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Hamid Hayat	Hamid Hayat	Jamiat-ul-Ansar	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050627
	Hamid Hayat	Lashkar-e-Taiba	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050723
	Hamid Hayat	Harkatul Mujahiddin	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050715
	Hamid Hayat	Jamiatul Ansar	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050731
	Hamid Hayat	al-Qaeda	Home Front: WoT	Pakistani	Arrested	Cannon Fodder	20050810
		charged with two counts of lying to the FBI when he said he did not attend a terrorism camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004
	Hamid Hayat	Lodi mosque	Home Front: WoT	Pakistani	In Jug		20050810
		criminal complaint alleges Hamid attended an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan
	Hamid Hayat	Harkat-ul-Mujahideen	Afghanistan/South Asia				20050622

Home Front: WoT

US judge says California man jailed for attending terrorist camp in Pakistan was wrongfully convicted

2019-01-13

[DAWN] A federal magistrate on Friday recommended overturning the controversial 2006 conviction of a Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, man accused of attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistain and plotting an attack in the United States. Hamid Hayat, ...did he spend time at an Al Qaeda training camp or did the site in the Northwest Frontier Province belong to the Pakistani army? Did he confess or was his testimony unfairly nudged by the FBI? And what ever happened to his father, Umer Hayat? now 36, who was then a young cherry-picker from Lodi, has served about half his 24-year sentence. But US Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes said he likely never would have been convicted were it not for the inexperience of his defense attorney, who failed to call alibi witnesses. "A reasonably competent attorney would have done more to investigate Hayat's alibi," Barnes said in a 116-page opinion. Her recommendation that the conviction be vacated now goes to US District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. He presided over Hayat's original trial, conviction and sentencing and previously rejected a defense motion over whether Hayat was properly represented at trial. Either side can appeal Burrell's eventual decision. Barnes heard new testimony from witnesses who said Hayat, who was born in California, never had time to receive terror training while visiting relatives and getting married in his ancestral village in Pakistain. Barnes also found that Hayat's defense attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, should have put on evidence from an expert on false confessions who could have countered prosecutors' claim that Hayat confessed. Mojaddidi, an immigration and family law attorney who was trying her first criminal case, said she "passionately represented Hamid Hayat as a young attorney and worked with a great team of lawyers and Sherlocks in his defense." She said in a statement that she always has believed he is innocent and is elated by Barnes' recommendation. Prosecutors are reviewing the magistrate's recommendation, US Attorney McGregor Scott said. "It has consistently been our position that Mr Hayat received effective representation at trial and that his conviction by a jury, subsequently affirmed by the Ninth Circuit, is completely valid," he said in a statement. One of the three appellate judges dissented when the court upheld Hayat's conviction in 2013, saying jurors erred in convicting Hayat based on predictions of what he might have done. Hayat's attorneys said Barnes' opinion goes beyond finding that his conviction should be overturned. "The judge found the testimony of the alibi witnesses sufficiently credible to conclude that Hamid would likely not have been convicted if the jury had heard these witnesses," they said in a statement. "That is effectively a finding of actual innocence."

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India-Pakistan

The Fluttering Flag of Jehad

2009-04-19

Khaled Ahmed does a book review The Fluttering Flag of Jehad By Amir Mir - Mashal Books Lahore 2008 Pp306; Price Rs 700 Amir Mir has developed into an informed commentator on the state of jihad with an uncomfortable inside track with those who are supposed to counter it in Pakistan. Of course jihad has unfortunately become another name for terrorism and those who have taken it out of the roster of the functions of the state and privatised it are to blame for this development. Amir Mir was able to interview Benazir Bhutto just before she fell to the terrorism of Al Qaeda or whoever it was who assassinated her in December 2007. She thought Pervez Musharraf was secretly in league with the terrorists and had tried to kill her in Karachi in October 2007, and was sure he would get terrorists like Abdur Rehman Otho of Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Qari Saifullah Akhtar of Harkat Jihad Islami, protégés of the ISI, to do the job. She named Brigadier Ijaz Shah and Brigadier Riaz Chibb etc. in her final writings. She predicted her death and blamed it on the army; months later, Major General Faisal Alvi too predicted his own death at the hands of the army and was shot down in Islamabad. Musharraf claimed that Benazir was killed by Baitullah Mehsud through his suicide-bombers whose minder was taped talking to him on the phone about the achievement. Evidence in place was destroyed by the establishment, and questions arising from her murder could not be answered although Al Qaeda was at first quoted in the press as having taken care of ‘the most precious American asset in the words of Mustafa Abu Yazid, the Al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. Benazir had her moles inside the ISI (p.28); but Amir doesnt accept that Baitullah Mehsud killed her and gives a convincing critique of the findings of Scotland Yard. Now a lot of writers use inside information from the US government to claim that Musharraf was sympathetic to the Taliban as they fled from the US attack in 2001. Amir Mir tells us that Corps Commander Peshawar General Safdar Hussain, who signed the peace accord with Baitullah Mehsud at Sararogha near Wana in February 2005, had called him a soldier of peace even as Mehsuds warriors shouted ‘Death to America. Major General Faisal Alvi was to accuse some elements in the army high command of being on the side of the Taliban before his assassination in 2008. Baitullah rewarded General Hussain with 200 captured Pakistani troops in August 2007. Benazir believed Qari Saifullah Akhtar was involved in the attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007 (p.43). Qari was in prison for trying to kill Musharraf in 2004 and was sprung from there to do the job on Benazir. Musharraf was outraged when he got to know that an ISI protégé had tried to kill him from his safe haven in Dubai after fleeing from Afghanistan in 2001. Qari was special because he was rescued by the spooks after he was found involved in trying to stage a military coup in league with Islamist fanatic Major General Zaheerul Islam Abbasi in 1995. He along with his Harkat Jihad Islami was to become the favourite of the Taliban government. The place to be mined for leadership talent was Karachis Banuri Mosque where the Qari and that other protégé Fazlur Rehman Khalil had received their Deobandi orientation. The third Banuri Mosque protégé of the state was Maulana Masud Azhar, who formed Jaish-e Muhammad and was rescued from an Indian jail together with Omar Sheikh, the man who later helped kill Daniel Pearl in Karachi. Qari was recalled from Dubai and kept in custody, and the Lahore High Court did not release him on a habeas corpus petition. But he was released quietly before Benazir arrived in Pakistan in October 2007 (p.45). After Benazir named him in her posthumous book, Qari was arrested again in March 2008. The reaction came in the shape of a suicide attacks on the Naval War College and the FIA office in Lahore where Qaris terrorists were being kept for interrogation into the War College attack (p.47). A Karachi terrorist court heard the case against Qari and freed him on bail because the proof with which the prosecution could have proved him guilty had ‘disappeared. Later he was rearrested but then quietly released by the Home Department because the spooks wanted him freed (p.48). Fazlur Rehman Khalil is the sort of person who can some day get Pakistan into trouble after which Islamabad will have to say he has mysteriously left the country and cannot be produced. He is Osama bin Ladens man and his Harkatul Mujahideen was prominent among the jihadi organisations in Kashmir and ran training camps for warriors in Dhamial just outside Rawalpindi Fazlur Rehman Khalil is another protected person who lives in Islamabad but governments hardly know what he has been saying to the American authors who visit him. When Islamabad got into trouble with its own clerics in Lal Masjid, it was Khalil who was taken out and made to negotiate with them (p.109). He is the sort of person who can some day get Pakistan into trouble after which Islamabad will have to say he has mysteriously left the country and cannot be produced. He is Osama bin Ladens man and his Harkatul Mujahideen was prominent among the jihadi organisations in Kashmir and ran training camps for warriors in Dhamial just outside Rawalpindi, at least that is what an American suspect Hamid Hayat told the FBI after visiting it (p.108). It is not only Dr AQ Khan whom Pakistan has to save from being kidnapped by the anti-proliferationist West, there is also Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the top scientist who enriched uranium at Khushab and then conferred with Osama bin Laden about building a nuclear bomb when he was in Kabul looking after his charity organisation called Umma Tameer Nau (p.111). He is the crazy bearded man who once presented a paper to General Zia saying Pakistan could make electricity from jinns. He also thought he could use a nuclear bomb to clear up a silted Tarbela Dam. Daniel Pearl was on to him, but he got killed when he got close to another protected person. there is also Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the top scientist who enriched uranium at Khushab and then conferred with Osama bin Laden about building a nuclear bomb when he was in Kabul looking after his charity organisation called Umma Tameer Nau (p.111). He is the crazy bearded man who once presented a paper to General Zia saying Pakistan could make electricity from jinns. He also thought he could use a nuclear bomb to clear up a silted Tarbela Dam. Daniel Pearl was on to him The other person was Mubarak Shah Gilani, a scion of the great Sufi of Lahore, Mianmir, who actually controlled jinns and ran a jihadi organisation named Al Fuqra still alive and doing well in the UKs Londonistan. He had recruited Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber terrorist who was caught before he could blow up an aircraft. Daniel Pearl had traced Mubarak Shah Gilani to Karachi and was going to interview him when he was tricked by Omar Sheikh into going with Lashkar-e Jhangvi gunmen who then handed him over to Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, who confessed at Guantanamo to personally beheading him (p.116). Omar Sheikh, who got involved in planning the 9/11 strike, was finally made to surrender after sheltering in home secretary and ex-ISI officer Ijaz Shahs residence in Lahore for a week. The book says on page 122 that the ISI chief General Mehmood was later investigated by FBI for sending $100,000 to plane hijacker Atta, who led the 9/11 strike on the World Trade Centre. The conduit for Mehmood was Omar Sheikh. The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearls paper, reported that an examination of Omar Sheikhs telephone record showed him talking to General Mehmood, proving also that the money sent by General Mehmood through Omar Sheikh was funding for the New York strike (p.122). General Musharraf in his book reported, as if in rebuttal, that Omar Sheikh was first recruited by the British spy agency MI6. the ISI chief General Mehmood was later investigated by FBI for sending $100,000 to plane hijacker Atta, who led the 9/11 strike on the World Trade Centre. The conduit for Mehmood was Omar Sheikh. The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearls paper, reported that an examination of Omar Sheikhs telephone record showed him talking to General Mehmood, proving also that the money sent by General Mehmood through Omar Sheikh was funding for the New York strike The book also reports that the hijacking — done by Masood Azhars brother Abdul Rauf and brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar — of an Indian airliner that led to the release of Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar from an Indian jail was linked to the ISI because its Quetta-based officers talked to the hijackers on the wireless set at Kandahar (p.128). Masood Azhar then went on to attack the Parliament in New Delhi in 2001, a month after 9/11. ISI chief Javed Ashraf Qazi on March 6, 2004 admitted that Jaish was involved in the New Delhi parliament assault (p.134). Later Jaish militants were to be housed in Lal Masjid during its siege by state troops in 2007 (p.141). An interesting chapter is included on the infiltration of the Pakistani cricket team by the Tablighi Jamaat. As a result, the team under captain Inzamam-ul Haq lost its playing ability to its obsession with tabligh and conversion. Media manager PJ Mir accused the team of neglecting the game during the 2007 World Cup and spending all the time trying to convert the innocent people of the West Indies (p.204).

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Sacramento FBI chief rebuilds trust with Muslim leaders

2008-12-01

For months, Sacramento's top FBI agent kept a Muslim prayer rug in his office. It was for Imam Mohamed Abdul Azeez, religious leader of the SALAM Islamic Center in Sacramento, who attended a citizens' academy with Drew Parenti at the FBI office. Parenti hasn't converted to Islam. He's been trying to convert Muslim leaders who might be suspicious of his agency after 9/11 and the Lodi terrorism case. And, after years of distrust, Azeez and other local Muslims believe they have found a friend in Parenti. The local FBI chief has visited several of the area's 14 mosques, ready to answer tough questions. He also has recruited an Egyptian Muslim agent who is known to the community and worships regularly at SALAM (Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims) and other local mosques. Local FBI agents and Muslim American leaders now come together "through friendship and partnership, not eavesdropping," Azeez said. "It's not us against them, and by working together, it's having a profound effect on preventing another 9/11. Prevention's not about phone- tapping and visiting people at 3 a.m., it's about being friends with the community. "He's the guy with the gun," Azeez said. "If he puts a smile on his face and approaches you humbly, you're going to open up right away." Now, the imam and the FBI agent plan to travel around California and the nation, to show other communities how to build similar partnerships. Azeez believes the Lodi investigation – which ended in 2006 with the conviction of one man of supporting terrorism – would play out much differently today. The new partnership between the FBI and area Muslims could prevent attempts to radicalize Muslim youths, Azeez said. "Someone familiar with law enforcement told me if we'd had an Arab or Muslim agent on the force, this whole Lodi thing would not have happened," Azeez said. Farouk Fakira, a leader at south Sacramento's Masjid Annur – which invited Parenti to the mosque's open house Nov. 22 – agrees. Parenti "is very approachable, very decent," Fakira said. "If Drew was around, the Lodi thing wouldn't have happened because Drew would have known better." Parenti, who inherited the Lodi case, "makes no apologies whatsoever for the case in terms of the way it was conducted or prosecuted." But he did say relationships now in place might prevent the "petri dish" of radical Islam from spawning hatred. Parenti, 48, became Sacramento Special Agent In Charge on June 19, 2005 – 11 days after two Pakistani American Muslims from Lodi, Umer Hayat and his son Hamid, were arrested on suspicion of terrorism. In 2006, Hamid Hayat was convicted of providing material support to terrorists by undergoing firearms training in Pakistan and returning to America prepared for jihad. Hayat, a 25-year-old cherry picker with a seventh-grade education, was convicted based on confessions he made during a 10-hour FBI interrogation without a lawyer present. Hayat had been befriended by Naseem Khan, a Pakistani American Muslim from Oregon working undercover for the FBI. In phone conversations disclosed during trial, Khan goaded Hayat into attending a terrorist training camp and encouraged his interest in violent Islamic fundamentalism. Hayat – sentenced to 24 years – admitted relishing the murder of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl. No evidence placed Hayat at a terrorist camp other than his conflicting statements to the FBI. Parenti, a graduate of California State University, San Diego, with a degree in Spanish, is a 24-year FBI veteran. He once supervised the anti-drug trafficking program in Mexico City. Two months after he arrived in Sacramento, Parenti recalled, he was intrigued by a newspaper headline, "New-Wave Imams," featuring Azeez, who had just become imam at SALAM. "I realized I did not know much about Islam," he said. He reached out to Azeez, an Egyptian American Muslim who wrote his University of Chicago master's thesis on the roots of suicide bombers

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Home Front: WoT

Hamid Hayat gets 24 years

2007-09-11

A federal judge sentenced an American to 24 years in prison for material support to terrorists by attending a paramilitary training camp in Pakistan and lying about it to U.S. officials. A jury in Sacramento, California, convicted Hamid Hayat in April 2006 for his activities between 2003 and 2005. Federal prosecutors had sought a 35-year sentence and his defense had argued that he should spend no more than 15 years behind bars. "It is because of prosecutions like this that we have prevented another attack against the United States," McGregor Scott, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, told reporters. "The threat to our nation demonstrated by the acts of the 9/11 terrorists was brought home with the revelations of Hamid Hayat's actions two years ago," Scott said.

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Home Front: WoT

Another bad guy loses... Daddy, too

2007-09-10

A California man was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison Monday for attending an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Pakistan and plotting to attack targets in the United States. Hamid Hayat, a U.S. citizen who turned 25 on Monday, was convicted in April 2006 of providing material support to terrorists and lying about it to FBI agents. Prosecutors said he intended to attack hospitals, banks, grocery stores and government buildings. Federal Judge Garland Burrell Jr. said Hayat had "returned to the United States ready and willing to wage violent jihad when directed to do so." His defense lawyer, Wazhma Mojaddidi, has said those sentiments were nothing more than the idle chatter of a directionless young man with a sixth-grade education. She said the government had no proof her client had ever attended a terrorist training camp. Ultimately, jurors were swayed by a confession that was videotaped during a lengthy FBI interrogation. "Lies! All lies! ... whaddayamean, the tape was rolling?" Hamid Hayat's father also was caught up in the case, but a federal jury deadlocked on whether he had lied to federal agents about his son's attendance at the camp. Umer Hayat later pleaded guilty to lying to a customs agent about why he was bringing $28,000 in cash to Pakistan several years earlier. For the Widows Ammunition Fund? The case against the Hayats grew from a wider federal probe into the 2,500-member Pakistani community in Lodi, a farming and grape-growing region about 35 miles south of the state capital. That investigation began shortly after the 2001 terror attacks and focused on whether Lodi business owners were sending money to terror groups abroad.

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Home Front: WoT

2 Lodi residents refused entry back into U.S.

2006-08-27

The federal government has barred two relatives of a Lodi man convicted of supporting terrorists from returning to the country after a lengthy stay in Pakistan, placing the U.S. citizens in an extraordinary legal limbo. Muhammad Ismail, a 45-year-old naturalized citizen born in Pakistan, and his 18-year-old son, Jaber Ismail, who was born in the United States, have not been charged with a crime. However, they are the uncle and cousin of Hamid Hayat, a 23-year-old Lodi cherry packer who was convicted in April of supporting terrorists by attending a Pakistani training camp. Federal authorities said Friday that the men, both Lodi residents, would not be allowed back into the country unless they agreed to FBI interrogations in Pakistan. An attorney representing the family said agents have asked whether the younger Ismail trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. The men and three relatives had been in Pakistan for more than four years and tried to return to the United States on April 21 as a federal jury in Sacramento deliberated Hayat's fate. But they were pulled aside during a layover in Hong Kong and told there was a problem with their passports, said Julia Harumi Mass, their attorney. The father and son were forced to pay for a flight back to Islamabad because they were on the government's "no-fly" list, Mass said. Muhammad Ismail's wife, teenage daughter and younger son, who were not on the list, continued on to the United States.

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Home Front: WoT

Terrorism informants at work across nation

2006-05-13

His work as an informant began after Oregon FBI agents first contacted him in connection with another criminal investigation. The foreign-born man was not arrested and began cooperating with a federal investigation into potential terrorist-related activities by other Muslims. His work led to arrests and prosecutions. That's the scenario played out not only in Lodi last year, but in 2002 in the FBI's investigation into the "Portland Seven," a group of Taliban sympathizers. And it's similar to terrorism investigations throughout the United States since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Naseem Khan, the Pakistani-born informant who infiltrated Lodi's Muslim community, is again expected to be a key witness in the government's second trial of Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old mobile ice cream vendor accused of lying to the FBI about his alleged firsthand knowledge of Pakistani terrorist training camps. Khan, 32, previously testified that his conversations about Hamid Hayat's "training" referred to his attendance at a terrorist camp. Umer Hayat's defense team argued the reference applied to religious education. Hayat's first trial ended last month in a hung jury that was split on the two counts. Federal prosecutors announced May 5 they would retry the case, with jury selection scheduled to start June 5. Hayat's son, 23-year-old Hamid Hayat, was convicted April 25 by a different jury that decided he received terrorist training and lied about it. Oliver "Buck" Revell, a former associate deputy director of the FBI, said informants are often necessary to stop potential terrorists or their friends from aiding America's enemies. Their use as a law enforcement tool grew in the 1950s, he said. "The use of informants is nothing new," Revell said. "It's just that in the terrorism area, people aren't used to prosecutions absent a violent act, so now the prosecutions are based before the act, before they do anything violent." Federal officials acknowledge that there were no impending attacks when terrorism-related arrests were made in Lodi; Toledo, Ohio; and Detroit. Revell said arrests have other functions, though. "It's definitely intended to be a deterrent to specific acts and specific behaviors," Revell said. "If you choose to participate in a criminal enterprise, and if you lie or take some sort of material action that aids and abets, then you've violated the law." But often, the suspects are arrested on "tenuous charges" based on an informant's reports and conversations, according to Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond, Virginia, law professor who studies terrorism cases. He said Muslim informants often aren't given specific targets but instead are asked to look for possible suspects. In the Hayats' case, he said the fact Khan was paid roughly $230,000 in wages and expenses raises suspicions about informants' motives. "You have to wonder when they get $250,000 and a car," Tobias said. James J. Wedick, a retired FBI agent who worked with the Hayats' defense team, said other veteran FBI agents consider many of the terrorism cases weak. Wedick said informants are taking advantage of many Muslim immigrants' sympathy for other Muslim nations. "Anybody who joins the bureau for a good case wouldn't work any of these cases for all the tea in China," Wedick said. "I would rather chase a white-collar crook or some violent guy, because there's plenty of them out there, rather than make up a case on these folks. "They've gone into the Muslim community and found a level of hate there, and instead of trying to understand it, because it's all about understanding and visualizing whirled peas ... they've paid some hired gun who has a reason to find someone. And he will get that one person." Muslims who attended the Hayats' trials said the FBI is actively recruiting other Muslims to look for other potential homegrown or immigrant terrorists. The FBI's use of Khan in Lodi now has the city's Muslims suspicious of any newcomers. Revell said that's similar to the reaction many Italian-Americans had after the FBI infiltrated the mafia in the 1960s. "It's an unfortunate aspect, but it's mandatory to penetrate organizations like al-Qaida or the Muslim Brotherhood," Revell said. "In order to do that, they have to send people in who can listen, overhear and report."

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Home Front: WoT

Umer Hayat to be retried

2006-05-06

Federal prosecutors said Friday that they would retry a California man on charges that he lied to F.B.I. agents about his son's stay at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The man, Umer Hayat, a naturalized American citizen, has been free on bail since Monday after a federal jury in Sacramento deadlocked on the charges against him. A mistrial was declared on April 25, the same day a separate jury convicted his son, Hamid Hayat, of lying to federal agents and providing material support to terrorists by attending a camp of Al Qaeda in 2003. McGregor W. Scott, a United States attorney in Sacramento, said in a statement on Friday that the severity of the charges against the elder Mr. Hayat, and evidence that included a videotaped confession, warranted a second trial. "In the post-9/11 environment in which we live, lying to the F.B.I. in the course of a terrorism investigation is serious misconduct," Mr. Scott said. "False information may result in agents losing valuable time to foil a deadly plot, or perhaps bringing the wrong person or persons under suspicion." The new trial is set to begin June 5 in federal court in Sacramento. Mr. Hayat's defense lawyer, Johnny Griffin III, said the government's decision to retry his client, who initially volunteered to speak with F.B.I. agents, would not advance its war on terror. "In pursuing this fight, the government needs information, eyes and ears in the community," Mr. Griffin said. "But people will be less apt to talk now." Mr. Griffin said the government had alienated the Muslim community in its handling of Mr. Hayat's case. "To now go back and retry it sends a message," he said. "If you cooperate and we don't like what you are saying or we don't believe you, we will prosecute." The jury in the elder Mr. Hayat's trial, which lasted nine weeks, deadlocked 7 to 5 and 6 to 6 on the two counts against him. Umer Hayat, 48, an ice cream vendor, and his son, Hamid, 23, live in Lodi, Calif., a small farming town south of Sacramento.

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Home Front: WoT

Lodi conviction is a major victory for Justice Department

2006-04-26

The conviction of a Lodi, Calif., man on terrorism-related charges Tuesday is a much-needed victory for the Justice Department, which has stumbled in its pursuit of terrorism suspects in the courts recently. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, federal prosecutors have won verdicts against, among others, an Ohio truck driver accused of plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and a man who threatened to kill President Bush. But there have also been a series of missteps and false starts. The government has seen juries starting to reject charges in some high-profile cases. In one instance, a judge threw out terrorism charges because of alleged misconduct by a federal prosecutor who was later indicted. The flubs have provided ammunition to critics of the Justice Department and threatened to undermine public confidence in whether the prosecutions are protecting the nation from serious threats. Tuesday's guilty verdict against 23-year-old Hamid Hayat was a measure of vindication. Hamid had been charged in connection with attending a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003 and then lying about his attendance to the FBI. A separate jury deadlocked on charges that his father lied to authorities about his son's participation at the camp, and a mistrial was declared. Hayat was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to terrorists. The case shows how prosecutors are attempting to use the law to disrupt what they see as evolving terrorist plots before they reach fruition. But the strategy, first enumerated by Attorney General John Ashcroft a few weeks after the attacks in Washington and New York, has also been highly controversial. Its supporters say it is an important tool to head off threats. Critics say it allows the government to subject people to lengthy prison terms based on little evidence that they intended to hurt anyone. In effect, "you prosecute people not for what they have done but for what you fear they might do in the future," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor. Some courts have held parts of the "material support" law unconstitutional on grounds that the law fails to give defendants adequate notice of what is illegal. The prosecution of Hayat and his father appeared to be one such marginal case. The only evidence against the men were the videotaped confessions they gave last June to FBI agents and the testimony of a paid government informant. Defense lawyers said the confessions were obtained under duress. The informant's credibility also seemed hurt after he testified having seen a senior al-Qaida operative in Lodi -- a sighting that terrorism experts universally dismissed as unlikely. But ultimately, the government was able to prove that Hayat himself was not credible. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said in a statement after the verdict Tuesday that "justice has been served against a man who supported and trained with our terrorist enemies in pursuit of his goal of violent jihad." The courtroom victory was also unusual because most of the convictions the Justice Department has won since the Sept. 11 attacks have come by defendants pleading guilty to crimes rather than by the government proving its case in a court of law. The verdict also reverses what had been a worrisome trend for prosecutors. In a major setback two years ago, a federal jury in Idaho acquitted a computer science student accused of aiding terrorists when he designed a Website that included information on terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. Lawyers for Sami Omar al-Hussayen successfully argued that the government was seeking to criminalize his political views. The government suffered another loss in December when a jury in Tampa, Fla., acquitted a former college professor indicted on charges of supporting terrorists by promoting the cause of Palestinian groups. The case of Sami Al-Arian had been touted by the Justice Department as an illustration of how the Patriot Act was empowering investigators by enabling law enforcement officials and intelligence operatives to share information. And just last month, a former assistant U.S. attorney, Richard Convertino, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit for alleged misconduct in connection with what was the first federal terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks. Convertino has adamantly denied the charges, and has said he is being made a scapegoat for missteps by his Justice Department supervisors.

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Home Front: WoT

Hamid Hayat convicted

2006-04-26

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a 23-year-old man of supporting terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan three years ago. Hamid Hayat, a seasonal farm worker in Lodi, an agricultural town south of Sacramento, was convicted of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI. The verdict came hours after a separate jury hearing a case against the man's father deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. The father, 48-year-old ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his son's involvement in the training camp. Defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet in court May 5 to decide whether he will be retried. One down, one to go. Both men are U.S. citizens and stood trial in federal court before separate juries. They have been in custody since their arrests last June. Both cases initially generated widespread interest because they raised concerns about a potential terrorist cell centered in the wine- producing region about 35 miles south of the state capital. But the government presented no evidence of a terror network during the nine- week trial. Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and a government informant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense. Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having "a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind" who returned from a two-year visit to Pakistan intent on carrying out attacks. Possible targets included hospitals, banks and grocery stores. They presented no evidence to show that such attacks were imminent or even planned. But in closing arguments, a prosecutors said the case was intended to prevent terrorist attacks "long before anybody is hurt." As opposed to afterwards, which tends to be something the otherwise dead victims will, or at least should, appreciate. Defense lawyers for both men argued that the government didn't have a case against their clients because it had produced no evidence that the son ever attended a terrorist training camp. Their biggest hurdle was trying to persuade jurors to discount the men's videotaped confessions. The statements were given separately last June during lengthy interrogations by the FBI in Sacramento. "Members of the jury, you have to disregard what my client said on those tapes! Why, he must have been under duress! Under the influence! Maybe he's just stoopid!" "Hey!" "Shaddup Hamid, I'm doing my best with what you gave me!" Defense lawyers said the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night. "My client is an early to bed kind of man, and they kept him up past his bedtime! Obvious duress if I ever saw it!" The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued. "Where my clients came from, you can say anything to the cops and it doesn't matter!" The trial is the result a government investigation into Lodi's 2,500-member Pakistani community that began after agents received a tip in 2001 that Lodi-area businesses were sending money to terrorist groups abroad. That investigation ultimately lead agents to Naseem Khan. The 32-year-old former Lodi resident was working a variety of fast-food and convenience store jobs in rural Oregon when agents approached him in October 2001, just a month after the terrorist attacks. Khan, a Pakistani native who moved to the U.S. as a teenager, was recruited to infiltrate Lodi's Pakistani community. He initially investigated the money laundering allegations and then targeted a pair of local imams before finally befriending Hamid Hayat. The Hayats grew to eventually consider Khan almost a member of the family. After Hamid Hayat left for Pakistan in spring 2003, Khan kept in touch and recorded their telephone calls _ some of which show Khan urging Hayat to attend a jihadi camp. In one conversation, Khan exhorted Hayat to "be a man _ do something!" Hamid Hayat's lawyers seized on such conversations to show that the FBI informant pushed Hayat to attend a training camp, but ultimately produced no evidence that he had. They also questioned the informant's credibility, in part because of his own testimony. Khan said that just before he was recruited, he told FBI agents he had seen Osama bin Laden's physician and two other international terrorists living in Lodi during the late 1990s. At the time, they were wanted for attacks in the Middle East and Africa. Defense attorneys and terrorism experts said it was highly unlikely they would have been in the U.S. at that time, a point prosecutors conceded later in the trial.

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India-Pakistan

Defense witness claims Lodi cell terror camp is a Pakistani military base

2006-04-05

A man on a humanitarian mission in Pakistan says what the U.S. government thinks is a terrorist training camp may actually be a Pakistani military facility. "I was at the right location. I'm 100 percent sure of that," said James Lazor, a witness for the defense in the terrorism trial against Lodi's Hamid Hayat. Last month, Lazor was in Balakot, Pakistan searching for the camp and says he encountered Pakistani soldiers when he got close. When he spoke to one of them, Lazor said, "He was a military guy, no doubt in my mind." Hamid Hayat, 23, is accused of training at a terrorism camp. Prosecutors claim his description of the area and the camp matches satellite images showing a complex of buildings tucked in the mountains of Pakistan's northwest Frontier Province. Defense lawyers say Lazor's testimony disputes that. "Their expert sat on the stand and stated that in looking at the images that it cannot be a military camp, and he is clearly wrong," said Wazhma Mojaddidi, who represents Hamid Hayat. "The proof is in that the government is not able to, with all its resources, produce one person whoever went there. Us as the defense, we were able to find someone to go there, and he came back and reported what he saw." Lazor testified that he went to Pakistan this past February, taking blankets to victims of the earthquakes as well as letters from California children to deliver to Pakistani children. He's a private citizen who went there on his own after speaking to friends about the needs of earthquake victims. The defense would not reveal how they discovered Lazor was going there, but he agreed to try to find the terrorist camp armed with maps, a global positioning system device and the coordinates provided by defense attorneys. Lazor said when he went up the trail and was about a mile and a half away, he was approached by a military-type vehicle. "I was stopped by a sergeant from the Pakistani military who said the area wasn't open to civilians and said it was a Pakistani military camp I would not be allowed access to," said Lazor. "He was polite and respectful. I mean if he was a terrorist it would've been a completely different scenario." Lazor, who lead off Tuesday's defense witnesses, said he did very little research on the Hayat case before he went on his quest in Pakistan last month. "I went with an open mind," he said. Also taking the stand was FBI agent Gary Schaaf, one of the agents who interrogated Hamid Hayat which was videotaped after Hayat claimed he attended training at the terrorist camp. Under defense questioning, he acknowledged that he often asked Hayat leading questions during the interview. Schaaf said he, not Hayat, was the one who first mentioned weapons and explosives training and the possibility someone would travel by bus to get there. Besides the charge of training for terrorism, Hamid Hayat also faces three counts of lying to federal agents. The key evidence against him is his videotaped confession, along with secret tape recordings between him and a paid FBI informant, Naseem Khan. On Wednesday, the trial for Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, resumes. The older Hayat, an ice cream truck driver from Lodi, is charged with lying to federal officials about his son's alleged involvement in terrorism.

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India-Pakistan

Expert describes al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan

2006-03-24

A government expert's description of a terrorist camp in remote northern Pakistan had several similarities with one a Lodi man told FBI agents he attended in 2003 and 2004. Muslim extremists operated the camp, which is hidden from plain view by mountains, Harvard scholar Hassan Abbas testified Thursday during the federal trial for Hamid Hayat, 23, and his father, Umer Hayat, 48, on terrorism-related charges. Hamid Hayat described to agents a long bus ride, being dropped off in a field and then hiking about three miles through forested mountains to the camp. He now contends he made up the story to end agents' questioning. Abbas, a former Pakistani police chief, testified the camp near the city of Balakot is well-known in Pakistan. While he said he has not talked to anyone who trained at the camp, he has read roughly two-dozen accounts of training by participants. In another potential link to the younger Hayat's confession, Abbas said many recruits are attracted by the speeches and writings of Masood Azhar, leader of a banned extremist group that founded the camp in 2000 or 2001. "They saw his speeches, read his material and met someone close to Masood Azhar," Abbas said of recruits one day after a juror dismissed from the case said she would vote to acquit the younger Hayat. "Through that communication or conviction, they were motivated to go and join him," Abbas said. Two hefty books found in Hayat's Lodi home were written by Azhar, and a scrapbook found there by federal agents on June 7 included newspaper stories about Azhar's group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. Several of Abbas' answers during cross-examination backfired against defense attorney Wazhma Mojaddidi, who is representing the 23-year-old man charged with supporting terrorism and lying to the FBI about his alleged attendance at terrorist camps in Pakistan. Where Abbas gave few details about the Balakot camp during questioning by federal prosecutor Robert Tice-Raskin, Mojaddidi pressed for more. When the defense attorney asked if the rail-thin younger Hayat had any value to terrorist leaders, Abbas said jihadists - Muslim warriors - didn't worry about trainees' fitness. "They're so much focused on recruiting people, anybody who has an interest, they will take him," Abbas told Mojaddidi. "Irrespective of a person's physique, they will provide the training. That's the purpose of a training camp." Abbas also intimated there could be a job as a food preparer in such a camp. Hayat told the FBI he didn't participate in weapons training but simply washed vegetables. "It's kind of a community they're trying to develop," Abbas said. "They eat together, they sleep together and they move together, because they are building a community. They would be involved in all kinds of things." Abbas also testified that contrary to efforts by Pakistan's government to eliminate terrorist training camps with the United States' assistance after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many camps still trained Muslim extremists. News reports of the October 2005 earthquake centered near Balakot stated many al-Qaida trainees had been killed by crumbling buildings. Abbas spent most of the day on the witness stand, with his testimony concluding the government's case against Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old Lodi ice cream vendor and father of the co-defendant. Paid FBI informant Naseem Khan briefly reappeared to answer more questions about his initial contacts with the FBI in Bend, Ore., in the fall of 2001, but with only Hamid Hayat's jury present. Prosecutor Laura Ferris said the government has only one witness remaining - an expert on satellite imagery who is expected to testify Tuesday about pictures taken of a suspected terrorist camp in Pakistan. Then, it's the defense's turn to present evidence.

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