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Source: 9/11 Terror Detainees Face Trial in N.Y. Friday, November 13, 2009 WASHINGTON — Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday. The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning. The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

A federal judge has taken the rare step of ordering self-described anti-terrorism investigator Paul David Gaubatz to remove from his Web site some of the 12,000 documents that his son allegedly stole from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly also ordered Gaubatz to return documents used in his book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Seeking to Islamize America," which was co-authored by Paul Sperry and portrays the council as a subversive organization that's allied with international terrorists. The 15-year-old nonprofit civil rights and advocacy organization says its goals are to "enhance understanding of Islam"...

A resolution pending in the United Nations in one form or another since 1999 is being pushed again by the Islamic nations that originally proposed the plan they called "Defamation of Islam," which would ban criticism of the beliefs of Muhammad worldwide. The proposal, sought by the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, now has be renamed "Defamation of Religions," but officials with Open Doors, an international Christian ministry operating in many of those Islamic states, is warning about its potential impact. WND has reported that a recent incarnation of the resolution sought to make the ban...

MONTREAL — The federal anti-hate law that “official Jews� lobbied for and got passed has, 32 years later, backfired, sowing the seeds for political correctness, media chill and censorship that have undermined the values that define the Jewish People, says Alberta lawyer, author and activist Ezra Levant. Levant, who is Jewish, made the assertion in an Oct. 21 talk to a small audience at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation about his 900-day saga of being prosecuted by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in his now defunct magazine, the...

Some of those musicians -- Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine -- say their music has been played at ear-splitting level to torment terror suspects and coerce confessions at the detention facility. Other petitioners want to know whether their works have been used in such capacity, including R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Billy Bragg. "The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me," said Tom Morello, former lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, an industrial rock band whose song "March of the Pigs" has been linked to torture tactics at...

Next week, investigative journalist and author Dr. Paul L. Williams will be tried in a foreign court for his investigative work on reports of al Qaeda terrorists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. But he broke no American statute and his alleged violation of Canadian law took place not in Canada, but at his home in Pennsylvania. Williams got into a legal jam with the Canadians while discussing his book The Dunces of Doomsday on the nationally syndicated “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio program with George Noory. To make matters more bizarre, Williams had been advised by the Ontario Provincial Police to...

A homosexual man is suing a third national Bible publisher for "mental anguish" after he says the company published Bibles with a negative connotation toward homosexuals. Bradley LaShawn Fowler of Canton, Mich., alleges William Tyndale Publishing manipulated Scripture when it published Tyndale’s New Living Translation Holy Bible and the New Life Application Study Bible by using the term "homosexuals" in a New Testament passage, 1 Corinthians 6:9. "One Bible dictates homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God, while the other is completely void on the issue altogether," Fowler wrote in a statement on his blog.

State officials are examining whether public money has been improperly used to pay for Islamic mosques on charter school campuses in Blaine and Inver Grove Heights. Chas Anderson, deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education, said officials will study Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy's (TiZA) use of state "lease aid'' grants, which were created more than a decade ago to help charter schools rent adequate facilities. "If it is subsidizing a mosque, in our view, that would be a violation of state and federal law,'' Anderson said. The probe is the latest in a series of church-vs.-state conflicts involving TiZA...

SNIPPET: "Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz died in Jeddah last Saturday." SNIPPET: "The serial libel tourist Khalid bin Mahfouz is dead. But the jihad against the West he helped fund, together with pernicious British libel tourism practices, are alive and well. Unfortunately, the U.S. government did nothing to stop his activities on either front when he was alive. Now Congress has the opportunity to reverse Mahfouz’s legacy of libel tourism. New York State, Florida and Illinois have already passed anti- libel tourism laws, and another was just passed unanimously by the California legislature." SNIPPET: "A law to protect Americans free...

Today, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled 'Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’: The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in,' Debra Burlingame writes: On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier [June 9, 2007 pdf file at link], the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner -- Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber” --...

The full Texas Second Court of Appeals yesterday rejected an attempt by a coalition of seven Islamic organizations to further their defamation lawsuit against an online writer and have him branded as less than a "real" journalist. As WND reported, after Joe Kaufman wrote an article for the online FrontPage Magazine exposing terrorist connections in two American Muslim groups, he was sued by a swarm of Islamic organizations, none of which he had even mentioned in his article. The lawsuit technique is called by some "legal jihad" or "Islamist lawfare," and the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Kaufman...

A convicted terrorist can sue a former Bush administration lawyer for drafting the legal theories that led to his alleged torture, ruled a federal judge has ruled who said he was trying to balance a clash between war and the defense of personal freedoms.

Note: The following text is a quote: Justice Department Files Religious Discrimination Lawsuit Against Essex County, New Jersey County Refused to Accommodate Muslim Employee’s Religious Headcovering The Department filed a lawsuit today against Essex County, N.J., alleging that it discriminated against a Muslim corrections officer on the basis of her religion in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The suit alleges that the county refused to permit Yvette Beshier to wear a religiously mandated headscarf while working as a corrections officer. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin...

On Thursday, Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times broke the story that the FBI is edging the CIA out of the business of fighting international terrorism. Under the bureau’s “global justice” initiative, Meyer reported that “FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option.” Who needs a War on Terror, or even an “overseas contingency operation,” when all the world’s a crime scene? If you’re thinking, “Hey, we’ve seen this movie before,” you’re right. Slowly but surely, it’s...

Last night on Freedom Radio, retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert Weimann talked about his open letter to Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Within it, 'Capt Roger Hill Case: Mister Secretary, it's time to end the double standard,' LTC Weimann demonstrates that political considerations have endangered the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and resulted in more than a few unjust prosecutions of our troops. Battlefield evidentiary requirements will be addressed within a revamp of the Military Commission Act (that was nearly hidden within Friday's White House announcement). With due respect to President Obama, those few select Members of Congress with...

What is wrong with this picture? We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisers to former President George W. Bush - including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. The purported crime? The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants. Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called “transnational law” to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule...

During a March 22, 2009, Freedom Radio interview, retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert Weimann discussed the improper command influence that occured throughout much of the Haditha investigation. The 'Sins of the Generals' were many and began even before Tim McGirk's insurgent talking-points driven Time magazine article. The top brass violated both the spirit and intent of the 1986 'Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reform Act'. The combat commander was the convening authority yet politicians, those outside the chain-of-command, and others improperly interjected themselves, let media buzz and enemy propaganda into their decision cycles, and forced further investigation even after Army Colonel...

"I'm not a war criminal! I'm not a Nazi!" Seated in a Jerusalem café, Yotam's tense voice and tight movements contrast sharply with the suave, cool surroundings. He looks around and over his shoulder frequently, admitting that he's afraid that someone might overhear him or recognize him. Throughout the interview, he takes long sips of water from a tall, iced glass in an effort to maintain his composure. He insists that he not be identified in any way. Yotam is not his real name. During Operation Cast Lead, Yotam, served as a battalion commander of a combat unit. He had...

Part Four: Lawfare By Kathy Shaidle RightSideNews Copyright © 2009 Military strategist Karl von Clausewitz famously said, "War is merely politics by other means." It could just as easily be said that "lawfare" is war, politics and religion by other means. What is lawfare? Lawfare is sometimes known as "stealth jihad," "soft jihad," "legal jihad" or "creeping sharia." In the same way that Muslim terrorists hijacked American planes and flew them into American buildings on 9/11, some Muslims are hijacking the West's freedoms and legal system to undermine civilization itself. The strategy might even be called "jihadist jujitsu." As expert...

SNIPPET: "The editor and publisher of a top English-language Indian daily have been arrested on charges of "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims. The Statesman's editor Ravindra Kumar and publisher Anand Sinha were detained in Calcutta after complaints." SNIPPET: "The article was entitled: "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" It concerns the erosion of the right to criticise religions."

On Wednesday, freedom of speech in Europe took a new and devastating turn, as a Dutch appellate court ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders, parliamentarian and filmmaker, charging him with "inciting hatred and discrimination" against Muslims for his film exposing the threat of radical Islam. This ruling comes a mere six months after the public prosecutor's office found Wilders' dialogue contributed to the debate on Islam and that he had not committed any criminal offense. Now, curiously, the court has done an about-face and decreed that charges may be brought against the politician, and that prosecuting him is somehow in...

Note: Video included. January 21, 2009 For hate speech -- after declining to do so last year, which means that Islamic supremacist groups in the Netherlands have kept up the pressure on lawmakers until they got the outcome they wanted. Hate speech, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and hate speech laws are tools in the hands of the powerful that they can use to silence the powerless and crush dissent. And make no mistake: even though the Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West present themselves as embattled victims of racism and "Islamophobia," that...

Over the past nine months, a major campaign promoted by member-states in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its Secretariat General has been aiming at forcing a declaration on "defamation of religion" on the United Nations. The OIC, influenced by radical ideologues including the International Union of Clerics headed by Sheikh Yusuf Qardawi, wants the UN to vote a law banning and punishing any criticism of religion in general and of critical debates about Islam in particular. Aside from obstructing reformers and suppressing democratic movements within Muslim societies, the OIC move will be used by Jihadi Terror networks...

The Long John Silver's in the Mall of America, had a toy in its Kids Meal that included a Bible Phrase and the not "Build with Jesus" written at the top. Last month a Muslim Family went to the restaurant and became outraged when they did not have any toys without the quote, so they complained to the Terrorist Support Group CAIR who called for a Probe of the company's toy distribution policy (Long John Silvers is owned by Yum! Brand who also owns KFC Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and A&W All-American Food). The full story is below:

UNITED NATIONS - Islamic countries Monday won United Nations backing for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say risks being used to limit freedom of speech. Combating Defamation of Religions passed 85-50 with 42 abstentions in a key UN General Assembly committee, and will enter into the international record after an expected rubber stamp by the plenary later in the year. But while the draft's sponsors say it and earlier similar measures are aimed at preventing violence against worshippers regardless of religion, religious tolerance advocates warn the resolutions are being accumulated for a more sinister goal. "It provides...

Pakistani intelligence claimed Rauf was killed, but this hasn't been confirmed. The strike has led to protests--not from Pakistanis but British Members of Parliament. Rauf was a dual Pakistani-British citizen. Some Tory backbenchers are angry over the "execution" of a citizen, while some in Labor are concerned Rauf's civil rights were violated. Patrick Mercer, Tory MP for Newark, said the attack had “ultimately led to the execution of a British subject”. He called for a clear statement from the Government to explain what was known about the planned attack. Andrew Dismore, Labor chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Committee, wanted...

Criminalizing Criticism of Islam By ELIZABETH SAMSON FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE September 10, 2008 There are strange happenings in the world of international jurisprudence that do not bode well for the future of free speech. In an unprecedented case, a Jordanian court is prosecuting 12 Europeans in an extraterritorial attempt to silence the debate on radical Islam. The prosecutor general in Amman charged the 12 with blasphemy, demeaning Islam and Muslim feelings, and slandering and insulting the prophet Muhammad in violation of the Jordanian Penal Code. The charges are especially unusual because the alleged violations were not committed...

Lawfare: Bleeping with the Enemy - May 14, 2008 ... A healthy understanding of Islamofascism, sharia and jihad is replaced by ignorance or the Islamofascist line of a benign Islam and sharia, ...

After a year-long investigation, the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has rejected a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant over his republication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. The allegation that the February 14, 2006, issue of the now defunct magazine was likely to expose Muslims to hatred helped to spark a national debate about human rights law and free speech, and its rejection comes after similar complaints of Islamophobia against Maclean's magazine also failed. ... "I was let go because I'm in the media every day. I've been down to...

Moments after boarding US Airways Flight 300 for Phoenix, Michael McCombie, a 3M sales rep from Santa Clara, Calif., jotted a note and handed it to flight attendant Terri Boatner: "6 suspicious Arabic men on plane, spaced out in their seats. All were together, saying '... Allah ... Allah ...' cursing U.S. involvement w/Saddaam before flight. 1 in front exit row, another in first row 1st class, another in 8D, another in 22D, two in 25 E & F." The men in question were six Muslim imams, or prayer leaders, returning home from a conference in Minneapolis. Within minutes of...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

A federal appeals court, in a major victory for federal officials in pursuing individuals suspected of terrorism, ruled on Monday that foreign nationals may not sue U.S. government officers for money damages for capturing them and sending them to foreign countries where they were tortured. The decision by the Second Circuit Court in New York City, in a high-profile case seen as a significant legal test of the U.S. program of “special rendition,” also barred a claim specific to this case that U.S. officials seriously mistreated the detained individual while he remained in this country before being sent abroad involuntarily....

At his arraignment Thursday, Ramzi Binalshibh admitted he committed an overt act in the 9/11 attack plot: "I've been seeking martyrdom for five years. I tried to get a visa for 9/11, but I could not," said [Ramzi] Binalshibh, who was a member of the German-based Hamburg cell of Al-Qaeda which planned and then carried out the attacks. A native of Yemen, Binalshibh shared a Hamburg apartment with Mohammed Atta, a key leader of the 19 hijackers who took over four planes on the day to use as weapons, but unlike Atta and the others, he was unable to get...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

The Islamist movement has two wings – one violent and one lawful, which can operate apart but often reinforce each other. While the violent arm attempts to silence speech by burning cars when cartoons of Mohammed are published in Denmark, the lawful arm is skillfully maneuvering within Western legal systems, both here and abroad. Islamists with financial means have launched a “legal Jihad,” filing frivolous and malicious lawsuits with the aim of abolishing public discourse critical of Islam and with the goal of establishing principles of Sharia law (strict Islamic law dating back to the 9th Century) as the governing...

8 proud United States Marines have mortgaged nearly all they own, taken donations, and collectively spent a million dollars defending themselves against charges associated with the deaths of twenty-four people in Haditha, Iraq. Conversely, since 2002, more than eight hundred ‘Guantanamo Bay Bar Association’ lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and many of America’s top-tier legal firms have — “pro bono” — nearly wallpapered our federal court system of behalf of America’s enemies. With the Supreme Court now considering whether the ‘Detainee Treatment Act of 2005′ provides sufficient due process to al Qaeda, the ACLU recently announced it had assembled...

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that a Muslim inmate cannot sue the government over the disappearance of the prisoner's copies of the Koran and a prayer rug.Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia joined Thomas. The dissenters were Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

For America's combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan � especially sniper teams � a disturbing yet totally unnecessary shadow has been cast over them by tactically and legally ignorant commanders and their lawyers. The end result is our young warriors' persistent exposure to criminal liability for the perceived "crime" of killing the enemy. While tragic for our warriors as individuals, this trend is a dangerous catastrophe on the strategic level. Never before has America sent it's young to war with the untenable burden of being judged in the clear vision of 20-20 hindsight over the manner by which they carry...

The latest case of intelligence leaks actually makes past leaks to the press look good. In this case, CIA personnel who opposed the secret prisons for terrorists program, proceeded to assist an investigation run by the Council of Europe into the program. This is not only going to render American personnel more vulnerable to lawfare, but it will also make gathering intelligence harder – both with sources recruited by American agencies, and cooperation with other countries' intelligence agencies. One facet of these problems is lawfare in Europe. Already, there has been a lawsuit filed in Germany by the Center for...

Since 9/11 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the term "lawfare" has gained currency. As I discussed briefly in a prior column, "lawfare" is the effort to achieve or defeat military objectives through legal tools. In theory, lawfare could have beneficial effects. In reality, however, there is evidence it has been seriously misused, even abused. In this column, I'll discuss a few key examples. The Muhammed Salah Case In Chicago, federal prosecutors indicted American citizen Muhammed Salah, alleging he was part of a Hamas racketeering conspiracy. Salah, the indictment claimed, had delivered funds given to him by Hamas...

He was the first American to die in what some have called "the real war." Johnny "Mike" Spann, the 32-year-old CIA paramilitary commando, was interrogating prisoners in an open courtyard at the Qala-I-Jangi fortress in Afghanistan when the uprising of 538 hard-core Taliban and al Qaeda fighters began. Spann emptied his rifle, then his sidearm, then fought hand-to-hand as he was swarmed by raging prisoners screaming "Allahu akbar!" Shearman & Sterling did far more than just write legal briefs and shuttle down to Gitmo to conduct interviews about alleged torture for the BBC. In addition to its legal services, the...

Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, touched off a new fight with human rights lawyers by suggesting that corporate clients might want to re-evaluate who they do business with. As one can expect, this sort of comment did not sit well with the human rights groups, who threw a fit. A Department of Defense ( DOD) spokesman later repudiated the comments. However, the comments do raise a couple of points. First, many of the lawyers who are waging lawfare are doing so pro bono. They have gotten the resources to do so through their work on...

December 3, 2006: In the United States, a federal judge has ruled that the President does not have the authority to designate certain organizations as terrorist groups. This ruling is the latest round of lawfare against the war on terror. In this case, two foreign terrorist organizations, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan (LTTE), were the beneficiaries of this suit. Why is this case, filed on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project, important? After all, a number of human rights groups have still been waging lawfare, largely on behalf of al Qaeda. This suit...

Maj. Michael Newton, a military lawyer who teaches at West Point, coined a new term earlier this year: "lawfare." It is the pursuit of strategic aims, the traditional domain of warfare, through aggressive legal maneuvers. Last Friday's decision by the International Court of Justice holding Israel's security fence in violation of international law is another milestone in the onward march of lawfare. The ICJ has now confirmed that lawfare and warfare can be pursued simultaneously. The terror war against Israel, launched in the summer of 2000, has by now resulted in the deaths of nearly a thousand Israeli civilians. The...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz has started calling his youngest son - named Saddam after Iraq's ousted leader - by the name Zuhair instead, according to letters obtained by the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat. "My regards to everybody, how is your mother? And your youngest brother Zuhair?" Aziz said in a July letter to his two daughters, Zeinab and Maysaa. He also referred to the son as Zuhair in an October letter, the paper said in its Wednesday editions, which reproduced several of Aziz's letters. The widely read Arabic daily said it got the...

There is a growing school of thought in the US that sees the International Criminal Court and the development of international criminal and humanitarian law over the past decade as a conspiracy against the US, former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues David Scheffer said Tuesday . But he denied allegations that the US refusal to ratify the Rome Statute and become a party to the International Criminal Court, or to ask for special treatment by the court, was an immoral act. Scheffer, now a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, was speaking during the second day of...