Guantanamo

Fort Dix 6, Guantanamo, Islamofascists, Lawfare

Fort Dix 6 legal spin begins in media: echoes of Gitmo

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As Debra Burlingame has pointed out, hundreds of American lawyers and their high-powered PR machines (such as this one) have created “image makeovers for suspected al Qaeda financiers, foot soldiers, weapons trainers and bomb makers.” Not to be outdone, the lawyers for the Fort Dix 6 are already putting the mainstream media to work. Constitutional lawyer and syndicated talk-radio host Mark Levin pointed this heavily slanted Associated Press article out last night on his show:

He railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer, and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. These were not the actions of a terrorist, but of a paid FBI informant who helped bring down an alleged plot by six Muslim men to massacre U.S. soldiers at New Jersey’s Fort Dix. And those actions have raised questions of whether the government crossed the line and pushed the six men down a path they would not have otherwise followed.

It is an argument — entrapment — that has been made in other terrorism cases, and one that has failed miserably in this post-Sept. 11 era. One defense attorney on the case, Troy Archie, said no decision has been made on whether to argue entrapment, but based on the FBI’s own account, “the guys sort of led them on.” Rocco Cipparone, a lawyer for another one of the defendants, said he will take a hard look at “the role of paid informants and how aggressive they were in potentially prodding or moving things along.”

The Fort Dix Six were arrested earlier this week after a 15-month FBI investigation that relied heavily on two paid informants who secretly recorded meetings and telephone conversations in which the suspects talked of killing “in the name of Allah.”

The AP waited until well down in the article before they provided a little balance:

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie defended the government’s handling of the case. He and the FBI portrayed the defendants as Muslim fanatics who were nearly ready to strike. They were arrested Monday night during what the FBI said was an attempt to buy AK-47 machine guns, M-16s and other weapons.

Former FBI agent Kevin Barrows said prosecutors appeared to have done things right. “They corroborated with surveillance, and they had a gun buy set up,” Barrows said. “That further solidified the case, as opposed to it just being a tape of somebody saying, `Yeah, I want to buy guns.’ They worked this for a long time and the evidence seems really, really solid.”

You can hear the 7 minute audio of Mark Levin’s commentary here.

A little later, I called in and spoke with my friend Mark. Like those defending the ghouls at Gitmo, the lawyers for the Fort Dix 6 are making a case in the press — without evidence — and their sound bites will not stand up in a court of law.

9/11, Guantanamo, Islamofascists

Guantanamo detainee admits 9/11 role

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Received money from hijackers within hours of September 11 attacks

An Associated Press report in the Washington Times today says a Gitmo detainee denied being a member of al Qaeda yet admitted at his status hearing to receiving funds from two of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. The AP itself then failed to point out widely publicized findings of the 9/11 Commission:

A Saudi accused of arranging financing for the September 11 terrorist-plot participants told a hearing he got money transfers from two hijackers inside the United States just hours before the attacks, according to a transcript the Pentagon released yesterday. But Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who was based in the United Arab Emirates on September 11, 2001, denied that he was a member of al Qaeda or that he sent money to the hijackers.
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The hearing, held to determine whether he is an “enemy combatant” eligible to be charged with war crimes, was conducted March 21.

Al-Hawsawi said he was told by al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh about the September 11 plot one day in advance and was instructed to fly that same day from the UAE to Pakistan, where he met Binalshibh the following day. Binalshibh is one of the 14 sent to Guantanamo last September; his hearing was March 9 but he refused to attend and submitted no statement.

Asked by a member of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal his reaction to realizing he was “part of that operation,” a reference to the September 11 attacks, al-Hawsawi replied, according to the transcript, “In the beginning I was surprised by the size of the operation. It was mostly a surprise to me.”

The transcript does not fully explain the significance of the claim that al-Hawsawi received thousands of dollars in money transfers from hijackers shortly before the September 11 attacks, other than establishing his association with them.

The 9/11 Commission stated some of the hijackers sent money back to their financiers prior to the attacks, to support future operations, as the money on hand was no longer needed for the current operation. They also noted that al Qaeda training manuals taught those sent on one-way missions to return unused funds (Ed.–No sense taking cash with them to hell). Al-Hawsawi’s admission directly links him to both al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. The Commission’s report has been in print and online for more than three years now. I wonder if the AP’s reporters will ever read it.