Lawyer Questions Evidence in Terror Case

[wicket]

LINK

A lawyer for an Islamic scholar convicted of exhorting followers to take up arms against U.S. forces overseas wants a judge to determine whether evidence against his client was gathered by a secret domestic spying program.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said there "seems to be a great likelihood" that Ali al-Timimi, a northern Virginia Islamic cleric, was "subject to this operation."

President Bush has acknowledged that within days of the Sept. 11 attacks he authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless intercepts of conversations between people in the United States and others abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

In doing so, the administration bypassed the nearly 30-year-old secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court established to oversee the government's handling of espionage and terrorism investigations.

[MasonJar]

1. They may as well let the suspect go; the evidence is ruined

thanks to our homegrown, government-sanctioned, Machievellian murderer-in-residence.

[wicket]

2. kick

:kick:

[wicket]

7. and another

:kick:

[HuffleClaw]

3. funny how their evildoing makes EVERYTHING suspect now

they've done more harm to the nation and its reputation than i'd ever thought possible. it will take generations to make things right again.

[gratuitous]

4. So, is al-Timimi a terrorist or not?

We will not know, and we can not know. Any evidence proffered against him has to be treated with suspicion, thanks to Bush's reckless decision to bypass the other two branches of government. For those here and on other message boards who feel that "if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about," what makes you so sure? Mr. al-Timimi may be a horrible person who we should rightly lock up. He may just have gotten cross-wise with the wrong person in a position of authority. Are you immune to a bureaucrat with a hard-on? How do you know? The truth may eventually come out to exonerate you, but how many years in prison are you willing to trade for a false sense of security?

[wicket]

5. kick

:kick:

[Wordie]

6. I heard a report on tv earlier that said that part of the defense strategy

would be to compare any surveillance that was collected with the statements of witnesses, to see if the information could prove that witnesses either lied or misrepresented what he said.

It appears that Bush has now provided us with a legal quagmire to go along with the other quagmire in Iraq.