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UPI - March 14 2006
U.S. bungled cases against terror suspects
WASHINGTON, -- Mistakes and bungled prosecutions have bedeviled the Bush administration's prosecution of suspected terrorism.
The Los Angeles Times Tuesday listed a series of what it called "missteps and false starts," including the botched handling of witnesses in the current trial of accused al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
It noted that in 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Jose Padilla, a Bronx-born Muslim, had been arrested on suspicion of "exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States."
Padilla was held for nearly four years in a military brig without being charged. This year, as his lawyers appealed his case to the Supreme Court, the administration indicted him in Miami on charges of conspiring to aid terrorists abroad. There was no mention of a "dirty bomb," the newspaper said.
In May 2004, the FBI arrested Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer and Muslim convert, saying that his fingerprint was on a bag containing detonators and explosives linked to the Madrid train bombings that had killed 191 people two months before. Mayfield was freed after almost three weeks in custody and received an apology from the FBI, which blamed the misidentification on a substandard digital image from Spanish authorities, the newspaper said.
The Los Angeles Times noted that a computer science student in Idaho was accused of aiding terrorists when he designed a Web site that included information on terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. A jury in Boise acquitted Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of the charges in June 2004.
And after Florida college professor Sami al-Arian was indicted on charges of supporting terrorists by promoting the cause of Palestinian groups, a jury in Tampa acquitted him in December, the paper said….
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060314-014132-8456r
St. Petersburg Times – March 18, 2006
FL: Was indictment misleading?
When the government charged Sameeh Hammoudeh
with terrorism-related activities, it used transcripts
from wiretaps that may have been unfairly edited.
By Meg Laughlin
On that chilly day three years ago when Hammoudeh was arrested, two FBI agents handcuffed him and drove him to FBI headquarters for questioning. Hammoudeh said the agents told him he was not their target, but that they wanted him to aid their investigation. They asked him to provide information about how he helped Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, get money to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after 1994.
The U.S. government has designated the PIJ a terrorist organization. The group has claimed responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of people in Israel and the occupied territories.
In 1995, it became illegal for people in the United States to provide funds, goods or services to the organization. Because Hammoudeh worked with Al-Arian, prosecutors focused on money Hammoudeh was sending to the occupied territories, in an attempt to link Al-Arian to the PIJ after 1994. Hammoudeh's indictment accused him of "transferring monies and funds . . . for the purpose of promoting PIJ activities."
Summaries of the wiretapped conversations that the government used to justify this accusation seem to undercut the charges….
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/18/Hillsborough/Was_indictment_mislea.shtml
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