While the judge isn’t sure whether these men can really be considered dangerous. An update on this story, from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
SACRAMENTO – A federal magistrate questioned whether two Lodi men held on terror-related charges can be considered dangerous, despite prosecutors’ detailing of secret recordings they say provide further evidence of potential violence.
Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, are charged with lying to federal investigators, and prosecutors said additional charges could follow. Prosecutors asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale Drozd to keep the men jailed pending trial, arguing they are likely to flee to Pakistan and are a danger to the community if they are released….
“They are not charged with a crime of violence,” Drozd said Monday of the Hayats. “I don’t believe they can be detained as a danger to the community.”
He stopped short of saying he might free the men but said he might have to change the order specifying why the father and son are being detained. He set a second hearing on the matter for Tuesday.
Secret tape recordings provide further evidence that the younger man attended a Pakistani terror training camp and trained for jihad, federal prosecutors contend in a court filing arguing against the defense motion to set bail.
The men were arrested in June, days after the younger man returned from Pakistan. Hamid Hayat is charged with lying when he initially denied attending an al-Qaida training camp. Prosecutors charged his father with lying when he initially denied helping pay for his son to attend the camp for at least three months in 2003….
In conversations from Pakistan, Hamid Hayat told the witness that he had been accepted for “training,” prosecutors said. After failing a lie detector test upon his return, Hayat admitted in a videotaped interview that he attended one camp for three days in 2000 and a second for three to six months in 2003 and 2004, describing the location and layout of the second camp, prosecutors alleged.
“The purpose of both camps was to train for jihad and to teach people to kill those who work against Muslims,” they alleged. They said the camps provided training in weapons and explosives and hand-to-hand combat.
The younger man admitted during the videotaped interrogation that he “intended to commit jihad in the U.S. He did not have any orders to fight at present; however, he was awaiting such orders,” prosecutors said.