Rendition & Tortured Confessions, The Appalling Case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali

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http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel03082005.html

 

March 8, 2005

Rendition & Tortured Confessions

The Appalling Case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali

 

By ELAINE CASSEL

 

Twenty-three-year-old, Houston-born American citizen Ahmed Omar Abu

Ali has been returned to Virginia after twenty months in solitary

confinement in a Saudi Arabian prison. But he returned only to face

arraignment, on February 22, in U.S. District Court in Alexandria,

Virginia.

 

The charge is that he conspired to commit terrorism- and, indeed, the

FBI says that he admitted as much in the course of interrogations in

Saudi prison. He is alleged to have plotted to assassinate President

Bush--but is not charged with that conspiracy.

 

The case is far from as open-and-shut as the FBI might suggest.

Indeed, a number of aspects of the prosecution are deeply troubling.

 

 

The Early History of Abu Ali's Case: The Government Reverses Itself

 

At the end of the 2003 academic year at the Saudi university he was

attending, Abu Ali failed to return home to the U.S. As a result, his

family--Jordan-born, naturalized U.S. citizens living in Northern

Virginia where I practice--contacted me to see if I could help.

 

In August 2004, attorneys filed suit in the U.S. District Court of the

District of Columbia, on behalf of Abu Ali's parents, in order to

obtain his release. Among the attorneys was renowned constitutional

rights scholar and Georgetown University law professor David Cole.

 

The day the suit was filed, the State Department--which had previously

refused to provide information to Abu Ali's parents--notified them

that their son would be charged with crimes of terrorism in Saudi

Arabia. But that never happened. Instead, the question of whether Abu

Ali could be returned to the U.S. was litigated.

 

Before U.S. District Judge John Bates, the government took the

position that Abu Ali was far too dangerous to ever be returned to the

United States, and that the reason was so serious that it could not be

disclosed even to the family's attorneys. In other words, the

government sought to proceed on secret evidence.

 

Then, the government reversed itself dramatically. It transported Abu

Ali to the United States itself--thus mooting the question before

Judge Bates of whether the government could proceed upon secret

evidence to block his return.

 

In 2004, when Abu Ali's parents had been begging the U.S. government

to intervene, it had refused--claiming it was up to the Saudis whether

he was released. With his return, however, it began to seem evident

that the Saudis had been holding Abu Ali with U.S. consent--indeed,

even at the U.S.'s behest. It now appears that FBI agents had the

Saudis remove Abu Ali from his university class and take him to a

Saudi facility for questioning in the summer of 2003.

 

It also became apparent that the U.S. could, all the time, have

ensured Abu Ali's return to the U.S. whenever it felt like it. After

all, federal prosecutors had, during this time, extradited from Saudi

Arabia to Alexandria another man in Saudi custody who was alleged to

be (and acquitted of being) a terrorist and involved in the case of

the Alexandria 11.

 

Apparently, however, the U.S. had taken advantage of this U.S.

citizen's choice to attend school abroad, to make sure he was held in

prison there--where torture would be permitted, and counsel would not

be provided. Indeed, unidentified sources have been quoted in the

Washington Post and New York Times as saying that the government

certainly would have preferred to have left Abu Ali in Saudi Arabia.

 

It was only Judge Bates's interest in Abu Ali's case that changed the

government's mind. Laudably, Bates was concerned--as we all should be

-- about the potentially indefinite imprisonment of a U.S. citizen,

with the U.S.'s consent, in a foreign prison where due process is

ignored and torture is common.

 

With Judge Bates perhaps unwilling to proceed against Abu Ali in

absentia, the government felt it had to bring him home. To do so, they

had to charge him with something--something that would at least sound

serious, even if the underlying indictment (as I will explain below)

fell far short of the media headline.

 

 

The Government Argues Abu Ali Ought to Be " Presumed Dangerous "

 

Abu Ali was arraigned, as noted above, on February 22. On February 24,

a hearing on whether he would be released prior to trial was to occur.

But the government managed to delay that hearing. It did so by arguing

that the usual standard for pre-trial release should not apply.

 

Typically, in a criminal case, to block a defendant's release on bail,

the government must prove the defendant's dangerousness or his

likelihood of fleeing. But here, the government took the position that

the defendant, Abu Ali, had the burden of proving to the court that he

would not be a danger to national security, before being released on

bail. It did so based on 2004 federal legislation stating that people

charged with terrorism-related crimes were presumed to be too

dangerous to be released unless they proved otherwise.

 

The Eighth Amendment requires that " excessive " bail shall not be

required, and constitutional due process applies to federal pre-trial

criminal proceedings. Moreover, two centuries of law have mandated

that the government has to prove that a defendant would be a flight

risk or danger to the community if not released on the condition he

pay bail and/or comply with other requirements.

 

More fundamentally, our system depends on the idea that we jail people

for criminal conduct, not merely the government's insistence that they

are " dangerous. " In order to honor this principle, we have made sure

that we have no common law crimes--only those specifically defined by

statute.

 

The importance of this principle simply cannot be overstated. Without

it, governments could simply lock up unpopular minorities, political

opponents, and political dissidents--and as South American and Eastern

European history shows us, they have.

 

 

The Government Relies on a U.S. Citizen's Saudi-Prison Confession

 

At the hearing on the bail motion, an FBI agent testified that Abu Ali

had confessed to Saudi officials that he associated with persons

involved with al-Qaeda, received things of value from them, and talked

with one or more of them about how to assassinate President Bush,

whether by car bomb or shooting. (These persons are named in the

indictment as unindicted co-conspirators.) The government also claims

to have a videotape of this confession.

 

Abu Ali's attorneys argued that if Abu Ali indeed confessed, he did so

under extreme conditions of confinement--conditions that included

torture. Confessions under such circumstances are not only deeply

inhumane; they are also notoriously unreliable.

 

They also pointed out that Abu Ali had repeatedly been denied the

right to an attorney. Abu Ali's parents had asked the U.S. consulate

in Saudi Arabia -- who had infrequently sent an employee to visit Abu

Ali in prison -- to provide their son with an attorney. They were told

the Saudis would not allow it. Accordingly, no attorney ever met with

Abu Ali while he was incarcerated and doubtless tortured in Saudi Arabia.

 

Hopefully, the Alexandria judge will exclude the confession from

evidence to be heard at Abu Ali's trial. He could do so on the ground

that Abu Ali was, in effect, in U.S. custody--and thus, his Fifth

Amendment rights were violated. Or, the judge could do so on a simpler

ground: that the prejudicial effect of coerced confessions outweighs

their probative value. (Federal trial judges may make this prejudicial

effect/probative value balance for any piece of evidence the

government seeks to offer.)

 

 

 

The Government Searches Abu Ali's Parents Home pursuant to the USA PATRIOT

 

The government also admitted at the bail hearing that it had secretly

raided Abu Ali's parents' home in 2003--apparently pursuant to the USA

PATRIOT Act -- and found what it deemed to be " radical " Islamic

writings. It also found a gun magazine--hardly unusual for Virginia.

 

This search had occurred incident to the prosecution of the

" Alexandria 11. " I have written about this group in an earlier column.

Abu Ali and his parents were certainly not among them--but because

they lived in the same community, apparently they fell under suspicion

anyway.

 

In Abu Ali's case, the government was able to use two arguably

unconstitutional laws--the USA PATRIOT Act, which allows secret,

warrantless searches, and the law the government invoked, which allows

pre-trial dangerousness to be presumed. Through the combination of

these laws, it was able to search secretly for supposed evidence of

dangerousness, craft an overblown indictment, flood the media with

dramatic press releases, and then dare the defendant to prove his

innocence.

 

 

 

The Government's Indictment: Where's the Conspiracy?

 

When the indictment was made available to the public, it raised an

even larger question about the entire prosecution. Nowhere in the

indictment is Abu Ali tied to any terrorist event or action. So what

is his crime?

 

Plainly, there was not enough support for a charge of conspiracy to

assassinate President Bush. Conspiracy requires an agreement, and an

overt act in furtherance of the agreement. Nothing in the indictment

suggests that Abu Ali either agreed to attempt to assassinate Bush, or

took any action as a step to doing so.

 

So, instead, the indictment simply charges Ali with having

" associated " with alleged terrorists. Specifically, it claims that he

talked about wanting to kill Bush with these persons, and that he

received money from one or more of them--for what purpose, it is unclear.

 

The very reason that the law of conspiracy requires an agreement and

an overt act is to prevent prosecutions like this one--based on

alleged, vague discussions that supposedly took place, but were never

acted upon.

 

 

 

What Abu Ali's Case Signifies for America and the Rule of Law

 

The next development in the Abu Ali case may be a plea agreement. The

government's case is obviously weak, and its evidence depends on

conduct that many view as unconstitutional--even appalling.

 

The government will be in the same bind it is in the Zacarias

Moussaoui case. There, it has successfully argued that it cannot

produce witnesses because they are of such high intelligence value to

the government that they have to be kept in secret. It has also argued

that given that this is the case, the defendant can't subpoena these

witnesses because their appearance, pursuant to Moussaoui's Sixth

Amendment right to face his accusers, would be a grave threat to

national security.

 

If prosecutors offer Abu Ali a deal and he refuses, he will sit in

jail for years as the case winds it way through appeal after appeal,

as his occurred in the Moussaoui saga.

 

If Abu Ali pleads guilty, he will no doubt be placed under a gag

order, like that imposed on John Walker Lindh. It will require, most

certainly, that he never speak in public about anything related to the

court case, or about what happened to him while he was in Saudi custody.

 

The plea agreement may also require that Abu Ali return to Saudi

Arabia--as the agreement the government entered into with U.S. citizen

Yaser Hamdi did--even though that means he will be separated from his

family. (The agreement followed upon Hamdi's in his Supreme Court case.)

 

Speaking of his family, Abu Ali's family have not been able to visit

him since his return because they refused to agree to the government's

rules: An FBI agent had to be present during the visits, all their

communications had to be in English, and they could make no comment to

anyone, including the press of course, about any aspect of their

visit. Is it any wonder they refused?

 

To add insult to injury, the family has been ordered not to

" communicate " with their son in the courtroom. Did this extend to a

smile, a loving glance, they asked the magistrate?

 

If Abu Ali's case does end in a plea agreement--or, worse, in a

precedent blessing this prosecution as constitutional--Americans'

rights will have been very significantly diminished.

 

Such a result will mean that this nightmare is viewed as an entirely

legal reality: The U.S. can work with a foreign government to arrest

and imprison a U.S. citizen and torture him. It can allow the

imprisonment to go on indefinitely; Abu Ali's took over twenty months.

 

Citizens of U.S. allies, too, should beware: Canadian citizen Maher

Arar was kidnapped by CIA operatives from New York's Kennedy airport,

and taken to Syria for " questioning. " There he remained for a year,

until Syria got annoyed with the United States and returned Arar to

Canada.

 

Then, if the U.S. (or allied country) citizen confesses under

torture--and virtually everyone does, even if the confession is a

lie--the U.S. may try to use the confession against him in a U.S.

court, as well in a foreign court. (We don't know why the intended

Saudi prosecution of Abu Ali got sidetracked. Could it be because the

Saudis thought, as did the Syrians about Maher Arar, that no crime had

been committed?)

 

But, readers may object, what if the U.S. really thinks Abu Ali is a

terrorist? The answer is that the U.S. can still protect its citizens

from him--consistent with the Constitution.

 

How? The U.S. could have promptly extradited him from Saudi Arabia to

face charges here. Once he was here, it could have honored his right,

as a U.S. citizen, to an attorney, a speedy trial, and a right to

pretrial release unless the government proved that he was a danger or

a flight risk.

 

This is not too much to ask. And it is what the Constitution requires.

 

Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia,

teaches law and psychology, and follows the Bush regime's dismantling

of the Constitution at Civil Liberties Watch. Her new book The War on

Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled the Bill of

Rights, is published by Lawrence Hill. She can be reached at:

ecassel1