He was convicted of attending a jihad training camp that apparently did not exist at the time he was supposed to have attended it. If that is all there is to this case, then his conviction should indeed be overturned, and he should be released. At the same time, one hopes that someone will look into exactly what he was doing in Pakistan, and where, at that time. “Lodi man asks court to overturn terrorism conviction,” by Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2014:
Attorneys for a Lodi man sentenced to 24 years in prison for terrorist involvement asked a federal court Wednesday to overturn his conviction, arguing that he was innocent and received incompetent legal representation during his trial.
Hamid Hayat, who was born in Stockton to Pakistani parents, was convicted in 2006 of attending a jihadist training camp during a visit to Pakistan and of lying to federal agents. After the 2005 arrest of Hamid and his father, an ice cream truck driver, the FBI said it had found evidence of an Al Qaeda cell in Lodi, a claim that was later dropped.
Hayat was convicted based on statements he made during a lengthy interrogation by FBI agents. His lawyers said the terrorist camp the government accused him of attending was not even operating when Hayat was in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, and the government knew that.
“That closure surely became known to the government during its investigation of this case, through its aerial surveillance of the Balakot area as well as the ready access it had to the camp location after Hamid’s arrest in June, 2005,” wrote Dennis P. Riordan, one of several lawyers who have volunteered to try to win Hayat’s release.
The motion filed in federal court in Sacramento said Hayat’s trial lawyer was not qualified to represent him. She had never tried a criminal case before and had been out of law school only 18 months when she was first represented Hayat, the motion said.
The lawyer, who practiced family and immigration law, knew that witnesses in Pakistan could prove her client’s innocence but was unaware that in federal criminal cases evidence can be obtained anywhere in the world by deposition, according to Wednesday’s filing.
A jury hung on charges that Hamid’s father, Umer Hayat, had lied to federal agents about his son’s alleged terrorist ties. The government dropped the case after Hayat agreed to plead guilty to lying to customs officials about the amount of money his family had during a 2003 trip to Pakistan….
weavo2 says
He should be released ASAP.
Then he can make $10.10 an hour at his local gas station in California…
mortimer says
Lies, damn lies…and taqiyya.
livingengine says
Here is the web of connections the FBI agents assigned to the case were looking at. http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/enemywithin/lodi/terrorchart.pdf
Salah says
Robert wrote: “If that is all there is to this case, then his conviction should indeed be overturned, and he should be released.”
Thank you Robert.
That’s the difference between the civilized man and the savage. Between us and them.
Jax Tolmen says
I am a staunch supporter of Robert Spencer purely because he stands on a moral high ground and does not stoop to the level of the savages in his efforts to further the cause.
I am always dismayed when I see comments from Jihadwatchers calling for thinly veiled genocide, indiscriminate violence and the deportation of every single Muslim. I think many confuse the issue, Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch are anti – Islam and not Anti – Muslim.
If we are to win this fight, we cannot let ourselves turn into the very monsters we are trying to destroy. If we let ourselves slip into their barbarism, then we may as well give up now.
Mirren10 says
”I am always dismayed when I see comments from Jihadwatchers calling for thinly veiled genocide, indiscriminate violence and the deportation of every single Muslim.”
If you see any comments calling for genocide or indiscriminate violence, then email Robert and/or marclouis, and they will be be deleted, and the commenters probably banned.
As for deportation, I see nothing wrong with deporting those who pose a danger to our societies and citizens. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to happen, certainly not in the immediate future, precisely because those who ‘take the moral high ground’ are prepared to do so at the risk of danger and death to themselves and their fellow citizens.
Is refusal to protect one’s society and it’s citizens, ‘moral’ ? I call it wilful stupidity.
PRCS says
“Hamid Hayat, who was born in Stockton”
He was born here, and is a citizen by nature of that birth. There is no provision in law to deport a citizen born in this country–and where would they be deported to? Those who’ve immigrated here and subsequently become U.S. citizens can only be deported if they do various things which express their desire to denounce that citizenship .
The issue of deporting citizens of this nation is a non-starter.
Salah says
Deportation won’t work. The only way to defeat jihad is to defeat Islam. The only way to defeat Islam is to tell the truth about it and about its founder. The only way to do so is to FULLY protect free speech. FULLY. Especially in the MSM.
Anyone who dares wage ANY attack on free speech must be brought to justice. He’s a traitor, and should be treated as such.
Mirren10 says
”Hayat was convicted based on statements he made during a lengthy interrogation by FBI agents”
So, if the terrorist camp ”was not even operating” what **statements** was he making ?
I would hazard a guess that his statements were typical mohammedan supremacist venom towards the US, and non-mohammedans.
Therefore, he should be **deported**, rather than released into American society. Because if he **is** released, what’s the betting he will become involved in some murderous plot ? Or will go trotting off to Syria, and if not killed, will come back to the US having acquired very dangerous knowledge.
It is all very well to take a ‘moral high ground’, but what about protecting our societies ?
The West cannot afford to be so complacent. Will those who take the ‘moral high ground’ sleep well when/if this mohammedan is released, and then perpetrates another Boston massacre ?
Marbran says
Hamid is a natural-born US citizen.
duh_swami says
If that is all there is to this case, then his conviction should indeed be overturned, and he should be release.
What is Nathan Lean going to do with that? You are going to frustrate your critics with that kind of writing.
dumbledoresarmy says
On the subject of “citizen” Muslims in non-Muslim countries, and deportation.
They may be natives of a non-Muslim country who (like Samantha Lewthwaite did in Britain, and Adam Gadahn in the USA, and David Hicks and Shane Kent in Australia) convert to Islam, and decide to go all the way and become Jihadis…
Or they may be persons born to Muslim immigrants, thus acquiring citizenship of the non-Muslim country they were born in, and who -having been raised Muslim – embrace their parents’ cult wholeheartedly, decide to practise the Sixth Pillar, and become combat jihadis…
If our societies are not prepared to exact the traditional punishment for a traitor…Death; then there remain the equally ancient and traditional punishments of Outlaw and Exile – used in many human societies (including our own) throughout history.
I fail to see why people should refuse to consider dusting off the punishment of “Exile For The Term Of Your Natural Life”.
The further implication of this fix that western countries are now in, vis a vis so-called “native-born” Muslims, whether converts to the Mob, or Muslims born on their soil from Muslim immigrant parents, is this: it would be an *excellent* idea, to save on future trouble and expense, if no more Mohammedans were permitted to enter the
USA.
Because if this man’s parents had not been permitted to migrate into the USA, he wouldn’t have been born in the USA, and would not therefore present the problem of a person possessing US citizenship but in fact despising it – *taught* to despise it, by the cult in which he has been raised – and owing his primary and final loyalty to the Empire of Islam, a loyalty that might become active – and deadly to surrounding Infidels – at any moment.
If the Times Square bomber had not been permitted to migrate into the USA, he would never have been able to set his bomb.
If the Tsarnaev family had never been let into the USA, the Boston Bombing would not have happened.
If the 9/11 hijackers had not been allowed into the USA, 9/11 would not have happened.
EYESOPEN says
Excellent post DDA! And your logic is impeccable. There is – or should be – if not death as a traitor, then permanent exile back to where his parent(s) emigrated from. That, in addition to immediate cessation of muslim immigration would at least help to curtail the problems we in the U.S. (or in any “Western” nation) face. Unfortunately, with OBummer in the WH and too many of the sheeple suffering from the PC/MC mind virus, it does not look as if this will happen any time soon – and that IS a problem.