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Government Corruption

Judge rules military can't disqualify enlistees with HIV

2024-08-23

[Washington Examiner] The U.S. military can no longer disqualify recruits who have undetectable viral loads of HIV from serving in the military.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled on Tuesday that the Pentagon’s arguments barring HIV-positive individuals from military service were not "supported by the evidence."
Clinton Appointee
"Defendants’ policies prohibiting the accession of asymptomatic HIV-positive individuals with undetectable viral loads are irrational, arbitrary and capricious," the judge wrote. "Even worse, they contribute to the ongoing stigma surrounding HIV-positive individuals while actively hampering the military’s own recruitment goals."

Brinkema previously ruled in 2022 that the Defense Department could not prevent service members diagnosed after enlisting from deploying in active duty outside the continental U.S. nor from being commissioned as officers.

Three plaintiffs who were either barred from entry or who were already enlisted and denied promotion due to their HIV status in this recent case argued that the Defense Department’s policy was unlawful based upon the due process of the Fifth Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

In defending its policy, the Defense Department listed that an asymptomatic HIV- positive individual still could pose risk to the military’s mission for they may not be taking their medicine on a regimented basis which could lead to their viral loads rising; HIV which is incurable could be transmitted to other service members either through "blood spatters or transfusions" and those living with HIV could suffer greater comorbidities impacting their health and ability to serve.

The Pentagon also raised concerns that the military would endure "significant costs" in order to pay for the HIV treatment of HIV-positive individuals. Antiretroviral costs are estimated to be between $10,000 and $25,000 per person annually.

Link

Home Front: WoT

US woman who led female IS battalion faces up to 20 years in prison

2022-10-31

[FRANCE24] An American woman who grew up on a farm in Kansas, converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
in Syria, where she led an all-female military battalion, is to be sentenced Tuesday for providing support to a foreign terrorist group.

Allison Fluke-Ekren,

... mother of five, wife of three jihadis — sequentially, they kept getting killed, first the sniper, then the Bangladeshi drone expert, then the failed defender of Raqqa—teacher, home schooler, fluent in Arabic, Turkish, and Spanish. Two of the kids escaped her clutches, getting themselves to safety with her first husband (who was unromantically uninterested in jihad) in America...

42, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to terror charges in June in a US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.

"For at least eight years, Fluke-Ekren committed terrorist acts on behalf of three foreign terrorist organizations across war zones in Libya, Iraq, and Syria," US attorney Raj Parekh said in a pre-sentencing memo.

"Fluke-Ekren brainwashed maiden of tender yearss and trained them to kill," Parekh said. "She carved a path of terror, plunging her own children into unfathomable depths of cruelty by physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually abusing them."

Parekh, urging Judge Leonie Brinkema to impose the maximum 20-year sentence, traced Fluke-Ekren's path from her upbringing on an 81-acre (33-hectare) farm in Kansas to her apprehension in Syria after the 2019 territorial defeat of IS.

While other Americans traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS, most were men and Fluke-Ekren is the rare American woman who occupied a senior position in the ranks of the now defunct Islamic Caliphate.

Born Allison Brooks, she grew up in a "loving and stable home" in Overbrook, Kansas, and was considered a "gifted" student, the US attorney said.

She dropped out of high school in her sophomore year, however, and married a local man named Fluke, with whom she had two children.

Her son from that marriage testified anonymously about years of abuse inflicted on him and his siblings by their mother.

"My mother is a monster without love for her children, without an excuse for her actions," said her son, who plans to attend Tuesday's sentencing in Alexandria. "She has the blood, pain, and suffering of all of her children on her hands."

After leaving her first husband, Fluke-Ekren attended the University of Kansas, where she married a fellow student named Volkan Ekren and became a Moslem. She later earned a teaching certificate from a college in Indiana.

They had five children together and adopted another after the child's parents were killed as jacket wallahs in Syria.

'EXTREMIST IDEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE'
In 2008, the family moved to Egypt and in 2011 to Libya where, the US attorney said, "Fluke-Ekren's dogged pursuit to obtain positions of power and influence to train young women in murderous Moslem ideology and violence began."

They were in Benghazi in September 2012 when the Islamic murderous Moslem group Ansar al-Sharia
...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet...
attacked the US mission and CIA office there, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans.

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-Lurid Crime Tales-

An FBI Analyst Is Going to Prison (7 days + $500. fine) for Illegal Email Hacking of a Political Enemy...to Protect Mueller

2019-12-28

[Townhall] While U.S. Attorney John Durham continues his criminal investigation into FISA abuse and other misconduct at the FBI, CIA, DIA and other federal government intelligence agencies, one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller allies was just sentenced to prison.

Mark Tolson, a former FBI analyst, illegally accessed the emails of right wing activist Jack Burkman in order to protect Mueller. He admitted to doing so in federal court last week. He will serve seven days behind bars and has been ordered to pay a $500 fine.

"I did what I did to try to protect Director Mueller, who can protect himself," Tolson told U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema.

After illegally sifting through emails, Tolson attempted to leak them to the press.

"After snooping through Burkman’s account, Tolson sent screenshots of the messages and offered the password to an unspecified journalist, court filings say," POLITICO reports.

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Home Front: Politix

Ex-FBI official gets 7 days jail for accessing anti-Mueller activist's emails

2019-12-21

[Politico] A former FBI analyst was sentenced to seven days in jail and a $500 fine Friday for illegally accessing a neighbor's email account in a bid to head off an apparent smear campaign against special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mark Tolson, 60, pleaded guilty in September to a single misdemeanor charge of computer fraud and abuse for his unusual effort last fall to derail eccentric Washington lobbyist Jack Burkman's attempt to obtain information to be used in sexual misconduct allegations against Mueller.

Tolson admitted he unlawfully accessed Burkman's emails in October 2018, after the conspiracy-minded lobbyist announced plans to hold a news conference to air sexual harassment allegations against Mueller.

After snooping through Burkman's account, Tolson sent screenshots of the messages and offered the password to an unspecified journalist, court filings say.

Tolson's wife, Sarah Gilbert Fox, facilitated the illicit access by providing Burkman's email password, which she had obtained for work she'd previously done for him.

At Tolson's sentencing Friday morning in Alexandria, Va., the longtime FBI employee told U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema that he acted out of a desire "to protect Director Mueller" from what Tolson believed were false allegations. "It was because of the press conference, your honor," the ex-FBI official said.

"This is actually a very serious offense," Brinkema said. "You're lucky. Your wife is lucky. The government could have prosecuted her as well."

Link

Home Front: WoT

Ex-CIA man Kiriakou gets 2 1/2 years for leaks

2013-01-25

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison by a federal judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower when he leaked a covert officer's name to a reporter.

A plea deal required the judge to impose a sentence of 2 1/2 years. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could.

Kiriakou's supporters describe him as a whistleblower who exposed aspects of the CIA's use of torture against detained terrorists. Prosecutors said Kiriakou was merely seeking to increase his fame and public stature by trading on his insider knowledge.

The 48-year-old Arlington resident pleaded guilty last year to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. No one had been convicted under the law in 27 years.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Feds can't find Somalis they say Va. man smuggled into U.S.

2010-04-12

No worries, they all drive cabs. Or they're bricklayers. Perhaps they teach math and science at the local schools. Honorable folks every one.
Federal authorities say they're certain nearly 300 Somalis allegedly smuggled into the United States by a Virginia man who admitted contacts with an Islamic terrorist group are in the country, but they can't find them despite a worldwide search for leads.

The search, first reported by the Washington Examiner, started in early February after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Anthony Joseph Tracy on charges that he helped smuggle the Somalis into the United States from Kenya. The 35-year-old has since been indicted on charges of conspiring with Cuban Embassy officials in Kenya to help the Somalis illegally enter the United States. ICE Agent Thomas Eyre has testified that authorities are "concerned" about the contact Tracy admitted having with the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda ally.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema questioned Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan about the status of the government's search for the illegal immigrants.

"We have not identified anyone," Linehan said. "We believe all the individuals are present in the United States. But by the virtue of [Tracy's] successful smuggling scheme, we are having difficulty finding them."

Eyre indicated in his testimony that authorities are trying to determine whether any of the Somalis are associated with Al-Shabaab.
Nah, can't be, they're all economists. Or work at the local nursing home as assistants. Perhaps they're farmers.
In a court filing, Linehan said agents and prosecutors have "issued numerous subpoenas, reviewed Department of Homeland Security records, and conducted witness interviews throughout the United States, as well as in Australia and Africa."

According to court documents, Tracy helped the Somalis move to the United States by getting them travel visas to Cuba through contacts he had at the Cuban Embassy in Kenya. Tracy's attorney declined comment for this story.

The Somalis are believed to have entered the United States through the border with Mexico after making a circuitous trip from Kenya to Dubai to Moscow to Cuba to South America then to Mexico and northward, Eyre testified.

In March, federal prosecutors requested an extra month to indict Tracy because of investigation delays caused by the February snowstorms that battered Washington. Even with the indictment now in hand, Brinkema said the government's case could be "shaky" without authorities locating the Somalis.

Tracy has been held without bail and his case has been scheduled for trial on May 17.

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Home Front: WoT

Moussaoui loses U.S. court appeal

2010-01-06

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court on criminal charges related to the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks, lost a bid on Monday to overturn his guilty plea and his sentence of life in prison.

A U.S. appeals court rejected arguments by Moussaoui, who is serving his sentence at a supermaximum federal security prison in Colorado, that his guilty plea was invalid because the U.S. government failed to turn over classified evidence that could have helped in his defense.

"Moussaoui challenges the validity of his guilty plea and his sentences" on the various counts, the appeals court said in its ruling. "We affirm Moussaoui's convictions and sentences in their entirety."

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking part in an al-Qaeda conspiracy to crash hijacked planes into U.S. buildings. The conspiracy included the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

In 2006, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison, rejecting demands by prosecutors that he get the death penalty.

Moussaoui testified at his trial that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House. He was arrested several weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks after raising suspicions at a Minnesota flight school.

A three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, rejected arguments by Moussaoui's lawyers that his conviction should be overturned and he should be resentenced because his constitutional rights were violated.

His attorneys had argued in the appeal that Moussaoui's trial preparations had been impaired because his lawyers could not tell him about classified evidence the government had that could have helped his case.

His attorneys said Moussaoui had a fundamentally unfair trial and raised various other arguments, including that his choice of lawyer had been rejected.

But U.S. Justice Department attorneys said U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the trial, made sure that Moussaoui understood his rights.

They said Moussaoui wanted to plead guilty, against the advice of his lawyers, and that he knew the gist of the classified evidence in question.

The court also rejected a request by Moussaoui to send the case back to Brinkema for further proceedings based on the government's disclosure of classified information while his appeal has been pending.

"The finality of the guilty plea, entered knowingly, intelligently, and with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences, stands," the appeals court concluded at the end of a 78-page opinion.

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Home Front: WoT

Federal judge says Sami Al-Arian plea deal does matter

2009-03-06

For the first time, federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., have acknowledged that when Sami Al-Arian took a plea deal in early 2006, federal prosecutors in Tampa believed as did Al-Arian that it exempted him from testifying in other cases. But with this surprising admission, which begins a 24-page document filed in Virginia federal court Wednesday night, comes a provocative argument: It doesn't matter.

"The understandings of the prosecutors who negotiated that agreement are irrelevant to (Al-Arian's) guilt or innocence" for criminal contempt, wrote the Alexandria federal prosecutors, who maintain they are not bound by an agreement made in another district. Despite what prosecutors in Tampa agreed to, the Virginia prosecutors argue they had a right to move Al-Arian to Virginia to testify. They also say that when Al-Arian repeatedly refused, citing a good-faith belief his plea agreement protected him, he was guilty of criminal contempt. He "willfully disobeyed," they say.

But U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema has said it does matter what he and the Tampa federal prosecutors agreed to. A criminal conviction could mean more prison time and she would need to see "a completely full record" to determine the length of his sentence. Furthermore, Brinkema has said, she doesn't think "the Department of Justice can compartmentalize itself."

"This is not one U.S. Attorney's Office vs. another. You have the United States Department of Justice involved at both ends," she said.

Al-Arian took a plea deal in February 2006, in Tampa after a jury acquitted him on eight counts of aiding terrorists and deadlocked on nine counts. He pleaded guilty to aiding associates of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad with nonviolent immigration needs. Tampa prosecutors agreed with his defense attorneys that he would be deported within a few months of signing the plea agreement. But, instead, a Tampa federal judge sentenced him to 11 more months in prison. Virginia prosecutors called that extra time "the window of opportunity" they needed to move Al-Arian to Virginia and force him to testify before a grand jury investigating an Islamic think tank.

Al-Arian's criminal contempt trial was scheduled to begin Monday, but Brinkema postponed it. A new date will be set Monday.

Link

India-Pakistan

Mumbai Terror Group Trained American Jihadists

2008-12-10

A growing chorus of intelligence officials in the U.S. and in south Asia have pinned the Mumbai attacks on the Kashmir-based militants Lashkar-e-Taiba. But there's been hardly any mention of the extremist group's deep ties to American-based jihadists.

Since 2003, at least five U.S. citizens have been convicted in federal court of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba. At least nine more men, considered to be in the same larger circle, have been convicted of firearms violations and other felonies. (A partial list is here.) Several other cases are still making their way through the legal process.

Islamic extremists in America have used Lashkar-e-Taiba ("LeT") as a "stepping stone" into the broader world of global terror, says Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator at the NEFA Foundation. With easy-to-access training facilities, English-speaking recruiters, and connections to militants around the world, a Lashkar camp is "the best way for emerging jihadist to get trained."

In April, 2000, for instance, Virginia native Randall Todd Royer (pictured) went to a LeT camp in Kashmir. The place wasn't hard to find, according to an opinion from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. Online newsletters gave out the group's phone number and e-mail address, with the assurance that "requests for information about the jihad in Kashmir are welcome." A recruiting center operated openly in Lahore, one of Pakistan's largest cities.

Royer spent a month at the LeT camp, firing AK-47s and other weapons, and going through endurance training. In August, Seifullah Chapman made a similar trip, arranged by Royer, who called it a "straight path" to global jihad. There, Chapman spent thirty days in "weapons training" and "performing military drills."

Then, on September 16, 2001, Royer and several of his would-be militant friends gathered to decide what to do in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When the meeting broke, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Yong Ki Kwon, Muhammed Aatique, and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan had all "agreed to go to LeT for training," according to Judge Brinkema. "Each of them had the intent to receive training that would allow him to proceed to Afghanistan and fight on behalf of the Taliban and Mullah Omar against United States troops."

Days later, all four were in the LeT office in Lahore, where they saw posters of a boot trampling the American flag, and the U.S. Capitol in flames. They traveled on to a Lashkar camp, where they fired AK-47s, anti-aircraft guns, and rocket-propelled grenades.

None of them made it to the Afghan fight. But in December 2001, two of the men, Khan and Kwon, were asked "to return to the United States, gather information, and spread propaganda." A year later, Khan was purchasing drone aircraft parts, and gave them to a LeT operative.

Nobody in this Virginia-based circle was about to be confused with Osama Bin Laden. These were newbies with violent intentions, not master terrorists. But Lashkar served as a kind of filter for the broader jihad movement -- sorting out who should stay wannabe, and who should go to the next level. One of the people who was moved up was Australian David Hicks. The group trained him, and then provided him "with a letter of introduction to Al Qaeda in 2000," the L.A. Times notes. Hicks went on to fight for the Taliban regime. "He was released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last year after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism."

American investigators continue to find domestic links to the Kashmir-based group. In 2007, Mahmud Faruq Brent was convicted of providing material support to LeT, after he admitted to attending one of their training camps. Federal prosecutors in Atlanta are still trying Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee for aiding LeT. They trained the Kashmiri group's camps, and then tried to get other Americans to do the same -- two more strands in Lashkar's network of ties to the United States.

"If you're hard-core about global jihad, you eventually outgrow what Lashkar has to offer -- unless you want to fight India, of course," Kohlmann says. But the group is "still being used by individuals around the world to start their jihad training."

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Home Front: WoT

Al-Arian arraigned on contempt charges

2008-07-01

Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian was arraigned Monday on two charges of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Va., ordered Al-Arian transferred out of the custody of immigration authorities and into the custody of U.S. Marshals.

Al-Arian's attorney, Jonathan Turley, wrote on his blog that the court where Al-Arian is being prosecuted "is called the 'Rocket Docket' because it prides itself on moving these cases at a breakneck pace." Al-Arian's arraignment had been scheduled for the morning, but was moved to the afternoon "due to the failure of the government to transport him to the courthouse," Turley said on his blog. At the arraignment, Al-Arian did not enter a plea, but the judge entered a not guilty plea for him, Turley wrote in his blog. Al-Arian's trial is scheduled for Aug. 13.

Al-Arian was prosecuted in Tampa on terrorism-related charges alleging he was a lead U.S. fundraiser for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization in Israel. A federal jury in 2005 failed to convict him of any charge, but deadlocked on nine counts. He later struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to one count of providing assistance to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He has completed his sentence for that charge, but has been held on successive civil contempt charges for refusing to testify before a Virginia grand jury investigating alleged terrorist financing by charities there.

During the Tampa trial, the government presented evidence that Al-Arian's think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprise, received funding from the International Institute of Islamic Thought, based in Herndon, Va. The institute's offices were raided in 2002 as part of the investigation into World and Islam Studies Enterprise. Turley wrote on his blog that Al-Arian has been indicted for failing to provide information about the institute, even though he doesn't have any information to give.

Stetson Law School professor Charles Rose said criminal contempt charges such as these are rare. "I just can't imagine that this is still around," Rose said. "You almost never see a charge of criminal contempt, historically, unless you're dealing with organized crime. They're treating Sami Al-Arian like he is a member of a criminal organization."

Link

Home Front: WoT

Hayden Says CIA Videotapes Destroyed

2007-12-07

WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.

The disclosure brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group which charged the spy agency's action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence.

Of course.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said. "The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations," Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.

"Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida"

The CIA decided to destroy the tapes in "the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them," Hayden wrote. He said the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined "they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries."

"The tapes posed a serious security risk," Hayden wrote. "Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathizers."

Now of course the 'human rights' activists don't care about that. Apparently the Dhimmicrats don't either.

Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of only four members of Congress informed of the tapes' existence, said she objected to the destruction when informed of it in 2003. "I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said.

"Besides, whoever heard of the CIA leaking material that would be harmful to our country or our agents?" Harmon added.

While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA's intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency went through with the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes' destruction in November 2006.

Jennifer Daskal, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch, said destroying the tapes was illegal. "Basically this is destruction of evidence," she said, calling Hayden's explanation that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA identities "disingenuous."

The CIA only taped the interrogation of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, Bush said in 2006. Binalshibh was captured and interrogated and, with Zubaydah's information, led to the capture in 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Hayden said a secondary reason for the taped interrogations was to have backup documentation of the information gathered. "The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002," Hayden said.

Hayden's message was an attempt to get ahead of a New York Times story about the videotapes.

Ah-ha, light dawns in the east. The NYT was about to blow another confidential intelligence matter. Why am I not surprised?

"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," Hayden said. "Over the course of its life, the Agency's interrogation program has been of great value to our country. It has helped disrupt terrorist operations and save lives. It was built on a solid foundation of legal review. It has been conducted with careful supervision. If the story of these tapes is told fairly, it will underscore those facts."

Beginning in 2003, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

More use of our legal system by our enemies to bring our country down.

In May 2005, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the government to disclose whether interrogations were recorded. The government objected to that order, and the judge modified it on Nov. 3, 2005, to ask for confirmation of whether the government "has video or audio tapes of these interrogations" and then named specific ones. Eleven days later, the government denied it had video or audio tapes of those specific interrogations.

Last month, the CIA admitted to Brinkema and a circuit judge that it had failed to hand over tapes of enemy combatant witnesses. Those interrogations were not part of the CIA's detention program and were not conducted or recorded by the agency, the agency said. "The CIA did not say to the court in its original filing that it had no terrorist tapes at all. It would be wrong to assert that," CIA spokesman George Little said.

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Home Front: WoT

Report: Lone Juror Kept Moussaoui Alive

2006-05-12

WASHINGTON (AP) - A single holdout kept the jury from handing a death sentence to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in this country in the 9/11 attacks. But that juror never explained his vote, said the foreman of the jury that sentenced the confessed al-Qaida conspirator to life in prison last week.

The foreman, a math teacher in Northern Virginia, told The Washington Post that jurors voted three times - 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2 - in favor of the death penalty on the three terrorism charges that each qualified Moussaoui for execution.

On April 26, the third day of deliberations, the jury's frustrations reached a critical point because of several 11-1 votes on one charge. But no one could figure out who was casting the dissenting vote, the foreman said, because that person didn't identify himself during any discussion - and each of the votes were done using anonymous ballots.

``But there was no yelling,'' she said in an interview for the Post's Friday editions. ``It was as if a heavy cloud of doom had fallen over the deliberation room, and many of us realized that all our beliefs and our conclusions were being vetoed by one person. ... We tried to discuss the pros and cons. But I would have to say that most of the arguments we heard around the deliberation table were'' in favor of the death penalty.

I served as a juror on a murder trial once. I can't imagine being the lone hold-out and then not speaking out as to why. It's dishonest -- being the lone 'no' vote is fine, but you have to explain your vote, even if it's to say, simply, 'the state hasn't proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt'. Then you can talk about what the doubts are.

The foreman, who was not identified by the Post, said she voted for the death penalty because she believed the government proved its case. She was the second juror to be interviewed by the Post since the trial ended. The first juror said he voted for life in prison because he thought that Moussaoui, 37, had only a marginal role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had ordered the identities of the jurors withheld for security reasons. The Post said the foreman contacted the newspaper and was interviewed on the condition of anonymity by a reporter who recognized her from the trial.

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