Posted on 04/12/2003 9:15:05 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
And lest you mistake where my sympathies lie, I am completly against this sort of detention. I don't have to imagine such a draconian law being applied under Hillary Clinton because I can see it being applied today under the current administration.
This guy is not being charged with a crime, he's being detained as a material witness in at least one Grand Jury case to testify against people who are charged with crimes- apparently the "Portland Group."
Also, I see nothing here (in the findlaw docs) to indicate that this is his very first appearance before a judge. Since this Judge mentions it involves an existing Grand Jury case I suspect he has been before the grand jury case's judge earlier. It being a Grand Jury case, his appearance there is not going to be public info, at least not now.
I'm curious about why he had trouble getting back into the country a few years ago, and needed Nextel's help.
(snip from the World Socialist web site ...)
In Portland, Oregon, 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets to protest the war, as well as the role of the media and the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties. The marchers stopped for speeches outside the offices of KOIN, a local TV station, and the Oregonian newspaper, where speakers denounced the sanitized images and manipulation of the news of the war by the corporate media.
The March terminated at Pioneer Couthouse Square where several speakers addressed the crowd. Steve McGready, a friend of Maher “Mike” Hawash, spoke about Hawash being detained as a material witness in a “terrorism investigation.” Hawash, a Palestinian-born US citizen, was arrested where he worked at Intel Corporation three weeks ago and has since been held in seclusion, though no charges have been filed against him. McGready said that Mike Hawash is a prisoner of war.(/snip)
They are of course lying here because Hawash has not been held in seclusion but has requested to be segregated from the general population, which is appropriate in that he's a witness. Looking at the Findlaw case, it's clear he has a lawyer to talk to. And of course Hawash hasn't been charged - he's a WITNESS to another case which is in the hands of a Grand Jury. We charge SUSPECTS, not WITNESSES who are not suspects.
Judging from Mr. McGready's stupid comment from the World Socialist Web site, McGready is a nut. He says Hawash is a prisoner of war- which is silly since no one has accused Hawash of fighting against the US or even of fighting for anyone else. Which war is McGready thinking of, the War on Terror, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the Israeli conflict with Hamas, or some civil war in Africa? And why would McGready associate his friend with any war when according to McGready, his friend Hawash is "apolitical" and the only thing suspicious about Hawash are his donations to Global Relief and for all anyone knows, Hawash was taken into custody to testify in a case against the Mafia? What does McGready think he knows about Hawash? Was Hawash captured while in uniform, carrying arms openly, under the command of an organized force? I think not- he cannot be a POW then. McGready is not a very good spokesman for Hawash.
(snip) This afternoon should see Steven McGready of Intel giving his testimony. He was the only DoJ witness who refused to give written testimony in advance, to speed up proceedings. (/snip)
? (PORTLAND CELL : HAWASH VISITS NABLUS, HAS TROUBLE GETTING BACK INTO THE US UNTIL INTEL INTERVENES ON HIS BEHALF) Mr. McGeady, [Maher Mofeid Hawash's] boss there [at Intel], said Mr. Hawash went back to Nablus to visit his family several years ago and had trouble returning to the United States until Intel officials intervened.- "Terrorism Task Force Detains an American Without Charges" NY Times, Posted by Gary on April 05, 2003 at 09:40:54: . http://www.ecolivingcenter.com/board/main/messages/1074.html
1. Only paper with the story is The New York Times?
2. This isn't Reno's Justice Dept.
I'm waiting for more info (and being Palistanian, unfortunately, does cause closer scrutiny.)
Apologies to Nextel.
(Is McGready still at intel? I saw a news item that referred to him as "former VP" at Intel.)
This guy is not some random victim- there's a reason he was taken in at this particular time, and in this particular manner, and a reason why they arranged the catch in such a way that if he had been armed, no citizen and no family member would be hurt. And there's a reason he had so much trouble getting into this country that he needed some behind the scenes help, and it may have to do with questions about his real identity.
I will assume he is innocent for the time being, but I do not think anyone associated with those two mosques who dumps that much cash on a charity does not know much about it and doesn't know one of its cofounders headed a mosque he attended. I wonder if he donated to any other charities or if it was just that one? I was burned while trying to stay open minded about Sami Al Arian because of my concerns about the use of secret evidence- and so was Bush, as a matter of fact. So I do not for one moment think the administration is trying to do anything wrong with this guy, or would even want to.
Additional information:
The FBI released a press release on March 20, the very day Hawash was taken into custody. The press release was made regarding FOUR search warrants in the Portland area it specifically said were related to an ongoing terrorism case in Oregon but were not related to the then-ongoing FBI inquiries of Iraqi citizens. See below:
MARCH 20, 2003 : (FBI PRESS RELEASE POSSIBLY ON HAWASH, RELEASED AT THE SAME TIME THE FBI WAS CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS OF IRAQI CITIZENS BUT ACCORDING TO FBI, NOT RELATED TO THEM)
For Immediate Release
Date: March 20, 2003
Contact: Special Agent Jerry Hill
(503) 229-9870 (pager)
Joint Terrorism Task Force Searches
Charles Mathews III, Special Agent in Charge (SAC), of the FBI in Oregon, and Michael Mosman, U.S. Attorney for Oregon, announced today that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), executed four federal search warrants in the Hillsboro, Oregon, area at approximately 7:00AM on Thursday, 03/20/2003. The Hillsboro Police Department also assisted in these activities. These searches were related to an ongoing investigation which is continuing in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area.
The searches were not related to the FBI’s interviews of Iraqi citizens which are being conducted due to the outbreak of war with Iraq. Since the search warrants are sealed, the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office will have no further comment.
******************************************************
It's interesting that there were FOUR searches in the Hillsboro area but the press only mentions what, two? Where were the others and who was involved? Are they all of places linked to Hawash? why didn't the press bother to find out? OR did they find out and decide not to mention it?
Also, some interesting information on Global Relief Foundation (It also goes by another name, an Arabic one) since GRF relates to Hawash in some fashion. I DON'T buy the idea that Hawash just heard about Global Relief from some traveling reprisentative. The cofounder is a local, right at the Islamic Center of Portland:
(INFO ON GRF)
Source- "Feds tie Kariye’s charity to al-Qaida : Global Relief Foundation accused of funding terror; lawyer says sheik cut ties to the group years ago ," BY JIM REDDEN , Portland Tribune, October 22 2002
A Muslim charity co-founded by Sheik Muhamed Abdirahman Kariye of Portland officially has been accused by the federal government of funding the al-Qaida terrorist network. Kariye has not been charged with any crime related to the charity, the Global Relief Foundation.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department formally declared the Global Relief Foundation to be a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist." The federal government had frozen its assets last December.
Stanley Cohen, Kariye’s New York attorney, said the designation is nothing but politics. Cohen insisted that the government has no new evidence against the charity. "They have only been charged in the court of John Ashcroft and the news media," Cohen said.
But terrorism expert Matthew Levitt said the designation is long overdue. "It’s a terrorist organization through and through," said Levitt, a retired FBI analyst who now serves as a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington D.C.-based think tank. Levitt told a congressional subcommittee in August that the foundation was part of a network of Muslim charities that helped finance global terrorism.
Kariye is the religious leader of the Islamic Center of Portland, also known as Masjed As-Saber, in Southwest Portland. The center is being investigated by the Portland FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Kariye was arrested Sept. 13 by the task force on two counts of Social Security fraud. He was released Oct. 11 on $250,000 bail.
Kariye and four other Muslims founded the charity in Chicago Ridge, Ill., in December 1992. Kariye also was listed as a director in the foundation’s first annual report.
Cohen insists that Kariye has not been involved with the Global Relief Foundation for nearly a decade. "He was one of a number of founders and hasn’t been involved in its activities for eight to 10 years," Cohen said.
The $5 million-a-year foundation is one of the largest Muslim charities in the country. It has its headquarters in Bridgeview, Ill., and has satellite offices in Pakistan, Belgium and France. Much of its money has gone to health clinics in Israeli-occupied territories, refugee camps in Kosovo and mosques and Muslim schools in the United States.
The federal government has long suspected that the charity also has helped fund al-Qaida. Among other things, Treasury officials claim that a top al-Qaida financier named Mohammed Zouaydi has given more than $200,000 to the organization.
The government also claims that NATO forces found documents linking the foundation to al-Qaida when it raided the charity’s Kosovo offices in late December 2001.
The raid followed the arrest of a senior foundation official, Rabih Haddad, on charges that he overstayed his visa. Haddad was arrested last December on the same day the Treasury Department raided the organization’s headquarters and froze its assets.
Cohen says the terrorism designation is an attempt by the Bush administration to support Israel. "Israel has been trying to shut it down for years because it supports Palestinian causes," he said.
(end)
'Free Mike' Rallies Help Magnify Abuses in Ashcroft's America
Robyn Blumner
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
April 25, 2003
Sometimes, before an abusive government practice gains widespread attention, bad things have to happen to someone with this bio: American citizen, blond wife, adorable children, good job and high-status friends.That victim would be Maher "Mike" Hawash, a naturalized American of Palestinian descent who has been held in federal custody as a material witness to a terrorism investigation since March 20.
In an early morning raid, Hawash was seized by armed FBI agents in the parking lot of his workplace in Portland, Ore. His home was later searched for hours and four computers were confiscated. Hawash has since been held under maximum security conditions in a federal prison south of Portland.
No one who can talk knows why Hawash has been detained or what the FBI agents are looking into, although there is conjecture it might have something to do with his donations to a Muslim charity. Everyone directly associated with the case, including his lawyers, has been ordered by a judge not to speak about it.
But Hawash is lucky. Unlike other Muslim and Middle Eastern men who have found themselves in this predicament, Hawash has well-situated friends. As a former employee and now a contract software engineer for Intel Corp., Hawash has a wide cadre of associates in the computer industry. And they are not sitting on their hands. An Internet-driven information campaign (www. freemikehawash.org) and organized "free Mike" rallies have increased interest in his case and, as a result, in the way Attorney General John Ashcroft has been misusing the material witness statute.
[snip]
Poor, whitto Mikie. Ashcroft bad, Palestinians good.
I wondered about his Hong Kong trip while I was adding him to my timeline, but this article disn't say when he went there- only that he did so while on a supposed "visit to his family" so I couldn't match it with the Portlance Groups's visit:
(snip)Several friends of Mr. Hawash's said he prayed at the Bilal Mosque in Portland, the same mosque attended by two of the suspects in the terrorism case. He also flew through Hong Kong on his way to visit his family in the Middle East, a route that law enforcement officials said was used by several of the suspects who tried to get to Afghanistan. Before 9/11, Mr. Hawash donated money to the Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity whose assets were frozen last year after federal authorities said it had ties to terrorists. - "Oregon Muslims Protest Monthlong Detention Without a Charge," By RACHEL L. SWARNS, NY TIMES.com
It's interesting that the Hong Kong trip coincided with the family trip- I suppsoe that's the excuse he gave to his employers- that he was visiting family.
He may have had trouble reentering the country if his passport papers weren't in order due to some strange stopovers or not arriving in Nablus at all; and this amy be why Intel stepped in to help him.
To a prominent group of Portlanders, Maher “Mike” Hawash is a co-worker, friend and neighbor — a U.S. citizen and software engineer detained without charges for undisclosed reasons on March 20. To the FBI, Hawash is a Palestinian-born terrorism suspect, now charged with plotting to aid the Taliban and al-Qaida in a holy war against the United States. It’s hard to reconcile these two faces of the same man.
Photographs posted on the freemikehawash.org Web site showed a balding man in a plaid shirt with a toothy grin and a beaming groom getting married to a woman from Oregon. The booking photograph from the FBI showed a heavily bearded man with a serious demeanor.
While there’s no doubt that Hawash had returned to his Middle Eastern roots during the last few years, his American friends can’t fathom the drastic change the government alleges. “If I were the FBI, I’d put that picture out there, too,” said Debbie Burke, who worked with Hawash at Intel Corp. in Hillsboro and has helped run a campaign to free him. “It makes him look like a terrorist.”
That’s exactly what the government is saying he is, according to a 41-page affidavit released this week by the Portland FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. It claims that Hawash joined five other Portland Muslims in October 2001 on an alleged mission to assist the fundamentalist regime of Afghanistan and its terrorist allies in a war against non-Muslim invaders.
The affidavit says Hawash traveled through western China with Portland terror suspects Jeffrey Battle, Patrice Lumumba Ford, and brothers Muhammad and Ahmed Bilal, where they allegedly attempted unsuccessfully to cross the border into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces.
Another defendant who traveled with the group, Habis Abdullah Al Saoub, allegedly made it to Afghanistan, according to the affidavit. Al Saoub, who previously fought the Soviet army in Afghanistan and is believed by the FBI to have frequently visited Hawash’s home in Hillsboro, is a fugitive. The FBI is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
Hawash’s supporters, many of them non-Muslim Intel employees, say they can’t reconcile the government’s portrayal of Hawash with their experiences with a fun-loving, open-minded and magnetic individual. They say they are confident Hawash will be found not guilty. “To think of Mike going to fight with the Taliban is just ludicrous,” Burke said. Tom Walsh, a 17-year veteran of Intel, put it more bluntly: “I consider Mike an esteemed colleague. The idea that he would go to Afghanistan with a bunch of losers to kill people is just unbelievable.”
But “Mike” is not the person being charged. According to the government charges, that person is Maher Mofeid Hawash, 38, who has not gone by the name Mike (adopted because it is easier for Americans to pronounce) for three years now. He has returned to his Arabic name, Maher, and to his Islamic roots as part of a transformation that brought tension to his family life and allegedly radicalized him to the extreme.
Success found in America
Hawash was born the third of six children in the West Bank city of Nablus. He and his family were exiled to Kuwait by the Israeli government but later returned to their ancestral home, a scene of intense fighting between Palestinians and Israelis. His mother still lives in Nablus, where an Israeli tank has been parked in front of her house during recent times of strife.
If Hawash’s boyhood experiences in the Middle East gave him radical political leanings, he hid them well. He came to the United States at age 20, earned a pair of engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and rode the high-tech wave through the 1990s with high-paying jobs at Compaq Computer Corp. in Houston (1989-92) and Intel in Hillsboro (1992-2001).
At Intel, he made friends with an ethnically diverse work force, co-wrote a technical book with a Catholic East Indian-American and was the lone Muslim among a tightly knit group of eight software engineers who worked on multimedia software out of the firm’s Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro.
His friend Rohan Coehlo, who co-wrote the tech book with him and was best man at Hawash’s 1995 wedding to Lisa Ryan of Roseburg, recalls that Hawash was so popular with his co-workers that they threw five going-away parties for him before Hawash left for a stint to work at Intel’s plant in Haifa, Israel. “Whenever you are with Mike, it is an enjoyable social experience,” Coehlo said. “People just like hanging out with him.” At the last of the parties, Coehlo and a half-dozen others all shaved their heads in honor of the balding Hawash’s no-frills hairdo. The next day, they all went to a fancy Intel reception where they were honored for their inventiveness, Coehlo said.
In Israel, Hawash won praise as a model employee. His manager at Intel, Benny Eitan, remembers him as a “gentle and tender person” who visited his family in the West Bank often and tried to help people there. “He was avoiding politics and was just trying to contribute to the local community in his modest way,” Eitan wrote in an e-mail to Hawash’s supporters.
Steven McGeady, who was Hawash’s boss at Intel, said he did not even know Hawash was Palestinian until he had to intercede to help get Hawash out of the West Bank during a security crackdown in which Israeli authorities would not allow Palestinians to leave Nablus.
A return to his roots
Hawash stopped going by the name Mike in 2000. That was the year his first child was born, his second child was on the way and his father died in Nablus. It also was the year records show that he gave more than $10,000 to the Global Relief Foundation, which has since had its assets frozen and been labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. Treasury Department.
After his father died, Hawash traveled to Nablus for the funeral and also visited Jordan and Egypt. When he returned to his suburban home in Hillsboro, he became much more serious about his faith, friends say. He prayed five times a day, gave up alcohol and grew a long beard.
The change put a strain on his marriage, Coehlo recalled. “He became much stricter in what he would tolerate. He was adhering to the tenets of Islam, and this was difficult for Lisa at times.”
In December 2000, Hawash’s mother came to Hillsboro for the birth of her grandchild. Neighbors observed that Hawash behaved differently during her stay, and that the people who came to visit were almost entirely Muslims.
In spring 2001, Hawash accompanied his mother on a trip back to Nablus, then made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Coehlo said Hawash seemed much more at peace after returning from the pilgrimage, and his relationship with Lisa was as strong as ever. Hawash followed the teachings of the Koran more closely after the pilgrimage, but Coehlo said he remained open-minded and enjoyed discussing religion in depth with people of other faiths.
Motive remains mystery
The affidavit mostly refers to where Hawash allegedly went and with whom during a three-week period in October and November 2001. It attaches motives to other defendants who made overtly anti-Semitic and anti-American comments to an FBI informant who recorded the conversations. Nothing, however, has yet surfaced that explains Hawash’s motives or gives a counterexplanation for what he was allegedly doing in those hotel rooms in China with a group of black converts to Islam who described themselves as a “fighting force,” according to the affidavit.
The affidavit refers to evidence that Hawash knew the other defendants and spent significant time with them. In the affidavit, he is said to have helped the Bilal brothers set up a landscaping business and to have written a check for $105 to Ford in September 2001, just before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a friend of Hawash’s, former Intel employee Bob Adams, called him up. “He had two reactions,” Adams said. “He was horrified by the loss of innocent lives. And he was really pained that someone would attach the Islamic faith to what happened that day.”
The government affidavit paints a different portrait. It says that after 9-11, Hawash became less friendly with his neighbors. In October 2001, according to the affidavit, Hawash bought outdoor clothing and a backpack, transferred ownership of his home into his wife’s name and traveled overseas on a supposed business trip that the government claims had nothing to do with legitimate commerce. In two cities in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang near the far eastern border with Afghanistan, Hawash allegedly stayed in the same hotels as Battle, Ford and the Bilal brothers, according to the affidavit.
Hawash’s supporters insist that the charges against him amount to guilt by association. McGeady, the former Intel vice president who designed the “Free Mike Hawash” Web site, said while it’s true that Hawash went through major changes in 2000 and 2001, the “double life” theory doesn’t apply. “As Mike matured and went through these life-changing experiences — death of a parent, the national tragedy of 9-11 — certainly aspects of his character changed,” McGeady said. “But there’s absolutely no reason to make the giant leap from there to Mike becoming a rabid, anti-Semite, gun-toting lunatic, right-wing fundamentalist Muslim.”
Hawash is scheduled to be formally charged in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday.
(My Note : Pay attention to former Intel president McGready's idiotic comment at the end. )
By ANDREW KRAMER, Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. - A software engineer who unsuccessfully tried to enter Afghanistan to fight against U.S. troops pleaded guilty Wednesday to aiding the Taliban and agreed to testify against other suspects.
Maher "Mike" Hawash, one of the so-called "Portland Seven," will serve at least seven years in federal prison under a deal approved by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
"Yes, your honor," Hawash replied.
Hawash's attorney, Steven Houze, said his client had decided to cooperate fully with the government. Houze said Hawash had faced more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all three counts.
Hawash admitted buying camping supplies and other gear as part of a plan to join the Taliban as a foot soldier. He said he tried and failed to enter Afghanistan from western China in late fall 2001.
Hawash also admitted he gave money to other members of the group that had been provided by another, unnamed, individual.
In exchange for the reduced sentence, Hawash agreed to testify in federal court, before grand juries and before any potential military tribunals. He also agreed, if called upon, to cooperate with foreign governments to aid in their terrorism probes and to assist intelligence agencies.
He will be sentenced after he testifies against his former co-defendants, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and simultaneously searched his home. He was held as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later. In what supporters called an abuse of civil rights, federal officials did not publicly confirm he was being held during those five weeks.
In a 41-page affidavit, the U.S. Attorney's Office accused Hawash, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, of growing angry with the United States after the Sept. 11. 2001, attacks, then conspiring with co-defendants to join the fight in Afghanistan against U.S. troops.
Hawash accompanied the group as it tried and failed to enter Afghanistan, according to court documents. The Taliban was the militant Muslim organization that controlled most of Afghanistan until the American invasion following the terrorist attacks.
Five of the other six suspects in the case all have pleaded innocent — Jeffrey Battle; Battle's ex-wife, October Lewis; Patrice Lumumba Ford and brothers Ahmed and Muhammad Bilal. The sixth, Habis al Saoub, remains at large. They face various conspiracy, firearms and money laundering charges.
He was held as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later.
I still have a problem with this position as taken by DoJ. As you found, the initial statements of his being held incommunicado were false, he should still have been brought before a court within a limited timeframe even though he was segregated from those charged and/or sentenced in the facility. Were he not a citizen, there'd be no problem; indeed if it can be shown that he took it under false pretenses then he should have it stripped and be deported after he completes his sentence as done to many Nazis in the past.
As you've remarked: Socialism is evil, even if its hidden in a Republican wrapper. It's also well buried in the Muslim cult, which is also starting to be recognized as anathema to our freedoms and prosperity.
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