HT to Weasel Zippers. Your Obama/Eric Holder corrupt DOJ in action again. *spit*
Airplane shoe bomber Richard C. Reid no longer faces severe limits on his prison activities or communications after the Obama administration quietly ended years of hard-nosed curbs against the British-born al-Qaeda terrorist.
This summer the Justice Department halted six years of measures that kept Reid from associating or praying with fellow jailed Muslim terrorists, and limited his access to the news media and pen pals.
That move has outraged victims of al-Qaeda and security experts. The recommendation to lift the restrictions was made with input from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, which prosecuted Reid in 2002, federal officials said.
"Terrorists should be held as incommunicado as possible," said Howard Safir, a former New York City police commissioner and CEO of Safir Rosetti, a division of Global Options Inc., a security consulting firm. "If they can communicate with the outside world, they can direct other people to commit terrorist acts."
An emotional Hermis Moutardier, one of the flight attendants who thwarted Reid's botched shoe bombing and was injured by the hulking terrorist, reacted with anger upon learning the news from the Herald by phone Friday.
"What's wrong with our system?!" cried Moutardier, 54, who lives in Florida and still works as a flight attendant. "I am concerned about the safety of my country, my fellow citizens, my children, the public buildings, that's my concern."
Life term in supermax
On Dec. 22, 2001, Reid tried to blow up a Miami-bound American Airlines [AMR] flight from Paris by igniting a fuse connected to powerful explosives stashed in his left shoe.
The flight was diverted to Boston, where Reid - who was subdued by crew and passengers - was tried and convicted in federal court. His failed terror bid led to the much-bemoaned rule requiring airline passengers to remove their shoes at security checkpoints.
Reid is serving life in a federal supermax in Florence, Colo., that is home to fellow terrorists Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Yousef is the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Over the last six years, the U.S. Justice Department annually renewed special restrictions on Reid, including limits on who he could call and write to and on the kinds of articles he could read or TV channels he could watch. They also banned him from group prayers.
Reid, 36, appealed the restrictions within the federal Bureau of Prisons several times, to no avail. In 2007, the London-born terrorist filed a lawsuit against the government alleging the restrictions violated his First Amendment rights.
On June 17 - after two years spent fighting Reid's lawsuit - federal prosecutors notified the courts that the restrictions, called "special administrative measures," or SAMs, would not be renewed.
The decision to let the SAMs lapse was based on a "collective assessment of the potential threat posed by Reid's communications and contacts," said Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd.
That assessment was made by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, the FBI and the DOJ counterterrorism section, Boyd said. Pressed repeatedly for more details, he would not say why those agencies came to the new conclusion. Christina DiIorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for the Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston, Michael K. Loucks, who was appointed in April, said the Boston office would not comment on the matter. 
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