Courtroom Jihad in Seattle: he was arrested when he went to pick up machine guns and grenades that he intended to use to commit mass murder for Allah. But he wants a good part of the evidence thrown out because he is not the agent of a foreign power, and therefore could not be targeted by a FISA surveillance warrant. Of course, he is the agent of an ideology that is inimical to many of our freedoms, but our existing laws do not imagine such a thing.
“Seattle terror suspect wants evidence tossed,” from the Associated Press, June 5:
Lawyers for a man accused of plotting to attack a military office in Seattle last year want some of the evidence against him thrown out, saying the government should not have been able to obtain a secret warrant because there was no indication he was involved in international terrorism.
Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, 34, was arrested June 22, 2011, along with an acquaintance from Los Angeles, when authorities said they arrived at a Seattle warehouse garage to pick up machine guns and grenades to use in the attack. In conversations recorded by the FBI with the help of a confidential informant, Abdul-Latif and his co-defendant, Walli Mujahidh, discussed how they wanted to gun down people in the Military Entrance Processing Station as revenge for atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, prosecutors said.
Weeks before the arrests _ apparently on June 9, 2011 _ investigators obtained a secret warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, defense attorneys said in recent court filings. Investigators used wiretaps to intercept about 70 of Abdul-Latif’s phone calls, as well as four years of emails _ more than 1,800 pages _ and YouTube messages.
The motion to suppress the evidence, filed late last month, was based on information turned over to defense lawyers Jennifer Wellman, Erik Levin and Vicki Lai by federal prosecutors, the lawyers wrote.
“Discovery confirms that law enforcement was aware that Mr. Abdul-Latif was not `an agent of a foreign power’ and therefore could not be targeted by a FISA surveillance warrant,” they wrote.
Indeed, Abdul-Latif is not an agent of a foreign power, unless Allah and Muhammad count as a foreign power. He is not acting on behalf of an existing state. He is an Islamic jihadist.