Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Prosecuting jihadist intent










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Prosecuting
Jihadist Intent


Dear Solsticewitch13,


The trial and convictions reported in the story below raise a
question that America is going to have to grapple with in the next few
years: At what point does the constitutional protection of free speech no
longer apply to those who speak about carrying out violent jihad?


For instance, is an imam’s call to jihad, echoing throughout an
American mosque, constitutionally protected speech?

Lawyers who we
have talked to say the question comes down to an assessment of whether or
not the call to jihad is incitement to violence that amounts to an
“imminent threat.” Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is an example of
speech that creates an imminent threat of injury to the moviegoers, and is
thus not protected speech.

At what point does calling for jihad
become the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater? We in
America deeply cherish the right to free speech, but are we at risk of
enabling the seeds of our own destruction by erring too far in the
protection of speech that calls for jihad against us?

Walid Phares, in his excellent book Future Jihad, argues that “…U.S. and
western strategies are a reaction to terror actions.” (p. 197,
emphasis in original). His point is that the jihadist ideology is what
produces the jihadist actions, that the history of militant Islam
demonstrates this, and until we address what he terms the “factory” that
produces jihad, we will fall short of success in defeating jihad.


In other words, given the clear pronouncements for jihad against
infidels embedded throughout Islam’s holy books, and 1,400 years of
Islamic history of violent jihad resulting from the call to jihad in those
holy books, it is not unreasonable to conclude a cause and effect
relationship between the ideology of jihad and the actions of jihad.


Radical Islam is at heart a supremacist political ideology, and it
is not the only such ideology that has ever existed. Nazism immediately
comes to mind. Here in America, the Ku Klux Klan built a violent
supremacist movement based upon hate and a twisting of the Bible. Each of
these ideologies have certain things in common, including treating
“non-believers” as second-class citizens and the call to violence against
those “non-believers.”

So let us close with two questions. Would
21st century America celebrate the “rights” of a Grand Wizard
of the KKK publicly calling for the lynching of African-Americans? By the
same token, then, should America celebrate the “rights” of Islamists in
America who publicly call for jihad against infidels in
America?








5 Miami men convicted of Sears Tower
attack plot

By CURT ANDERSON AP Legal Affairs Writer

4:24 PM
CDT, May 12, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-us-terrorisminvestig,0,7616324.story


MIAMI - It took three trials, three juries and nearly
three years, but federal prosecutors finally succeeded Tuesday in
convicting five Miami men of plotting to start an anti-government
insurrection by destroying Chicago's
Sears Tower and bombing FBI offices.
One man was acquitted.


When the FBI swarmed the downtrodden Liberty City neighborhood to
make the arrests in June 2006, the administration of
President George W. Bush hailed the
case as a prime example of the Justice Department's post-Sept. 11 policy
of disrupting potential terror plots in the earliest possible stages.


Yet hours of FBI recordings of terrorist talk contrasted with
little concrete evidence of an evolving plot, triggering two mistrials
because juries could not agree on verdicts against ringleader Narseal
Batiste or five followers. One of the original seven defendants was
acquitted after the first trial.

"Any cases that involve someone's
mental intent, their intention when they made certain statements, are
always difficult," said Matthew Orwig, former U.S. attorney in
Texas
who has monitored the Miami case. "It was a must-win for the
government. They needed some vindication."

Finally, this third jury found the way on its sixth
day of deliberations.

It wasn't the only victory Tuesday for
terrorism prosecutors. In a separate case in New York, a jury convicted a
Lebanese-born Swede of trying to set up a terror training camp in

Oregon in 1999. The verdict against
Oussama Kassir capped a three-week trial.

In the Miami case,
Batiste, 35, was the only one convicted of all four terrorism-related
conspiracy counts, including plotting to provide material support to
terrorists and conspiring to wage war against
the U.S. Batiste, who was on the
vast majority of FBI recordings, faces up to 70 years in prison.


Batiste's right-hand man, 29-year-old Patrick Abraham, was
convicted on three counts and faces 50 years behind bars. Convicted on two
counts and facing 30 years are 24-year-old Burson Augustin, 25-year-old
Rotschild Augustine and 33-year-old Stanley Grant Phanor. Naudimar
Herrera, 25, was cleared of all four charges.

U.S. District Judge
Joan Lenard set sentencing for July 27 for the five convicted men, most of
whom are Haitian or have Haitian ancestry.

Herrera criticized the
prosecution as "bogus" and insisted the men banded together not for
terrorism but to explore ways to lift up the impoverished, drug-infested
area.

"It's not right," Herrera said outside the courthouse. "We
were really all about helping the community."

The jury endured a
two-month trial, then had to restart deliberations last week after one
juror was excused for illness and a second was booted off the panel for
being uncooperative. After the verdicts were read, court security
officials escorted the jury -- whose names were kept secret -- out of the
building before they could be interviewed.

"This was a difficult
trial, and we thank all the prosecutors and agents involved, whose efforts
resulted in today's successful conclusion," said Miami U.S. Attorney R.
Alexander Acosta, a holdover Bush appointee.

Prosecutors Richard
Gregorie and Jacqueline Arango focused on the group's intent as captured
on dozens of FBI audio and video recordings. Batiste is repeatedly heard
espousing violence against the U.S. government and saying the men should
start a "full ground war" that would "kill all the devils."

"I
want to fight some jihad," Batiste says on one tape.

A key piece
of evidence is an FBI video of the entire group pledging an oath of
allegiance, or "bayat," to al-Qaida and
Osama bin Laden in a March 16,
2006, ceremony led by an Arabic-speaking FBI informant posing as "Brother
Mohammed" from al-Qaida. Testimony also showed the men took photographs
and video of possible targets in Miami, including the FBI building, a
courthouse complex and a synagogue.

But Batiste, who testified in
all three trials, insisted he was only going along with Mohammed so he
could obtain $50,000 or more for his struggling construction business and
a nascent community outreach program. Batiste was leader of a Miami
chapter of a sect known as the Moorish Science Temple, which combines
elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and does not recognize the
U.S. government's full authority.

Defense lawyers also claimed the
case was an FBI setup driven by informants who manipulated the group.


"This is a manufactured crime," Batiste attorney Ana M. Jhones
said earlier in the trial.

A seventh man who was acquitted after
the first 2007 trial, 34-year-old Lyglenson Lemorin, is being deported to
his native Haiti anyway. Less stringent
Immigration laws make it easier for
U.S. officials to use the terrorism allegations against Lemorin.




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www.actforamerica.org


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