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Former Intel Engineer Pleads Guilty To Taliban Aid
theodp writes "Following up on an earlier Slashdot story, software engineer Maher "Mike" Hawash pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban, agreeing to testify against other suspects in exchange for the dropping of other terrorism charges. He will serve at least seven years in federal prison under the deal. In March, federal agents seized Hawash from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
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Whatever else people will say about this guy, he did not get what he deserved. Everything after and including his arrest was fair and deserved, but the five weeks of being held as a material witness were complete bullshit. The officials abused the statute to hold him indefinitely and complete their case research. If it hadn't received the media attention it did, they probably would have held him longer before finally arresting him.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
They still were. Them happening to be right about him being a criminal doesn't excuse it. If you have all kinds of secrets from the people who are supposed to ostensibly be your boss (We, the people, remember?) you have to expect them to get really cranky and upset with you. The FBI had no business being so secretive about it all.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Remember when 'innocent until proven guilty' meant something?
I'm sure you'll change your tone if the government decides to 'own' you.
Silly me. Of couse the end justifies the means.
Soo many people had rallied around him because of the problems minorities (especially Muslim ones) face in today's conditions. Unfortunately because he has pleaded guilty, next time people will just assume the person is guilty, and they won't rally around the new person, even though he/she may be innocent.
Mark my words, there will be innocents who get caught up, and due to cases like this people will be reluctant to support them. Sad.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Remember when the Feds snatching this guy from Intel was a big deal here at /.? When we all thought that the FBI was overstepping their bounds? When we all thought that they were wrong; that an Intel engineer couldn't possibly be guilty?
You're not a lawyer, and niether am I, but I think it should be noted that in the US _justice_ system, regardless of innocence or guilt, a plea bargain is often going to be tempting in proportion to how likely you are to win a case (your legal re$ources vs. theirs). Really, as I recall (I have not RTFA, of course!) he was otherwise facing something like ten times this to life. What would you do, even if innocent?
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
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All that said, there's nothing for it but to accept the plea as presented until such a time as Mike recants it. And if he'd been successful, and caught on the field of battle, he would deserve having a book thrown at him as much as John Walker Lindh. But having failed at that, I think it's outrageous that he was facing the same or greater sentence than Lindh himself (20 years).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Actually, the complaint was (and remains) that due process was not followed. Why should this matter? Because someone who is locked up, with no prospect for release and a possibility of deportation to a third-world nation for third-party torture, is much more likely to confess to crimes of which he/she is innocent.
And it does happen. People confess to crimes they didn't commit, often because the risk of being executed otherwise is too great. In return for a confession to lesser crimes than in the original accusation, government prosecutors will seek a less harsh sentence.
Due process exists for other reasons as well; if we go around imprisoning people for years before trial, you're right, there is no excessive penalty for those eventually sentenced to more time than served waiting for a trial. But all of the others who are eventually found innocent will have served time for no reason but your willingness to ignore their plight.
So you're asking him to go against his religious beliefs so that YOU can feel safer? (ok so he WAS a terrorist.. but not everyone with scrappy looking beards are, some are just trying to make a living like you and I)
I, for one, don't know if he is guilty or innocent, but I sure-as-hell am not going to believe a plea bargain arragement. Most of you predicted that the Patriot Act would be used in exactly that way - to force plea agreements.
As far as I am concerned, the government's case remains unproven.
After 9/11/01 the US asked the government of Afghanistan if they had him, they replied that he was under their control and that they would turn him over, if the US was willing to provide proof that he had done something wrong.
Get your dick out of your ass. The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
bin Laden was known by everyone to be the head of the terrorist organization that was dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible. They took responsibility for bombing the USS Cole, the two African embassies, and many other terrorist acts.
On Sept 11, I and quite a few other people around the world, when we thought about who to blame, thought first of Osama bin Laden.
Why? Because everyone in the fucking world knew he was the head of an evil international well-funded terrorist organization dedicated to killing Americans! (and based out of Afghanistan)
ps. mod parent down as flamebait. I can't believe I got sucked in.
no thanks
The problem now is that we'll never know whether he's actually guilty, or whether he was forced into the plea. You can hope that he was, indeed, guilty, and that the FBI was quite right in bending the Constitution to keep him around until he finally admitted it. Or you can say that it's never right to break a person's rights in order to get them to admit their guilt, regardless of whether you *know* they're guilty (even if you couldn't prove it in court) or not.
The problem with the former approach (hoping that he's guilty and accepting the methods involved in attaining the admission of guilt) is that the constitution wasn't just some fancy of some guy. It was the result of millenia of people being raped, tortured, and murdered. In many cases, that rape, torture, and murder was designed to elicit confessions (from those who weren't the ones being killed, obviously :). Relatively speaking, this particular stab at Rights (note the capitalisation there) has thus far been very short-lived. A few centuries, barely that. If it slides into the same environment that was prelevant for thousands of years previously, it wouldn't be surprising (statistically speaking).
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
According to the article: "In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and simultaneously searched his home."
Note Intel Corp., where he worked.
Get your facts right. They report you discredit with FUD
They still DID overstep their bounds. We have some laws in this country which provide protection to citizens from potential abuse of power by law enforcement. Such as locking someone up for weeks without pressing charges, denying them access to a lawyer, etc. There's also unreasonable punishment- I'd say spiriting someone off and denying you've done so to their family etc certainly qualifies.
Police are required to file charges within a certain, rather short period of time(24 hours? I forget), or let you go- one or the other. You can't just lock someone up, and THEN go looking for evidence of a crime; you have to FIRST find the evidence, THEN arrest them and THEN charge them with a crime.
I don't care if he was guilty- their actions are improper, unjust, and remind me more of, say, dictatorships and communist governments than the country that supposedly leads the "free world". Inefficiency in law enforcement is the price we pay for our freedom, rights, and protections. When we throw any of the three out the window, what's left to protect? One only need to look as far as 1980's eastern germany to see what road we are headed towards.
Please help metamoderate.
Given sufficient motivation innocent people DO plead guilty - it wasn't too long ago in soviet russia (no, I'm not making that tired joke) that Stalin killed millions - many of which were upstanding members of the community who confessed to crimes that never occurred. Look at just about any dictatorship and you'll find evidence of innocent people pleading guilty to criminal acts in order to avoid or end terrible punishments.
I'm not saying that America is a tyrannical dictatorship - I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader - but the statements you made about a government unquestionably having MY best interests in mind fly in the face of dozens of years of history: sometimes they do not. Vigilance and over our governments is what keeps them from degenerating to the depths of those decrepit examples of our past.
Aren't there some billy goats at the ol' bridge you should be bothering?
... you are a very bad person. You are hereby sentenced to seven years in a federal pound me in the ass prison.
You know, it's really sick that we make jokes like this. The constitution outlaws 'cruel and unusual punishment' but the threat of being corn holed is actively used as a deterrent, and not much is done to prevent it. I think homosexual rape probably qualifies as 'cruel and unusual'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Whoa there! Aren't you the same person who played Thoreau in a different thread?
It's an open secret of law that innocent people plead guilty all the time. Consider, for example, the recent furor in Tulia, TX, where a police source went bad and turned in dozens of innocent people on drug distribution charges. Those people -- uniformly poor and African-American -- chose almost to the one to plead guilty to lesser charges. Governor Rick Perry is currently reviewing papers to dismiss all charges and convictions in that case.
Likewise, in Dallas, the local police department has come under intense fire for planting fake drugs on poor Latino residents, many of whom accepted plea bargains (usually due to inattentive defense counsel, a real problem down this way). Because evidence was moved upwards into the federal courts, even those cases are now under review as judges seek to determine which defendants were truly innocent of charges.
Then there are those quasi-Art. III courts, such as the IRS and immigration courts, where people frequently accept deals even though they may not be guilty at all.
Why do people do this? Simple: it takes time and money to fight in court. If you're hauled in front of an IRS judge on charges you're innocent of, you may still rationally accept a lesser penalty knowing that it's less money than hiring an experienced tax attorney. (I've got a former IRS prosecutor as a friend who quite cheerfully explains every trick up that particular profession's sleeve.) If you're poor, a minority, or an immigrant resident, you may not have the resources or even the knowledge necessary to fight a criminal charge when it comes down the pipe; your defense counsel, who's either a private attorney getting less than scale for his time on your case, or a public defender who has literally hundreds of other cases sitting on his desk, has no incentive to spend more time than is absolutely necessary on your case -- and cutting a deal with the prosecutor is the fastest way to dispose of a pending case.
Now, this doesn't obviate the fact that Hawash doesn't seem to be an innocent party. He's admitted to conspiracy to provide material support of a foreign terrorist organization, starting on October 20, 2001, two years after the official designation of the Taliban as an FTO and following the declaration of hostilities against the Taliban by the United States.
The information set out in the plea arrangement is pretty precise regarding his actions, and the end result is not particularly favorable for Hawash -- if the judge accepts the sentencing level set out in the agreement (and there's no guarantee he or she won't apply an upward departure), Hawash gets a minimum sentence of over eight years. Now, the prosecutors certainly dangled a much harsher sentence over his head, but the specifics in the agreement (such as Hawash going to China and attempting to cross the border into Afghanistan) are precise, and serious, enough that I can't see him being truly innocent in this case.
Nonetheless, just as I can remain conservative while damning every sentence from an Ann Coulter or Michael Savage, I can affirm my belief in Hawash's guilt while saying of your statement: wrong, wrong, naive, and wrong.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
It's a good thing I didn't make a donation at http://www.freemikehawash.org/ when this first came out.
But guilty or not, it didn't seem right for him to be held in prison for several months without being charged, calling him a "material witness". One could say they forced his confession, because they admittedly weren't going to let him out until they heard what they wanted.
That is no more damning than when a captured US soldier is forced to denounce the actions of their government by their captors. We have no idea what kind of threats were made against that guy before his "confession" was extracted.
I seem to remember this one white guy that blew up this one federal building. Maybe it was too long ago for everyone to remember. I don't remember anyone breaking windows at white owned businesses after that. Do you?
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
"...held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
Is anyone else disturbed by this?
Probably the same time they stop looking like middle eastern gentlemen at a time when the country gets attacked by them. Right or wrong, looks (and appearence) play a great role in identifying suspects. If the attack were carried out by middle aged, caucasion males with pension plans linked to a Mexico bank account, I would EXPECT to be at least questioned.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
It's called the consitution. It's there to make sure that under no circumstances can the Government take away my rights as a citizen.
There's a fine line between cracking down on terrorism, and terrorising the citizens to crack down on terrorism.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The problem with the Hawash case was never his guilt or innosence, but the whole issue of how he was arrested in the first place.
Hawash was secretly arrested. With a secret warrent. Based on secret evidence. The feds wouldn't even admit that they had arrested him until eleven days had passed. He was not charged with a crime until he had been held for more than two months.
The Constitution specifically states that people get speedy trials. The police are not allowed to arrest people and hold them without pressing charges. That is one of the main things that's wrong with communist nations like China and Cuba. The whole idea of "find charges, then arrest" is central to real justice. "Arrest, then make up charges" is a sure sign of Stalin and his ilk.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Plea bargains are a travesty of justice. Telling someone "we can prosecute you for a crime on which there is the death penalty, or you can plead guilty to a lesser charge" creates a grave risk of making the innocent plead guilty. This is really not all that different from the interrogation and torture techniques used by the inquisition or totalitarian governments. Furthermore, it allows the guilty to get away with lesser charges.
I think the utilitarian argument for these kinds of arrangements doesn't work: no matter how many criminals we catch through plea bargains or how many crimes we prevent, the cost of such arrangements--sacrificing a fair trial and a thorough, public examination of the charges and evidence--is just too high. Plea bargains are killing the patient in order to save him.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
This, too, is rather chilling. It's not that conspiracy might not be a prosecutable crime under some circumstances, and maybe this is one of them. But in this phrasing, he didn't actually admit to doing anything, he was just "prepared to do" something.
I don't care if they thought Stalin was Jesus. Until they made any movement (like killing people, or stealing) they have a right to walk the streets like anyone else.
Wake up. There is such a thing as the outside world, and whether you like it or not it isn't part of any society, it just is regardless of what influence one person has on another.
I don't want a paradise on Earth. I want a place where I can live and learn things you'll never get trained or taught to do or understand. I want a place where I can test the world to see what's true and what isn't for myself. I exist dammit. I'm not just taking up space. I am. Therefore I will think. Therefore I will not be molded without prior agreement. As if Lieberman will get elected in 2004. HA!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I took the liberty of reading the article, and found, in one of those paragraph things near the top of the story thing, the following set of words:
So, in what part of this do you not see "taking a conviction on lesser charges out of fear that you're looking at a much greater time if you're convicted on the original charges" ?
While the Taliban was in power, the US gave quite a bit of aid and assistance to them. After all, they were our buddies- they were going to crack down on drugs! It's easy to turn a blind eye to everything and anything else that the US supposedly stands for, provided they tell us they'll crack down on opium production.
I mean, it's a well known fact that the US can never do any wrong- so, why is this guy going to jail?
Perhaps we should put this retarded administration on trial, along with the schmucks in previous administrations who thought it was a good idea to put a bunch of folks through Terrorism for Dummies, CIA Edition. Hell, perhaps we could even go so far as to look at our current actions- the CIA sponsors guerilla training like that given to our buddie Osama in a number of countries. You see, when the US wants something from some un-developed nationn we train a bunch of locals to despose the current dictator and put one in that is more to our liking... It's usually about getting some resource that the other guy didn't feel like sharing. Oil? COULDN'T BE!
USA! USA! USA!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Pretty lucky guess, if he's pleading guilty and that's all they had to go on when they picked him up.
Don't be so sure. I don't know if he is in fact guilty in this case, but people have been known to plead guilty when they are in fact innocent.
Here's a possible scenario. They pick him up on secret evidence and secret warrant, then hold him secretly with no access to a lawyer or his family. That's pretty scary right there.
Next, they tell you, "listen buddy, you look just like one of Osama's boys, so when we put you before a jury of your *peers*, they'll have no problem locking you away for the rest of your life being gang raped by muslim-hating white supremicists"... OR, if you plead guilty, we'll take it easy on you, put you in a nice prison, and you'll see your family in 7 years."
What does his lawyer tell him? Oh wait, he didn't have access to one for quite a while... in fact, nobody did.
What do you do given a choice like that?
Prosecutors have a lot of power in our system, particularly when they can frighten you into pleading guilty out of fear for what a guilty verdict means.
Could we please, please, please stop seeing these self-important, self-aggrandizing rants from Damn-the-Man slashdotters who don't even care to learn about the difference between a guilty plea and an Alford plea, and why it's so significant that Hawash didn't plead Alford?
Which lawyer did he get, to explain this theory (which I've never heard of as a foreigner that has lived in this country for a quite while) to him while he was not allowed to contact the outside world?
I don't consider a confession of someone who has not been allowed a proper trial worth anything.
his hair is short and reasonably neat. Obviously been cut in the last month. If they aren't letting him near razors, whoever cut his hair could have shaved him.
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It doesn't really matter; Ernesto Miranda, of "Miranda Rights" fame, kidnapped a girl and raped her. Even though he was later re-tried and convicted, the Supreme Court decision set a legal precident.
While a convicted felon loses some of their rights, until the point of their conviction they've got all of their rights and should still be treated as such until a conviction is reached. Innocence or guilt are irrelevant when it comes to imporoper imprisonment.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
The Washington Post just ran a pair of articles on the Lackawanna Six and Jose Padilla, American citizens who got associated with bad guys. The Lackawanna Six (and John Walker Lindh and now Mike Hawash) pleaded guilty to avoid the fate that befell Padilla. When the government didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime, they simply designated him an enemy combatant and carted him off to a military prison, with no right to trial or to a lawyer. Hawash, Lindh and the Lackawanna Six chose prison, even though the evidence against them was weak, because the alternative was indefinite solitary confinement and possibly even a death sentence from a military tribunal. So how meaningful were their guilty pleas?
We have laws in this country to punish treason, conspiracy, or any other crime these men committed. But citizens charged with those crimes have rights, like the right to be convicted by the government's evidence. So far, this administration has been unwilling to take the chance of letting a defendant exercise those rights.
There is not a chance in hell the the DOJ would have allowed a nolo or Alford plea in this case. If Hawash had agreed to anything other than a guilty plea, he'd by in Gitmo now (and for longer than 7 years, probably), without the feds bothering with specific charges. And as others upthread have written, probably his family would be rounded up for deportation in "secret evidence" against them.
Repeat after me: THIS IS NOT A NORMAL CRIMINAL CASE.
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Quoting from the [oft referenced here but should be re-read. If you can read it without fear, why?] article on Why the Lackawanna 6 pled guilty:
Yup, thats the system I learned about in civics class:The government can choose to give you access to the Bill of Rights unless it really need you to be guilty. In that case the Posse'll just come on by to take you away. Oh, and when the BoR says that "persons" get these rights they really meant "upstanding uncriminal citizens-by-birth and taxpayers" so it doesn't apply to YOU.
Can some biologist please, PLEASE gene-mod a frog so that it'll actually hang out in ever-warming water so that I can use that cliched, false but I still want to use it proverbial frog in a pot analogy now?
Yes, Amerika is Savage and Evil (tm)! That's why with the ability to literally snap its fingers and destroy the entire planet or any portion (Country) thereof, it never has.
So can any country that possesses nuclear weapons, such as France, Russia, or China. Or even India. If someone did not notice, government of any of those countries is either few keypresses, or few months of missile-building away from turning Washington, DC and NYC into two holes in the ground, not to mention various other nasty things that can be done with existing nuclear weapons. I don't see any of those countries demanding to be treated as The Owners Of The Earth, or randomly attacking the rest of the world.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Taliban is not a country. In fact, the Taliban has never been a country. They were not generally, in fact, Afghani - many (I believe most) were foreigners who simply took over, as 1) Afghanistan wasn't able to resist, and 2) they wanted a country in which to practice the most extreme version of Islam. So it would be a mistake to assume there was hardly anyone in Afghanistan who voluntarily supported the Taliban.
Second, this guy was Palestinian as pointed out. So he's not defending a country - he's committing acts of aggression against a country he does not like by aiding an extremely violent terrorist regime with a history of targeted violence against civillians.
That's terrorism in pretty much any book.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
As someone trying to make a case against prejudice and stereotypes, I found the following very interesting:
White America still wants minority people dead.
This is one the most aggravating posts I've seen on Slashdot in a while. In trying to show how you were pre judged because of your appearance, you go on to portray every white American as people who wish every minority would die!? Did you not learn anything about the stupidity of prejudice in your experiences?
Slashdot for you. The factually false post bashing the US gets +4 Interesting, while the corrections pointing out facts that put the US case in a more favorable light get no higher than +2.
Figures.
-jimbo
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He's not JUST pleading guilty. He's pleading guilty and providing information/evidence against the other six. Which tells me he was probably involved somehow.
That said, I still think the way he was treated is bullcrap. Guilty or not, some of his rights that we have (supposedly) guaranteed to us in this country were taken away. Sure a lot of people will say "He was guilty, who cares." Yeah, a lot of people don't care until one day maybe they get falsely accused, get snatched up, and aren't given the rights of the accused that is expected. I can't find the part in the constitution that talks about "If it's a matter of national security, then we rewrite the rules."
With the implementation of the Patriot Act the 4th amendment of the US constitution is basically null and void - its gone, and that's only the beginning. The replys of americans to Ians statement speak for themselves though: anyone opposing the actions of the US government is a "traitor", "unamerican" and should get lost. Right. Perhaps they're not aware that anyone questioning the decisions of the "Fuhrer" in Nazi-Germany was considered a traitor, too. Heil America