Lawfare

Fort Dix 6, Guantanamo, Islamofascists, Lawfare

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

by  • 

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.

Guantanamo, Islamofascists, Lawfare

David Hicks is a terrorist

by  • 

Pleads guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorism

‘Australian Taliban’ is a misnomer for David Hicks.

After September 11, David Hicks traveled from Pakistan to Afghanistan with other foreign terrorists and fought US and Northern Alliance forces. It is important to set the record straight, to know what he pled guilty to, past all the misleading statements. For years now, his PR team has proffered up David Hicks’ father who passed his son off as only a misguided youth yet numerous reports and his own father’s statements indicate Hicks dropped out of school at 14, abused drugs, and stole cars before twice volunteering for the jihad. While his lawyers downplayed David Hicks’ role, the evidence shows he trained and fought as a terrorist.

Before September 11, David Hicks met Osama bin Laden at least eight times. Hicks complained to bin Laden that terrorists training manuals were not in English and volunteered to translate them from Arabic. Those translations were intended to train other al Qaeda who only spoke English for the jihad.

While visiting Pakistan, Hicks learned of the September 11 attacks and applauded them. He soon traveled to Afghanistan and fought against US and Northern Alliance alongside other “foreign” fighters for two months until captured.

In 2000, Hicks joined and trained with Lashkar-e Tayyiba or LET (also know as Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Army of the Pure):

“…learning guerrilla warfare, weapons training (including landmines), kidnapping techniques, and assassination methods. In a March 2000 letter, Hicks told his family “don’t ask what’s happened, I can’t be bothered explaining the outcome of these strange events has put me in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in a training camp. Three months training. After which it is my decision whether to cross the line of control into Indian-occupied Kashmir.” In another letter on August 10, 2000, Hicks wrote from Kashmir, claiming to have been a guest of Pakistan’s army for two weeks at the front in the “controlled war” with India. At the time, Lashkar-e-Toiba was an Islamic fighting group that had widespread support in Pakistan. It had a reputation for being focused on fighting India in Kashmir but was also accused of attacks against Indian civilians. After the September 11, 2001 attacks and its banning as a terrorist group by Pakistan in January 2002, Lashkar-e-Toiba fragmented and branched out into sectarian violence. Lashkar-e-Toiba was banned in Australia in 2003.”

David Hicks also trained and fought in Afghanistan:

“…attended a number of al-Qaeda training courses at various camps around Afghanistan, including an advanced course on surveillance, in which he conducted surveillance of the US and British embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan”. They claim that, on an occasion when al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden visited an Afghan camp, Hicks questioned bin Laden about the lack of English in training material and subsequently “began to translate the training camp materials from Arabic to English”. Hicks wrote home that he’d met Osama bin Laden 20 times, later telling investigators that he’d exaggerated. He’d seen bin Laden about eight times and spoken to him only once. Prosecutors also allege Hicks was interviewed by Muhammad Atef, an al-Qaeda military commander, about his background and “the travel habits of Australians”. The US Department of Defense statement claimed “that after viewing TV news coverage in Pakistan of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, [Hicks] returned to Afghanistan to rejoin his al-Qaeda associates to fight against US, British, Canadian, Australian, Afghan, and other coalition force. It is alleged Hicks armed himself with an AK-47 automatic rifle, ammunition, and grenades to fight against coalition forces… Hicks spoke to his parents from just outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in November 2001. “He said something about going off to Kabul to defend it against the Northern Alliance,” Terry Hicks said.”

David Hicks pled guilty yesterday. He is not some poor, misguided youth whose only crime was guarding a disabled Taliban tank. The media conned you, his lawyers misled you, and his PR team spun you.

David Hicks is a convicted terrorist.