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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."
look at him.. I don't mean to come off as a racist or anything, but seriously. when you are in fact a terrorist, wouldn't it make sense to sharpen up a little, maybe try and cut down on the co-worker-thinks-im-a-terrorist-because-i-look-lik e-this factor?
bite my glorious golden ass.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the news bit:
"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.
"Yes, your honor," Hawash replied.
I had really hoped that the US Gov was wrong for nabbing a US citizen. I had hoped that there would be a suite against the gov for violating civil rights.
But Damn!
This doesn't look good.
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
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."-
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.
Because the Talaban sheltered Al Quaeda, provided them land to build training camps, and refused to give up their leadership even after the attacks of 9/11?
I think that their direct support of Bin Laden makes a clear case that they are culpable for terrorism. And I don't even agree with the war on Iraq or any of the dozens of stupid things the Feds have done in the name of defending us from terrorism.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The Taliban was a legit government
Woah, hang on there. The only country that recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan was Pakistan. Nobody else in the world thought they were a "legit" government, and they didn't even represent Afghanistan in the United Nations.
And they had a hell of a lot to do with Al Qaeda. They provided logistical support and gave aid to Al Qaeda, and they did so knowing that he was carrying out terrorist activities (here is the US's stance on the Taliban). Nobody really disputes this. Some people have even speculated that Bin Laden requested Mullah Omar's approval before any terrorist act.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Actually, you are right. You wouldn't have been a terrorist. You'd have been a covert agent of an enemy power -- a spy. You would not have been held as a POW; you would have been held as an irregular combatant. Guess what? The Geneva conventions don't protect irregular combatants. Combatant nations are not legally bound to return irregular combatants to their countries of origin when conflict ends.
If you weren't shot out of hand, you'd have spent the rest of your life in a French jail, along with the other collaborators.
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.
With the threats they probably used against him he would probably have said that black was white if they wanted him to. The list of those that agree to pleas but later are proven innocent is longer than most people might imagine. Consider being given the choice of pleading guilty and serving 5 years, or fighting it out in what must at this point appear to him as a frighteningly hostile environment, and serving 20 - what would you do, guilty or not?
He obviously hasn't been shaving or something since he's been in jail. He hasn't always looked like that.
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."
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
To clarify, this is a little right, but, imho, mostly wrong.
It is true that the CIA supported the Afghani mujahideen in the 80's. If you're interested, the word "mujahideen" is of an Arabic base and comes from the three letter radical j-h-d, with a rough meaning of struggle (one meaning of jihad is, literally, to struggle). A mujahid is someone who struggles/practices jihad. Mujahideen is the plural.
Anyway, off that tangent. Yes, the CIA funded Afghan mujahideen/freedom fighters in the 1980's. There was an Afghan govt later formed of those same mujahideen. It was not however, until 1996 that the Taleban seized Kabul and ousted the former Mujahideen govt.
Incidentally, Taleban comes from the Arabic radical t-l-b. A Talib is a student. Taliban, in pashto means students. The Taleban are the products of radical (and backwards!) madrasahs, religious schools, many of them in Pakistan. The allegation that the CIA funded the Taleban is totally incorrect. There were no doubt American arms under Taleban control, but you must remember that warlordism in Afghanistan is nothing new. You can go back thousands of years and little in Afghanistan has changed. Alexander the Great encountered very fierce resistance on his way to Central Asia. Warlordism and yet another meltdown of Afghan society in the 90's brought about the Taleban, NOT American support.
Please, please, please, for the love of Bob, people, think a little bit before you go about saying "he just plead guilty because he was looking at 20-to-life, we don't actually know what he did."
There's a special kind of plea you use when you're 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. It's called an Alford plea, closely related to a nolo contendre plea.
Nolo has been expressed in layman's terms as "I didn't do it, judge, and I'll never do it again!" You neither admit guilt nor protest your innocence. As a result, many judges refuse to enter nolo pleas; they demand that you either admit or deny responsibility, and if you insist on nolo a "not guilty" plea will be entered instead.
An Alford plea is a far different thing. An Alford, in layman's terms, is "Judge, I didn't do it, but I'm terrified of the original charges and I think they could convict me on it." An Alford plea allows you to formally and legally protest your own innocence, while at the same time stipulating that the government could convict you if it went the whole nine yards, and thus avail yourself of the plea bargain.
Mike Hawash didn't plead either nolo or Alford.
Mike Hawash plead guilty.
Guilty, as in "yes, Your Honor, I fucking did it! "
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?
People often say, "Yeah, but he was a terrorist! He has no rights! I have no sympathy. Do you really want this guy to go to trial and risk him being set free?"
Yes. He does have rights. As an American citizen, he is innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. He is an alleged terrorist. Quite a difference. And if you really think tearing to shreds the fundamental basis of our freedoms does a whole lot to protect them, you are very sadly wrong.
If the terrorists really want to destroy our way of life, all they have to do, at this point, is sit back and hope the Bush administration gets re-elected. Ashcroft's disdain for the rule of law--his disdain even for court orders he doesn't feel like complying with--shows him to be worse than just a silly ideologue. He has no conception of justice, no respect for the ideals he claims to be defending, and is more of a threat to our American way of life than any terrorist.
Here's the main definition:The section goes on, but the subsequent passages either speak to edge cases.
Key is, a covert enemy agent meets none of the four tests for being a prisoner of war. In that case, there's no question about whether or not that agent is covered by the provisions of the Convention; he or she is not. Irregular combatants may or may not be, but generally would not be covered. The foreign combatants in Afghanistan directly associated with Al Quaeda were clearly not covered: they were not commanded by a responsible officer, they wore no distinctive signs, they concealed their weapons, and they did not conform to the standard laws and customs of warfare (including the Third Geneva Convention, which forbids the taking of hostages and direct attacks on civilians, both of which many of the GB detainees had done.)
In short, GB may be wrong, and is a PR disaster, but it is not illegal, no matter what HRW wants you to believe.
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.
I always look at people with buzz cuts and camo suspiciously. I don't *do* anything though. That would be dumb. They're the army...
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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