Syed Haris Ahmed Update: The "naive kid" canard doesn't work this time.
"Court can use Georgia Tech student’s jihad statement," by Bill Rankin for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 19:
Atlanta terrorism defendant Syed Haris Ahmed’s statements that he considered planning a terrorist attack and dying a martyr waging jihad can be used against him at trial, a judge has ruled.
Handing federal prosecutors a major victory, U.S. Magistrate Gerrilyn Brill rejected arguments that the former Georgia Tech student was coerced by agents into making the statements.
Ahmed and co-defendant, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, of Roswell, are charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Both have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bond. Their trial dates have yet to be set.
Over the course of five interviews in March 2006, Ahmed admitted traveling to Washington to take “casing videos” that were sent to “jihadi brothers” overseas.
He also said that when he visited Pakistan in 2005, he hoped to be recruited into a jihadi training camp to learn how to fight against Muslim oppressors. During a trip to Canada the same year, Ahmed told agents, he met with “brothers” and discussed attacking oil refineries, a military base or the satellite system that controls the global positioning system.
About 11 hours of tape recordings of the interviews were played during hearings early this year. They portray Ahmed as an impressionable, soft-spoken student transfixed by Internet sites and chat rooms that were popular with extremists and promoted the annihilation of the enemies of Islam.
In one sobering exchange, Ahmed told agents he had thought about committing a terrorist act here.
“My intentions were to do something in America,” he said. “Yes, attack.”
His appointed attorney, Jack Martin, has noted that Ahmed never committed a violent act or developed a specific plan to carry one out.
Martin contended Ahmed was coerced into making the statements by agents who used psychological tactics, such a threats of arrests and promises of leniency. The agents also preyed on Ahmed’s deeply held Muslim faith, Martin said, calling the statements involuntary.
In a 64-page ruling issued Monday, Brill disagreed.
“Although [Ahmed] was deeply religious, he was also 21 years old, intelligent and had been interviewed by law enforcement twice before,” Brill wrote. “There is nothing … to suggest that [Ahmed’s] will was critically affected by the agents’ various appeals to his Muslim beliefs and there is nothing inherently coercive about such tactics.”
U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said, “We are very pleased with the court’s thorough and well-reasoned opinion rejecting defendant Ahmed’s motion to suppress the highly incriminating statements he made to the FBI.”
Martin vowed to appeal. “It makes no sense to conclude that a suspect has voluntarily given a statement to law enforcement officers when he has been promised he will not be arrested and left alone if he talks, but will be arrested and prosecuted if he does not,” he said.
Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, moved to the United States with his parents when he was 12. At the time of his arrest, Ahmed was a Georgia Tech engineering student working part-time at a perfume shop.
Authorities had come to suspect Ahmed and Sadequee were behind the videos of various Washington-area buildings found on the computer of Younis Tsouli.
Tsouli, who called himself Irhabi (Arabic for “terrorist”) 007, is imprisoned for terrorism-related crimes in England. Agents later confirmed that Ahmed and Sadequee made those videos during a trip to the nation’s capital in April 2005.
But in March 2006, with intelligence drying up, authorities confronted Ahmed to see if it was true and to gain his cooperation.
FBI Agent Mark Richards and Khalid Sediqi, a DeKalb County detective and member of a terrorism task force, met Ahmed as he walked one morning to his ranch-style home in Midtown. They would interview Ahmed five times — first at his home, next at a hotel and, the final three occasions, at FBI headquarters in Atlanta.
The two counterterrorism agents played good cop, bad cop. Sediqi, who is Muslim, built a rapport with Ahmed through their shared beliefs. Richards berated and threatened Ahmed when agents believed he wasn’t being truthful with them.
Their tactics worked. Ahmed gave up more and more. He ultimately took the agents to his parents’ home in Dawsonville to retrieve the camera used to take the casing videos.
Although Ahmed called the amateurish videos “stupid,” he admitted they could be used for “some kind of terrorist act.”
“We could be spies for the people over there,” Ahmed told the agents, referring to extremists overseas. “It’s like, uh, thrilling to be undercover and stuff like that.”
Pigman on Terrorist Rights.....
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nabi ZK (pbum)
"Martin contended Ahmed was coerced into making the statements by agents who used psychological tactics, such a threats of arrests and promises of leniency. The agents also preyed on Ahmed’s deeply held Muslim faith, Martin said, calling the statements involuntary."
hmmmmm...would those "agents" be the local imans at the local mosque?..
"We could be spies for the people over there,” Ahmed told the agents, referring to extremists overseas. “It’s like, uh, thrilling to be undercover and stuff like that.”
I hope he finds it equally thrilling to be in jail, if he's actually convicted and incarcerated.
"Martin contended Ahmed was coerced into making the statements by agents who used psychological tactics, such as threats of arrests and promises of leniency. The agents also preyed on Ahmed’s deeply held Muslim faith, Martin said, calling the statements involuntary."
-- from the article above
What a terrible thing those police agents did. Can you imagine their wickedness, in using those "psychological tactics" in order to get a suspect to tell the truth. And apparently they did even worse. They "preyed on Ahmed's deeply held Muslim faith." How did they do this? No doubt by telling him that they certainly understood the Muslim impulse, the Muslim duty, for Jihad, and possibly said further that there was no reason for a Muslim to be anything but forthright in declaring the support he would feel for taking part in the world-wide Jihad. And possibly they, to get him to confess, appeared to be deeply sympathetic, and understanding, of how natural such support for Jihad -- in this case violent Jihad -- from such true-blue Muslims as Syed Haris Ahmed was, or wanted to be. In other words, those agents were merely fulfilling their task: to extract the truth from a suspect.
It is clear that Syed Haris Ahmed wanted to be a Good Muslim, just as dutiful as he could be. He went to Muslmi websites: "[Eleven hours of tapes]...portray Ahmed as an impressionable, soft-spoken student transfixed by Internet sites and chat rooms that were popular with extremists and promoted the annihilation of the enemies of Islam.)
And that is why "[o]ver the course of five interviews in March 2006, Ahmed admitted traveling to Washington to take “casing videos” that were sent to “jihadi brothers” overseas.
He also said that when he visited Pakistan in 2005, he hoped to be recruited into a jihadi training camp to learn how to fight against Muslim oppressors. During a trip to Canada the same year, Ahmed told agents, he met with “brothers” and discussed attacking oil refineries, a military base or the satellite system that controls the global positioning system."
Or does his court-appointed attorney think there another way in which those agents managed to "prey on Ahmed's deeply held Muslim faith"? Those who, all over the Western world, "prey on" the "deeply held Muslim faith" of Muslims in the West (and especially young male converts, which may the case here) are not law enforcement officials. It is other Muslims, those who know exactly how to use those new recruits, ardent and eager, for the Army of Islam.
We have become a Dr. Phil society. Everybody thinks they are some kind of a psyciatrist. In my opinion, that is why we put up with stuff like this type of defense.
Juries today hear all kinds of psycological defense postures like this and it works some of the time.
These Muslims that practice their religion to the letter of their "book", get caught, make one true statement about their religious reasoning, and then after lawyering up, they claim some "Dr. Phil" type defense. And it works on some soft headed people who don't know what is going on.
“It’s like, uh, thrilling to be undercover and stuff like that.”
A young sweetheart like this guy in prison, will find all the thrilling undercover stuff he could ever want, trying to hide from 'Bubba'.
He better get some strong muslim buddies quick, before Bubba finds out he's there...
Perhaps all that 'sensitivity training' yields non-halal dividends.
In interrogations, cops can do a/o say anything that would not make an innocent person confess.
It's just that simple.
the american jail this guy going to might as well a mosque. he will be welcomed by muslim inmates. he will leave prison ready to go....
People don't realize how important these trials are. Should Jihadis - affiliated or not - perceive the American justice system as broken (which, in many respects, it is), then it will be open season on Americans.
The law has become too technical for even the most trained law-enforcement agents to navigate in the pursuit of their duties....and the unanimous-jury system is an on-going institutional defect, where one recalcitrant juror with an agenda is able to thwart the dispensation of justice.
Did you folks know that the 'Trial Lawyers of America' are THEE biggest contributors to the Democratic Party? There's a reason. They DON'T want the tort reform backed by Republicans that would introduce a semblance of sanity to our out-of-control, litigious legal system...a system consuming the energies and finances of the American people.
At this point, he seems like a wannabe terrorist.
If this persists throught the trial, I suggest a wannabe-sentence ... 5 or so years
Here's another suggestion:
http://freemendo.typepad.com/undaunted/2008/03/justifiable-hom.html
“We could be spies for the people over there,” Ahmed told the agents, referring to extremists overseas. “It’s like, uh, thrilling to be undercover and stuff like that.”
Cool, we could execute you and stuff like that.
"The agents also preyed on Ahmed’s deeply held Muslim faith..."
Could not the techniques used by the agents in this case be used successfully on almost any Muslim in the States? Especially those not born in the U.S., male, young adults. Did he not act and respond as any "reasonable" Muslim would, and is expected to? Heading down this train of thought, I could see a good defense. However, how would that not condemn all of the Muslim community here, and those waiting to get in?
I wonder which Mosque in the US he graduated from?
A fine bit of police work. I think the FBI has done a good job since 911.
This guy should be tried for treason and exicuted.