Four men who are to go on trial Monday were members of a dangerous Muslim terror cell that schemed to support the Taliban and fight the United States, the government charges. Defense lawyers paint a different picture, saying overzealous prosecutors have turned legal activities, like playing paintball and buying weapons, into a sinister plot, and are inferring anti-American sentiments where none exist.
| Maybe it was the turbans... |
It will be up to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to decide the men’s guilt or innocence: all four defendants and the prosecution have waived their right to a jury trial. The four men were charged in June with conspiracy, firearms charges and other crimes as part of what U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty called a "Virginia jihad network." Six others charged who were also indicted have pleaded guilty to various charges and some have been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. The four — Masoud Ahmad Khan, Seifullah Chapman, Hammad Abdur-Raheem and Caliph Basha ibn Abdur-Raheem — are U.S. citizens who live in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Khan faces the most serious charges, including conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to support Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. All four are charged with conspiracy, and the government claims one of the conspiracy’s aims was to engage in hostilities against the United States. Khan’s participation is the most serious, the government alleges. They say he traveled to Pakistan in the months after the 9-11 attack to train with an organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba, and that his ultimate goal was to travel to Afghanistan and join the Taliban in its pending holy war against the United States. There is no evidence Khan ever joined the Taliban.
| But there's evidence he went through Lashkar e-Taiba training... |
Before Sept. 11, the government alleges that the group’s paramilitary training was an effort to join Lashkar, a Pakistani group that is seeking to drive India from the disputed Kashmir territory. Supporting Lashkar against India is a violation of the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from warring against countries with whom the United States is at peace. Violations of the Neutrality Act are relatively minor felonies under federal law, punishable by a maximum of three years in prison.
| If they get less than the max on that charge alone we're not taking the WoT seriously... |
But the group’s aims changed after the Sept. 11 attacks to include hostility against U.S. forces, the government alleges. Prosecutors’ primary evidence of the group’s anti-American intent comes from a Sept. 16, 2001 meeting in which the group’s purported spiritual leader told his followers that the time had come to defend Muslims in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime and that "American troops ... would be legitimate targets of the violent jihad in which the conspirators had a duty to engage," according to the grand jury’s indictment of the defendants."
| And who, pray tell, is the group's "spriritual leader"? |
Defense lawyers say it is a stretch to take that religious leader’s exhortations and impose his views on the entire group. Furthermore, defense lawyers say it’s unclear exactly what the imam said on that date. "The government’s own witnesses in various places dispute that version," said Christopher Amolsch, the defense lawyer for Caliph Abdur-Raheem. "Some people understood his comments to mean that it is no longer safe to be in this country (because of a backlash against Muslims). Some people took from that meeting, you need to go fight abroad," but not necessarily against Americans — perhaps in Chechnya or Kashmir where Muslim fighters were engaged in holy wars.
| "And then we have to consider the meaning of the world 'is'..." |
Prosecutors did not return calls seeking comment, but court documents show that some of the defendants who have already pleaded guilty have admitted as part of their plea bargains that they understood the Sept. 15, 2001 meeting as an exhortation against the United States. "Based on the comments of the (religious leader), Khwaja Mahmood Hasan knew that the enemy against whom help was needed was the United States," according to an admission signed by Hasan as part of his plea bargain. The religious leader, who is not named or charged in the indictment, has been identified by sources close to the case as Ali al-Tamimi, a religious scholar and doctoral student who lives in northern Virginia. His lawyers have denied that their client advocated violence against the United States.
| And what was his address, again? |
Bernie Grimm, a lawyer for Khan, who faces the most serious charges, said the government overplayed its case. "I don’t necessarily blame them. They believed at first that they had an actual terrorist cell," Grimm said. "But even in the best light for the government, that charge never comes to fruition." The only other person who faced charges as serious as Khan, Randall Todd Royer, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and is awaiting sentencing. But Royer in his plea never made any admission of intent to harm America, Grimm noted.
| That's why he's awaiting sentencing on a lesser charge. A hundred years ago he'd already have had his cigarette and blindfold session... |
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