Thormir
10-23-2007, 02:21 PM
The year's long case against charity Holy Land Center ends in mistrial (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-holyland23oct23,0,1540715.story?page=1&coll=la-home-center). U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish declared a mistrial, but not before it became clear that the government's landmark terrorism finance case -- and one of its most-costly post-9/11 prosecutions -- was in serious trouble.Juror polling resulted in two jurors stating that their views were incorrectly tallied, thus the mistrial. It's unknown whether the government will retry the case. Some other details from the article:President Bush announced in December 2001 that the Texas-based charity's assets were being seized, and in a Rose Garden news conference accused the organization of financing terrorism. Monday's outcome, however, raised serious questions about those allegations as well.
"I think it is a huge defeat for the government," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor specializing in 1st Amendment cases and terrorism prosecutions.
"They spent almost 15 years investigating this group, seized all their records and had extensive wiretapping and yet could not obtain a single conviction on charges of supporting a terrorist organization."
...
Georgetown's Cole said Monday's outcome reflected flaws and overreaching in the government's long-running case against Holy Land.
"One is that the government's theory here was a real stretch under the law, because they were seeking to hold these individuals responsible not for funding Hamas, which is a designated [terrorist] group, but for funding non-designated groups that the government claimed were fronts for Hamas."
Additionally, he said, the case should raise questions about the administrative process that enabled the government to shut down Holy Land almost six years ago, long before criminal charges were brought.
"That was a summary process that involved no trial, permitted the government to rely on secret evidence and barred the defendants from ever introducing their own evidence in court. Now we see when they are required to put their evidence on the table, the government is not able to prove a single charge," Cole said.
Next is the case of Abdallah Higazy, an Egyptian national staying at a hotel in NYC on 9/11. The hotel found in his room a device used to communicate with airline pilots, and Higazy was arrested. Higazy denied having anything to do with the device or 9/11, but the investigator stated that life could go badly for his family back in Egypt if he didn't confess:Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”
Higazy explained why he feared for his family:
The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is —they’re suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam’s security force—as they later on were called his henchmen—a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister.And Higazy added:
[L]et’s just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay
And so he confessed. Not long after, an airline pilot arrived at the hotel looking for his radio, and Higazy was set free. He sued the hotel and investigator, and this recent case judgment says he has a case and may sue for damages.
Here it gets interesting. The opinion posted on the web at the Court of Appeals was pulled and, eventually, replaced with a redacted version (http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA1LTQxNDgtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/05-4148-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysquery/irlf97f/1/hilite). On page 7, the opinion is interrupted by the following:This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced.The Court -- or someone with authority enough to compel the Court -- decided that FBI techniques for extracting confessions (even or especially false ones) wasn't the sort of thing the public should know. However, a site that tracks court decisions had already captured the original (http://howappealing.law.com/HigazyVsTempleton05-4148-cv_opnWithdrawn.pdf), which contains the text quoted above.
It will be interesting to see how Higazy's case proceeds in the eventual face of "state secrets" that will most likely be brought to bear in the agent's defense. An internal inquiry cleared (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E5D81F39F935A15752C1A9649C8B 63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Higazy,%20Abdallah) the FBI agent of wrongdoing in 2002.
"I think it is a huge defeat for the government," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor specializing in 1st Amendment cases and terrorism prosecutions.
"They spent almost 15 years investigating this group, seized all their records and had extensive wiretapping and yet could not obtain a single conviction on charges of supporting a terrorist organization."
...
Georgetown's Cole said Monday's outcome reflected flaws and overreaching in the government's long-running case against Holy Land.
"One is that the government's theory here was a real stretch under the law, because they were seeking to hold these individuals responsible not for funding Hamas, which is a designated [terrorist] group, but for funding non-designated groups that the government claimed were fronts for Hamas."
Additionally, he said, the case should raise questions about the administrative process that enabled the government to shut down Holy Land almost six years ago, long before criminal charges were brought.
"That was a summary process that involved no trial, permitted the government to rely on secret evidence and barred the defendants from ever introducing their own evidence in court. Now we see when they are required to put their evidence on the table, the government is not able to prove a single charge," Cole said.
Next is the case of Abdallah Higazy, an Egyptian national staying at a hotel in NYC on 9/11. The hotel found in his room a device used to communicate with airline pilots, and Higazy was arrested. Higazy denied having anything to do with the device or 9/11, but the investigator stated that life could go badly for his family back in Egypt if he didn't confess:Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”
Higazy explained why he feared for his family:
The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is —they’re suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam’s security force—as they later on were called his henchmen—a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister.And Higazy added:
[L]et’s just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay
And so he confessed. Not long after, an airline pilot arrived at the hotel looking for his radio, and Higazy was set free. He sued the hotel and investigator, and this recent case judgment says he has a case and may sue for damages.
Here it gets interesting. The opinion posted on the web at the Court of Appeals was pulled and, eventually, replaced with a redacted version (http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA1LTQxNDgtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/05-4148-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysquery/irlf97f/1/hilite). On page 7, the opinion is interrupted by the following:This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced.The Court -- or someone with authority enough to compel the Court -- decided that FBI techniques for extracting confessions (even or especially false ones) wasn't the sort of thing the public should know. However, a site that tracks court decisions had already captured the original (http://howappealing.law.com/HigazyVsTempleton05-4148-cv_opnWithdrawn.pdf), which contains the text quoted above.
It will be interesting to see how Higazy's case proceeds in the eventual face of "state secrets" that will most likely be brought to bear in the agent's defense. An internal inquiry cleared (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E5D81F39F935A15752C1A9649C8B 63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Higazy,%20Abdallah) the FBI agent of wrongdoing in 2002.