The best analogy I have read is to imagine that the men who found oil in Texas were all major believers in, and supporters of, the KKK. And that they were financing the KKK. That is what we are up against with the Saudis. Here are two articles on it. When you read the second one, note the last paragraph.
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FBI Says Saudis Buy Off Witnesses
Saudis Raise FBI Ire by Paying for Lawyers, Bail of Citizens Arrested in Terror Sweeps
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON Oct. 17 — The Saudi government has been paying for lawyers, and in some cases for bond, for hundreds of its citizens who have been detained, prosecuted or questioned inside the United States during the crackdown on terrorism. The FBI openly calls the practice tantamount to buying off witnesses.
Saudi officials said they have spent more than $1 million to provide American lawyers for those detained or questioned here since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most, they said, are students being held on technical violations of immigration laws.
The Saudis acknowledged concerns by the Justice Department and FBI, but said it was essential that Saudis who are unfamiliar with the American legal system be provided with good lawyers to defend themselves.
"Our view is give them lawyers and let the process take its course, and if they are found guilty of crimes they will pay their price and would have had fair representation. If not, they should be released," said Adel al-Jubeir, Crown Prince Abdullah's foreign policy adviser.
John Pistole, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, recently told the Senate the FBI has raised concerns with the Saudi government that paying legal bills and bond for Saudis being questioned in the terror probe could influence what they say in their testimony.
"To us, that is tantamount to buying off a witness, if you will. So that gives us concern if the government is supplying money for defense counsel," Pistole testified.
The United States does not provide its citizens with lawyers and bail money when they are detained in foreign countries, although U.S. embassies often will intervene to ensure they are treated fairly.
Immediately after the suicide attacks, U.S. law enforcement focused heavily on Saudis after learning 16 of the 19 hijackers were from the kingdom.
Saudi officials say several hundred of their citizens were detained in the weeks immediately after Sept. 11 on immigration violations or terrorism suspicions, but the number detained today has dwindled to around a dozen.
A recent Justice Department investigation concluded many immigrants rounded up after the terror attacks were improperly detained for unnecessarily long periods of time and some endured mental or physical abuse during detention.
A small number of Saudis have been charged with crimes, such as a University of Idaho graduate student charged with associating with Islamic extremists.
The Saudis are also paying for lawyers for any citizens who are detained or questioned by the FBI and are sometimes providing counsel to students as they apply, renew or comply with their visas to ensure they don't get in trouble. Saudi-paid lawyers have sat in on hundreds of interviews by FBI and immigration agents.
The U.S. lawyer hired by the Saudi Embassy to coordinate the hiring of attorneys across the country for Saudi citizens said she is mystified by the criticism.
"I am fascinated that the FBI is unhappy with it. Isn't the right to counsel a bedrock of the American court system?" asked Malea Kiblan, an immigration attorney for two decades who is the lead counsel for the Saudis on immigration cases.
Kiblan said she has arranged attorneys for hundreds of Saudis who have been detained on visa violations or simply been instructed by immigration agents to sit down and be interviewed.
For instance, when University of Idaho graduate student Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi, was arrested earlier this year on federal charges accusing him of links to Islamic radicals, immigration and FBI officials rounded up Saudi and Muslim students in Idaho for questioning, she said.
"The agents were flown in on a military air transport plane," Kiblan said. Al-Hussayen as well as all the students interviewed during the sweep were provided attorneys paid by the Saudi Embassy, she said.
In some instances, Kiblan said, the Saudi government has also paid for bail or bond so Saudis could be released from detention, and is providing some attorneys to assist with visa renewals or interviews.
"In the end, such help benefits the United States as well by ensuring they stay within the law," Kiblan said.
She said in recent months there have been renewed immigration sweeps that have temporarily detained Saudi students in such places as Florida and Michigan. Many of the students were caught off guard when they were picked up by FBI or immigration agents, she said.
"Many of these students are being debriefed multiple times by the FBI, and it has been a very traumatic experience," she said.
photo credit and caption:
Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki, talks to The Associated Press at his office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in this Feb. 12, 2002 file photo. When U.S. officials were trying to gain access to a key al-Qaida operative detained in Yemen, Vice President Dick Cheney picked up the phone and called Saudi Arabia's crown prince. The U.S. ally intervened with the Yemeni president, and the suspect was quickly sent to a friendly third country where U.S. intelligence could question him. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, Files)
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Qatari Man Designated as Enemy Combatant
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
WASHINGTON — President Bush designated a Qatari man in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant (search) -- accusing him of helping Al Qaeda agents settle in the United States so they could plan and prepare for new terror attacks.
The designation means that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 37, could eventually be tried by a military tribunal without most of the legal rights afforded defendants in the U.S. criminal justice system, such as representation by an attorney.
Al-Marri, who lived in Peoria, Ill., has been in U.S. custody since December 2001, held first as a material witness and later charged with lying to the FBI and credit card fraud. Pentagon officials said al-Marri was transferred from federal civilian custody in Illinois to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.
Alice Fisher, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, said that al-Marri had been identified as being a "sleeper" agent of Al Qaeda tasked with assisting new terror network arrivals in getting in place for a planned second wave of attacks. She said key information came from an "Al Qaeda detainee in a position to know."
Fisher would not identify that person, but officials have said that senior Al Qaeda operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (search) has provided a wealth of information about the network's presence in the United States. Other detainees have said that al-Marri was at the al-Farooq training camp in Afghanistan and that he had offered to die for Al Qaeda's cause.
Prosecutors say al-Marri had over 1,000 credit cards in files on his laptop computer, which also contained oaths to protect Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, photos of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, files detailing weaponry and dangerous chemicals and lists of militant Islamic Internet sites.
Fisher told reporters the decision to drop the charges and hand al-Marri over to the Defense Department was made not because the criminal case was weak but because it was the best way to deter future terrorist attacks.
"We are confident we would have prevailed on the criminal charges," Fisher said. "However, setting the criminal charges aside is in the best interests of our national security."
Al-Marri becomes the third person publicly designated by name as an enemy combatant since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the only one who is not a U.S. citizen. In addition, there are more than 600 unidentified people captured on the battlefield as enemy combatants who are being interrogated at the U.S naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Of the other named combatants, Yaser Esam Hamdi (search) was captured in Afghanistan and later found to have been born in Louisiana, making him a U.S. citizen. Jose Padilla (search) is alleged to have been involved in a plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
Bush approved the designation of al-Marri as an enemy combatant Monday morning, Fisher said.
Designation as an enemy combatant means that al-Marri has no right to representation by an attorney -- a status that has drawn court challenges -- and that he could be held by the military indefinitely, possibly to face eventual trial by a military tribunal where fewer U.S. criminal justice rules apply.
Al-Marri's attorney, Mark Berman of Newark, N.J., said he believed the government decided to switch his client's status because al-Marri refused to cooperate and would not plead guilty as others accused in the war on terrorism have done.
"I'm not surprised but it makes you wonder how far the government is prepared to go in denying constitutional rights," Berman said.
Larry Mefford, the FBI's assistant director for counterterrorism, said al-Marri's role in helping members of Al Qaeda sleeper cells get established in the United States should not be minimized.
"He is somebody who posed a danger to the United States," Mefford said. "Clearly, we think he is very important."
The FBI first interviewed al-Marri on Oct. 2, 2001, after receiving a tip that he might be involved in terrorism. He was interviewed again in early December 2001 and then placed in custody as a material witness on Dec. 12, 2001.
Al-Marri was subsequently charged with lying about phone calls he made to a number in the United Arab Emirates used by Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, who prosecutors say provided financial backing to the Sept. 11 hijackers. That same telephone number appeared on the records of a calling card that had been used by Mohammed Atta, leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers and pilot of one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, prosecutors say.
Al-Hisawi is also named as an unindicted coconspirator in the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Al-Marri had lived in the United States from 1983 to 1991, graduating that year from Bradley University with a degree in computer science.
After living abroad for a few years, al-Marri returned to the United States on a student visa on Sept. 10, 2001 -- the day before the attacks in New York and Washington. He enrolled at Bradley for graduate courses and had begun taking classes.
In February, the Saudi Arabian government ignored a request from the State Department and issued a passport to al-Marri's wife and five young children, who have since left the United States.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
