Recently in courtroom jihad Category

These men were not arrested or cited. They were questioned. I also have been questioned about my activities and allegiances after people have seen me in airports working on a website that prominently mentions "jihad." When CAIR and these Muslim men try to make a big deal of this, the underlying agenda is clear: they are trying to inhibit law enforcement personnel. They're trying to make sure that police and other investigators will be too intimidated and hamstrung by PC sensibilities to question young Muslim men about their actions, no matter where, no matter how suspicious.

Remember also that CAIR was involved in the attempt by six imams who were taken off an airplane after other passengers complained about their behavior to sue those passengers. If they had succeeded, people would have been afraid to report suspicious behavior by Muslims, for fear of getting sued. This is of a piece with that.

"Muslim Men Claim Henderson Police Detained Them for Praying," from LasVegasNow, March 5 (thanks to herr Oyal):

LAS VEGAS - Henderson Police are investigating some of their own officers regarding a complaint filed by a group of Muslim men who stopped to pray in a parking lot.

The incident happened in December. The Muslim men were passing through Las Vegas on a road trip. They stopped at a convenience store parking lot in Henderson to perform their sunset prayer. According to documents obtained by 8 News NOW, a concerned citizen called the police, saying seven Middle Eastern males were acting suspiciously by a gray minivan with California license plates. The caller reported several of the men were kissing the ground.

Read the Incident Report

Minutes later, Henderson Police officers arrived on the scene. One of the Muslim men recorded the incident with his cell phone.

Watch Cell Phone Video from the Incident

"We don't (have) you at gunpoint," one of the officers said. "We're not going to throw you down on the ground or handcuff you right now. We just want to make sure that you guys are good people."

"We are praying," one of the men replied. "You know, this is a Muslim prayer. Is that enough for you to say that this is suspicious activity?"

"Well, that's why I'm checking it out," the officer replied.

"Do you think it is," the Muslim man asked.

"I think there's somebody out there that called us and said, 'Hey check this out,'" the officer said. "Did I see you guys praying? No. Do I know what you were saying? I don't know if you guys repeat the same thing, or if you're actually over there saying, 'I hope that I kill a police officer today.' I don't know that you're not saying that."

After almost 45 minutes, the Muslim men were on their way. They were not arrested or cited. They are now vowing to fight what they consider an unlawful stop.

Cue the obligatory mainstream media CAIR reference with no hint that CAIR is an unsavory Hamas-linked group that has opposed every anti-jihad effort ever devised by man:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, has filed a formal complaint with the Henderson Police Department.

Read the Letter from CAIR to Henderson Police

"What the men really want to see is change within the police department and (a change in) law enforcement attitude toward people engaged in religious activity," CAIR Los Angeles Chapter staff attorney Ameena Qazi said. The Muslim travelers also want compensation for damages and emotional distress....

Over at Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller has an illuminating report on how Brian Williams, who helped Rifqa Bary when she fled from her Muslim parents in fear for her life after converting to Christianity, now faces arrest.

[...] According to Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa Bary's friend and pastor, the authorities are trying to arrest Brian Williams, the man who helped her escape. If you missed my interview with Brian Williams, listen here.

The impending arrest of the courageous Brian Williams is proof of the incompetence of Rifqa Bary's legal team. The silence is deference and dhimmitude to Islam. If the crime of apostasy in Islam and the threat Rifqa was facing were exposed and heard in an American court of law, Brian Williams would not be pursued by the Franklin County prosecutor. [...]

Jamal Jivanjee wrote me this:

I wanted to take a minute to give you an update on the latest situation surrounding Rifqa Bary's quest for life. According to Brian Williams, the dear friend who helped rescue Rifqa Bary on the night that she fled out of fear for her life, it is looking very likely that he will be arrested by Ohio authorities for his role in helping rescue her. This is very unfortunate because, in my opinion, he is a modern day Harriet Tubman or Corrie Ten Boom. They too risked their freedom in order to rescue those who fled for their lives. I know that I can speak for Brian when I say, if he could do it all over again, he would not hesitate. He knew then, and he knows now, that what he did was the Lord's work. Brian's courage is a breath of fresh air in a day and age when many are not able to see righteousness as clearly as Brian Williams did the night he rescued Rifqa in her hour of need.

I'd like to take a few minutes to point out something that we should be very well aware of right now. We all should be asking why someone who did something that was righteous and humane at the very least, is now possibly facing arrest and criminal charges? It is a good question which I believe points to a much deeper issue at hand.

When the truth is suppressed, the innocent suffer; when truth is proclaimed, justice prevails!

At some point in Rifqa's defense, her attorneys decided that the best course of strategy was to cut deals and settle the dependency case out of court. While it may have seemed easier and less risky to settle dependency out of court by making deals with the opposition, it is clearly not playing out that way in reality. By staying away from a trial for dependency, the court and the authorities are not being made aware of the threats and injustice that Rifqa Bary faced as a result of her conversion to Jesus Christ. This has only emboldened C.A.I.R. and the pro C.A.I.R. Ohio authorities who may be playing election year politics with innocent lives. It is very clear to me that if the truth were to be told in court regarding why Rifqa had to flee for her life, it would be very clear why Brian Williams took the actions that he took. By pressuring Rifqa to admit to wrongdoing as well as making an agreement for temporary dependency out of court instead of allowing Rifqa to be awarded dependency in court because of the truth, the truth continues to be suppressed and this has clearly emboldened those who are out to attack Rifqa and those who helped her.

So why am I bringing this up?

The point of this article is not to be pessimistic or negative, nor is it to simply be a legal commentary. I am not an attorney and I do not pretend to think that the problem that we face is simply a legal problem. There is much at stake in this case, and because this is indeed a precedent setting case in this nation, C.A.I.R. has made a vested interest in silencing Rifqa and those who rescued her. The point that I am trying to make is something I believe very strongly...The courts and the world need to hear the truth about Rifqa's testimony and persecution as a result of her conversion from Islam to Christianity. One way or the other, this story must be told. This is not only true for Rifqa; it is also true for our lives as well. Romans 8:28 says: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." With that said, we can learn an essential truth from the unfortunate strategy that Rifqa's attorneys have employed: When the truth is suppressed, the righteous suffer; when truth is proclaimed, justice prevails. If we learn anything from this situation, let us learn that, and let us find courage and a voice for the struggles ahead.

There is much more. Read it all.

How Islamic supremacist groups like CAIR and others use the courts to intimidate and silence those who dare to speak the truth about the Islamic jihad. "The chilling effect of 'lawfare' litigation," by Alan Dershowitz and Elizabeth Samson in The Guardian, February 9:

[...] American courts are being utilised by radical Islamic groups to stifle writers through "lawfare" - the use of law as a weapon of warfare - a tactic that has had a "chilling effect" on free speech. In contrast to the British laws, American libel law favours defendants. However, plaintiffs in the US have learned to sue their critics for defamation, not with the intent to win the case, but with the hope of imposing an unaffordably high cost on criticism of their actions.

A recent case is most instructive: the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government-funded Tarek ibn Ziyad academy for allegedly promoting Islam - a violation of church-state separation. TIZA counter-sued for libel over the ACLU's statement that it is a "theocratic school". On 9 December 2009 the court dismissed TIZA's counterclaim because, as a public school, it is required to show that the ACLU's statement was false and that it was also made with actual malice or a reckless disregard for the truth, which it was unable to do.

How, in TIZA's estimation, would a libel lawsuit against the ACLU - one of the strongest defenders of Muslim civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 - have had any chance of succeeding? The fact is that this case is part of a pattern of defamation lawsuits brought to silence critics of controversial Islamic organisations due to increased scrutiny post-9/11. The strategy, which has included actions such as libel tourism in the UK, often works.

Though most defamation claims are deemed baseless by US courts, the enormous cost a lawsuit imposes and the smear of bigotry it achieves has stifled legitimate discussion of some suspect behaviour. Litigation - and the threat of litigation - has prevented concerned citizens from speaking freely and stopped the publication of important information.

In 2003, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sued the National Review for publishing an allegedly defamatory statement relating to a CAIR-sponsored event. Though NR retracted the statement, Ayloush pursued the suit, aiming, in NR's view, to intimidate and punish the magazine. The court threw out the case for lack of merit, but NR still paid more than $50,000 in legal fees.

That is a fraction of what a libel defence can cost. In 2005, the Islamic Society of Boston sued the Boston Herald and nearly a dozen others for defamation. The ISB was building New England's largest Islamic centre and the defendants were raising legitimate questions about the ISB's connections to terrorist financing and hate speech. Though the ISB dropped the lawsuit - just weeks before some of their leaders were to give sworn testimony - the defendants incurred close to $2m in legal costs.

The ISB lawsuit had even more damaging consequences. Howie Carr, a columnist for the Boston Herald, said he "know[s] the ISB lawsuit has had a chilling effect on journalists in Boston". An analysis of the articles printed in the Herald from summer 2003 to winter 2007 supports Carr's statement. Between summer 2003 and winter 2005, the Herald published 19 articles mentioning the ISB's alleged connection with radical Islamic groups. After the lawsuit began in 2005 until winter 2007, the paper whitewashed its reporting and no longer mentioned radicalism in the 20 articles that covered the ISB's activities during that period.

Before 2001, there were five documented defamation cases relating to radical Islamic groups. After 2001, that number rose sharply. Though roughly 20 cases have been identified, the extent of the problem is difficult to determine since these cases are typically settled out of court. Often, the plaintiffs have substantial resources and the defendants cannot afford the legal costs....

Read it all.

Azad Ali tried to sue a British paper for drawing attention to his blog that justified the jihad killing of British and American soldiers, but there was just one catch -- his claims suffered from an "absence of reality."

An update on this story. "'Kill British' blog man fails in MoS libel bid," by Oliver Luft for the Press Gazette, January 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

A civil servant at the Treasury yesterday lost his attempt to sue the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail over articles suggesting he had been suspended and was being investigated over comments he made on a blog.

Azad Ali tried to sue over articles which appeared in the two newspapers in January last year under the headlines "Muslim civil servant suspended over 'kill British' blog", and "Civil servant 'backed fanatic's call to kill our troops in Iraq'."

Justice Eady yesterday gave the newspapers' publisher, Associated Newspapers, his summary judgment in which he said Ali's case was bound to fail and had about it "an absence of reality".

Ali had claimed the articles meant that he was "a hardline Islamic extremist who supports the killing of British and American soldiers in Iraq by fellow Muslims as justified".

The stories said he had been suspended from his job after posting a number of remarks on his personal blog, published on the Between the Lines website, which is hosted by the Islamic Forum of Europe.

They cited passages from two particular pieces Ali published under the headings "Defeating extremism by promoting balance" and "We are the Resistance II", which were posted on the blog on 18 November 18, 2008, and 15 January last year.

The judge said David Glen, for Associated Newspapers, sought summary judgment or an order striking the case out, arguing that Ali's observations in his blog advocated a form of jihad - holy war - which could only be understood as justifying the killing of British and American troops in Iraq, and that a jury would be perverse to reach any other conclusion.

Justice Eady said Ali had sought to draw a distinction between the position in Iraq up to the elections in 2005 and the position afterwards, and went on: "The suggestion appears to be that until the Iraqi elections the allied troops were 'occupiers' and that resistance to them could be seen as justified by his 'balanced' view of the requirements of jihad."

But after the elections the allies were in Iraq with the people's consent, so could not be properly regarded as occupiers, meaning that violence towards them could not then be justified by Ali's interpretation of jihad.

But in his blog Ali had not drawn any distinction between those two periods in time.

The judge said the logic of Ali's argument was that he would have regarded the killing of American and British troops in Iraq as being justified by reference to jihad up, at least, to the elections in 2005.

But the passage in the blog "seems clearly to convey the meaning that, on the 'balanced' view of jihad, killing the 'occupying' troops would still have been justified in November 2008", he said....

No doubt the charges against him are simply "Islamophobia." After all, look at Maher Hawash! Look at Sami Al-Arian! No, wait --

"Mumbai terror suspect Rana pleads 'not guilty' in Chicago: North Side man also is charged in plot on Danish cartoonist," by Natasha Korecki for the Chicago Sun-Times, January 25 (thanks to Choi):

A Chicago man pleaded not guilty this morning to charges that he took part in a terror conspiracy involving the deadly 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, and in a plot that targeted a Danish newspaper cartoonist.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 49, a North Side resident, also pleaded not guilty during an appearance in federal court in Chicago to a charge of providing material support to a designated terrorist group.

Rana faces up to a life sentence if convicted.

Rana is one of two Chicago men indicted this month on charges he had a hand in the attacks that left 166 people dead in Mumbai, as well as in planning an assault on a Danish newspaper cartoonist who sketched a drawing of the prophet Muhammad that was published in the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark. The cartoon offended much of the Islamic world, sparking riots.

The other man, David Coleman Headley, is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in Chicago.

Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen, said Rana doesn't have the money to pay for the entirety his legal fees, which will be more substantial in a terrorism case. Rana is asking the judge in the case to make Blegen his court-appointed lawyer, which would mean taxpayers would ultimately pick up the bill.

Rana owns the Chicago-based immigration advisory business, First World Immigration, as well as a meat plant in Grundy County that slaughters animals according to Muslim tradition.

So why is he hurting for money?

Rana, who is being housed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago, is appealing a ruling that says he must stay behind bars pending trial. He's seeking to be freed on bail.

Blegen said his client has no intention of fleeing and leaving his family holding the bag. "He wants to fight this," Blegen said.

Of course!

Muzzammil Hasan: Islamic supremacist wuss. Note the typical Islamic supremacist shifting of blame and responsibility to the victim. This was mentioned in this post, but this story highlights it, and it is worth highlighting this absurdity: "NY man accused of beheading claims he was battered," by Carolyn Thompson for The Associated Press, January 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The founder of an Islam-oriented television station who is accused of beheading his wife was abused by her for years, according to his lawyer, who said Friday he will pursue a defense combining that justification as well as psychiatric claims.

Defense attorneys' claims that Muzzammil Hassan was victimized by his wife drew a blunt response from District Attorney Frank Sedita after a hearing Friday.

"He chopped her head off," Sedita said. "He chopped her head off. That's all I have to say about Mr. Hassan's apparent defense that he was a battered spouse."...

"The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship," attorney Frank Bogulski said outside the courtroom. "He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him."

Nancy Sanders, a former news director at Bridges TV, was skeptical of the abuse claim, noting the stocky Hassan stood over 6 feet tall and "filled a doorway," while Aasiya was slender and several inches shorter.

"I never ever heard her disparage him in the workplace at all," Sanders said. "It just did not seem to be in her nature. She was very gentle."...

A comment at the Houston Chronicle's posting of this AP story sums up Hassan's defense: "I heard that even to the end the wife was abusing him. For example, the bones in her neck gave him some bad scratches while he was hacking her head off."

Wasting more Infidel time and money with more Courtroom Jihad. "Hate preacher Abu Hamza launches legal fight to keep British passport," from the Daily Mail, January 19 (thanks to Kathy Shaidle):

Hate preacher Abu Hamza last night began yet another expensive legal fight against the taxpayer - this time to retain his British passport.

His appeal against a Home Office decision to remove his UK citizenship is expected to cost tens of thousands of pounds.

This is in addition to the estimated £3.5million the fanatic has already cost the public purse, including £1.1million in legal aid.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson says Hamza, who has joint UK and Egyptian nationality, is unfit to keep his British passport.

But 51-year-old Hamza claims this is unfair.

He is currently in a high security jail fighting attempts to extradite him to the U.S. on terror charges.

That case will come before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg later this year....

It is a clever strategy: create the appearance of Israeli killings of civilians by launching attacks from civilian areas, and then seeking to prosecute Israeli officials for retaliating at all. The overall objective, of course, is to bring down so much international opprobrium upon Israel that it will be paralyzed and unable to respond to jihad attacks at all. International Courtroom Jihad Update: "Islamic group seeks Israeli minister's prosecution," from the Associated Press, January 15 (thanks to James):

An Islamic human rights group has petitioned a prosecutor to start legal proceedings against the Israeli defense minister for alleged crimes committed against Palestinians during the Gaza war.

The Turkish authorities did not act on the Friday's petition by the Istanbul-based Mazlum-Der group....

Suicidal. "Detroit bomber 'singing like a canary' before arrest," by Philip Sherwell in the Telegraph, January 9 (thanks to Banafsheh):

President Barack Obama is under fire over claims that the Christmas Day underwear bomber was "singing like a canary" until he was treated as an ordinary criminal and advised of his right to silence.

The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel.

The potential significance became chillingly clear this weekend when it was reported that shortly after his detention, he boasted that 20 more young Muslim men were being prepared for similar murderous missions in the Yemen.

The lawyer for the 23-year-old Nigerian entered a formal not guilty plea on Friday to charges that he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25 - even though he reportedly admitted earlier that he was trained and supplied with the explosives sewn into his underwear by al-Qaeda in the Arab state.

"He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal."...

Not with this President in power.

CAIR is at war with the authors of Muslim Mafia, because they tell the truth about the organization. "Judge rules against CAIR: D.C.-based Islamic group trying to quash book exposing terror ties," by Art Moore for WorldNetDaily, January 9 (thanks to Doug):

A federal judge ruled against the Council on American-Islamic Relations today in its lawsuit against a father and son who carried out a six-month undercover investigation of the D.C.-based Muslim group, denying a request to conduct discovery - an examination of its opponent's witnesses, facts and documents - prior to hearing a motion to dismiss the case.

CAIR is suing P. David Gaubatz and his son, Chris Gaubatz, for allegedly stealing sensitive internal documents and making recordings of officials without consent. Chris Gaubatz, who posed as a Muslim in an internship with CAIR's national office in Washington, took some 12,000 pages of documents destined for a shredder in an attempt, he said, to expose the group's ties to Islamic jihad and terrorism. His father is a former Air Force special agent with extensive Middle East experience who researches the spread of radical Islam in the U.S. and its threat to national security.

In her ruling today, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., canceled a court hearing scheduled for Tuesday and gave CAIR until Jan. 15 to reply to the Gaubatz's motion to dismiss the case.

The motion filed last month by Gaubatz lawyer Daniel Horowitz asserts CAIR has no claim because it does not legally exist.

Horowitz explains that just two weeks after CAIR was named by the Justice Department in May 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist finance case in U.S. history, the organization changed its name to the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network.

"CAIR is not a valid entity and even if it were, the exposure of its inner workings is part of the price it pays for being a controversial group in a hotly contested arena," Horowitz declares in his reply to CAIR's lawsuit.

The FBI produced evidence at the trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation in 2008 that CAIR was established as a front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The material obtained by the Gaubatzes is featured in the book "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," published by WND Books, an affiliate of WorldNetDaily.com. The book asserts CAIR is acting as a front for a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood - the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas - to infiltrate the U.S. and help pave the way for Saudi-style Islamic law to rule the nation.

Horowitz said CAIR had hoped to draw WND Books into the legal battle so it could pull the book off the shelves. But the federal judge's ruling today prevents the group from any legal investigation of the Gabautzes or WND Books under the court's authority before the motion to dismiss the case is heard....

Read it all.

A few weeks ago Pamela Geller started an initiative to have people send Christmas cards to Rifqa Bary, the girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her Ohio home in fear for her life, and is now in foster care in Ohio while authorities decide whether or not she is going to be returned home to the father who she says threatened to kill her.

Christmas cards -- who could object? Only someone whose heart is three sizes too small -- like an attorney from the unsavory and thuggish Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations. "CAIR Attorney Demands Ban and Seizure of all Christmas Cards sent to Rifqa Bary (Bumped)," from the Jawa Report, December 11:

In a stunning development in the ongoing legal saga of Muslim-turned-Christian convert Rifqa Bary, the parents' attorney, Omar Tarazi, filed a motion with the Franklin County courts last week moving to ban on all Christmas cards being sent to Rifqa through her attorneys, and demanding the seizure from her of all Christmas cards that she might have already received. And yet her parents still make representations to the media that they intend to honor and respect her Christian faith, while their attorney files sealed motions stating that Christmas cards are "dangerous to her health and safety".

This news and a copy of the motion were provided to me from a source inside CAIR, who noted that CAIR has raised funds for the Bary's legal jihad to have the courts return the 17 year-old to her allegedly abusive Muslim family....

The court will hear Tarazi's motion for the ban and seizure of all of Rifqa's Christmas cards on December 22nd.

In a particularly inept example of legal jihad, Muslims Of America has threatened legal action against the Christian Action Network, the producers of the Homegrown Jihad documentary, for a video that the Christian Action Network didn't produce. The MOA press release is here.

Martin Mawyer of the Christian Action Network responds in a statement to Jihad Watch:

This is going to give us an opportunity to finally file suit against Muslims Of America and depose people at Muslims Of America to obtain all their financial records, which I believe they will have to turn over to us, and which will prove definitively that they are a terrorist organization. We will have a jury in court agree that they are a terrorist organization.

Debra Burlingame, courageous and outspoken cofounder of 9/11 Never Forget US, calls Holder and Obama to account for their irresponsible decision to give the 9/11 masterminds a civilian trial -- and platform for dawah -- in New York.

"We must rise up against the trial: It's time for 9/11 families to fight Holder's dangerous move," by Debra Burlingame for the New York Daily News, November 29:

[...] The attorney general has glibly, and most insensitively, called the perverse spectacle he wants to invite on this city and this nation, the "trial of the century." Well, Mr. Attorney General, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has put you on notice. He's going to give it to you. His trial will be lawyer-assisted jihad in the courtroom.

We understand that to the terrorists, jihad is more than spilling American blood, it is forcing us to change our lives, divert our limited resources. When we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on rooftop snipers, kevlar vests and armored vehicles, that's jihad. When we barricade our buildings, lock down our streets, and close our transportation systems, that's jihad. When we grant a confessed war criminal access to platinum due process, so that he can use it to rally his fellow terrorists to kill more of our citizens and target our military, that's jihad.

Mr. Attorney General, this doesn't have to happen. You have called the military commissions system "lawful, fair, and effective" and "consistent with our highest standards as a nation." We agree. We think that is far more than these sworn enemies of America deserve.

Indeed.

"The Jakarta Superior Court has overturned militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir's treason and sedition conviction, and cut his jail term from four years to three." This from Straits Times, with thanks to nicolei.

Judges said prosecutors failed to prove Bashir had taken part in a plot by the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network to overthrow the government. . . .

Police detained him following last year's Bali bombings. Prosecutors accused him of two counts of treason, of having false papers, and of illegally exiting and entering the country. . . .

In the trial that ended in September, he beat the more serious treason charges, but was convicted on the other three. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year jail term.

The international community criticised September's verdict, saw the punishment as light, and questioned Jakarta's resolve to root out potential terrorists.

This latest ruling is likely to further disappoint some foreign governments, including several major donors to Indonesia, which have insisted Bashir led JI at least until 2000, and continued to play a major role after that.

A foreign diplomat based in Jakarta said: 'By rolling back Bashir's jail term, the court hurts the country's efforts to fight terror. The body of evidence for his leadership of JI is clear and convincing.' . . .

Despite foreign intelligence information that Bashir played a major role in JI, the authorities have not linked him to either the Bali blasts or August's blast at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta. Both incidents have been blamed on the group.

El Fadl strikes back (PBS photo)

The New York Sun (no link, subscription only) reports that Khaled Abou El Fadl, "a Bush administration appointee to the Commission on International Religious Freedom," is "threatening to sue an Egyptian government magazine over an interview in which he allegedly calls President Bush a religious fundamentalist who is seeking to Christianize Muslim countries through invasion.

"The Egyptian publication 'October' quotes Commissioner Khaled Abou El Fadl predicting that America may invade Syria and Iran if Bush is re-elected and describing American soldiers in Iraq as mentally-ill nervous wrecks who wet their beds out of shock that the Iraqi people did not greet their invasion with flowers.

"'I didn't say any of this crap,' Mr. El Fadl told The New York Sun in a telephone interview from Yale Law School, where he is a visiting professor teaching national security law and immigration law. . . .

"'I can't vouch for the translation, but the stuff that they have me saying is pure fabrication. It is not a case of tweaking what I said in a different way, or emphasizing or de-emphasizing what I said,' he said.

"The article also quotes him boasting that he determined the U.S. 'deployment plan of withdrawal from Iraq.'

"'I would need to be a schizophrenic with serious delusions to say that. Give me a break,' said Mr. El Fadl, who is a professor of Islamic law at UCLA law school.

"The article was translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute and posted on its popular Web site last week.

"Mr. El Fadl told the Sun that he did not agree to be interviewed by the magazine and has asked a lawyer in Egypt to prepare a possible lawsuit against the magazine. . . .

"Mr. El Fadl said an unidentified man . . . walked up to him during the meeting and asked a handful of general questions in a 10-minute conversation that was neither recorded nor written down. He said he now believes that was the basis for the article.

"He recalled being asked whether he approved of the administration's Iraq policy.

"'I said, I think Middle East needs democracy. We all agree on that, but it is a point of discussion on how we get there,' he told the Sun.

"Asked whether America intends to invade [Syria] and Iran, he recalled replying, 'I don't know.'

"Asked whether he was a 'Muslim stooge' for accepting an appointment from the American president, Mr. El Fadl said he replied: 'No. In fact, the administration had tried from the beginning to be inclusive toward American Muslims, to appear with organizations, to speak about the need for tolerance.'

"But the magazine's rendition of the conversation was more elaborate. . . .

"The article also quotes him as saying that President Bush 'permitted missionaries into Iraq before medicines.' Mr. El Fadl said he has no idea whether missionaries were allowed into Iraq. . . .

"Fellow commission member Nina Shea dismissed the Egyptian press as 'highly unreliable."

"'Based on my encounters with him, I don't believe he said these things,' said Ms. Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom of the human rights group Freedom House, in an interview prior to Mr. El Fadl's disavowal of the report.

"'This notion that Bush is a bigot that wants to forcibly Christianize the Middle East sounds more akin to wild conspiracy on the Internet than the reasoned analysis of a scholar. I just don't believe he said these things,' she said."

I am sorry that El Fadl is going through these difficulties, despite my criticisms of his work in the past. If he did not say these things, their fabrication by the Egyptian magazine illustrates how desperate some segments of the Egyptian press are to keep hatred of the United States at a fever pitch.