Washington Post staff writers Steve Fainaru and Amy Goldstein report on the case of Osama Awadallah in an article titled, “Judge Rejects Jailing Of Material Witnesses.” Excerpt:
NEW YORK, April 30 — A key legal tactic employed by the government in its post-Sept. 11 war on terror is illegal, a federal judge ruled today, delivering a potential blow to the Justice Department’s methods of detaining suspects and gathering evidence.
The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that the Justice Department has overreached in imprisoning as “material witnesses” men the authorities believe might have information for grand juries investigating terrorism. She dismissed perjury charges against a Jordanian student, Osama Awadallah, 21, concluding that the information the government collected in its investigation must be suppressed because the suspect had been “unlawfully detained.”
“If the government has probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime, it may arrest that person,” Scheindlin wrote. “But since 1789, no Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation.”
Legal experts predicted the ruling could have far-reaching implications because the material-witness statute has emerged as a key tool in the government’s investigation of terrorism after last year’s attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. In addition to detaining people as material witnesses, authorities have arrested hundreds of others on charges of immigration violations and crimes unrelated to terrorism — though the exact number is not known because of the Justice Department’s policy of secrecy in the inquiry.
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Today’s decision revolved around Awadallah, 21, a student at Grossmont College in El Cajon, Calif. He was initially questioned Sept. 20 after authorities found a note with his first name and an old phone number in a car abandoned by some of the hijackers at Dulles International Airport.
FBI agents searched his bedroom, where they found computer images of Osama bin Laden.
The next morning, Awadallahagreed to a lie-detector test. An FBI examiner testified the test showed Awadallah had responded untruthfully when he answered “no” to questions about whether he had advance knowledge of or participated in the attacks. Awadallah was arrested.
Over the next three weeks, Awadallah was in maximum security at four jails in Southern California, Oklahoma and Manhattan.
He alleged that guards physically and verbally abused him and threatened his life.
Scheindlin did not rule on those allegations, but she noted: “Having committed no crime — indeed, without any claim that there was probable cause to believe he had violated any law — Awadallah bore the full weight of a prison system designed to punish convicted criminals as well as incapacitate individuals arrested or indicted for criminal conduct.”
Judge Scheindlin’s 2nd Opinion and Order (302 kb PDF) in US v. Awadallah discusses the circumstances of the FBI’s unlawful seizure and polygraph interrogation of Awadallah. See especially pp. 20-23.