by TChris

Josh Connole thinks the FBI viewed him as a suspect in an arson at a Chevrolet-Hummer dealership in West Covina, California because of his liberal politics. West Covina police arrested Connole at the direction of the FBI. He was detained for four days. A Caltech graduate student has since been arrested as a suspect in the crime.

Although the City of West Covina maintains that its officers did nothing wrong, the City paid Connole $20,000 to settle his false arrest lawsuit. Now Connole plans to sue the FBI. He's angry that he was labeled an "environmental terrorist."

Why did the FBI issue a warrant for Connole? Connole is described as "an outspoken environmentalist and antiwar activist who matched the general description of one of two men caught on a security videotape at one of the dealerships." Large numbers of people match "general descriptions," so it's difficult to believe that Connole's politics didn't motivate the FBI to view him as a suspect.

by TChris

A patent attorney took home $5 million after winning the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, beating out a math and economics major in the final round. Not a bad return on the $10,000 entry fee, and way more fun than patent law.

Isabel Hilton, a visiting professor at Harvard, writing in The Guardian, explains why Britain should refuse to extradite Abu Hamza.

...the measure of a legal system's virtue does not rest on how it treats lovable innocents, but on how it tests the evidence against those whom public opinion is ready to condemn. Thus far, the British authorities clearly found Abu Hamza guilty of terminal unlikeability. They had not, however, charged him with anything more. Now a British court must decide on his extradition to the US. There are many reasons for extreme caution.

In a highly unusual decision, set forth in a 45-page unanimous opinion, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a recommendation for disbarment of the state's most "successful" capital homicide prosecutor for suborning and exploiting known perjury.

The use of false testimony in the trial of two men accused in a 1992 triple-slaying at a market in Tucson "could not have been more harmful to the justice system," wrote Justice Michael D. Ryan for the unanimous court. "A prosecutor who deliberately presents false testimony, especially in a capital case, has caused incalculable injury to the integrity of the legal profession and the justice system."

[Kenneth] Peasley was admitted to the state bar in 1974 and conducted about 250 felony cases, 140 of which were homicides, the court said. Sixty of the cases were capital murder trials. In a ruling overturning the conviction of one of the defendants in 2002, the Supreme Court said Peasley intentionally deceived the jury to paper over weaknesses in his case.

[hat tip to Peter Goldberger, who emails that apparently some of Peasley's victims were executed.]

The manager of Denny's Restaurant in Avon, Colorado (on I-70, past Vail, just before Eagle) is certain that two of the seven most wanted terrorists stopped in for salads Wednesday night. He says they were acting rude and obnoxious. They told him they were Iranian and driving from New York to the West coast. The manager says he had difficulty getting the FBI interested in his sighting.

We're not suprised. After Timothy McVeigh's photo and perp walk were published following the OKC bombing, there were hundreds of reports of sightings of him around Oklahoma City on the days leading up to the bombing. All of them were subsequently discredited.

Also, the al-Qaeda terrorists from 9/11 who came to this country in the months prior to the attacks reportedly were polite and obviously trained to avoid calling attention to themselves. These guys don't seem to fit the terrorist profile--only a Middle Eastern one. Cross-racial identification is a particular problem in eyewitness identifications.

How wise is it to tie up FBI agents with phone calls from anxious citizens instead of having them coordinate with Homeland Security and intelligence agencies to track the terrorists down and find them on their own? America's Most Wanted really is just a tv show, even if they occasionally get their suspect.

by TChris

Can deception turn a soldier into a slave? Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers argues that many U.S. soldiers never would have enlisted had they known that they would be sent to war under false pretenses.

And I don't think "slave" is too strong a word to describe someone who is not permitted to quit his job no matter how dangerous it becomes or how much he hates it. For most of us, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed that we have the right to withhold our labor. It doesn't protect soldiers.

Camilo Mejia learned that lesson when he refused to return to Iraq after deciding that he couldn't further an immoral war -- a very different campaign from the honorable and necessary war of liberation he was told he'd be fighting. Rather than participating in the violent occupation of Iraq, he's spending a year in prison for desertion. He may not be a slave, but he's sure not free.

According to Rivers, kids are induced to sign up for something that's very different from the reality in Iraq:

[O]ur kids get bombarded with formal and informal recruiting messages -- and they sign up. One day, they find themselves sitting in a Humvee in Iraq, with their best friend lying dead on the floor next to them, and they suddenly realize the deception of their recruitment and the shackles of their slavery.

As a general rule, if you're induced by a false representation to enter into a contract, you can get out of the contract. Should soldiers be entitled to ditch the military when they realize they've been sold a boat that doesn't float?

by TChris

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer is being investigated in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a top officer in Saddam Hussein's military at a Qaim detention facility on Nov. 26, 2003.

Mowhoush, who had turned himself in Nov. 10, died during an interrogation conducted by Welshofer and another officer, according to a summary of investigative reports obtained by The Denver Post. Investigators also are looking into whether "Other Governmental Agency" employees, a term often used to describe CIA officers, beat Mowhoush in the days before his death, according to the summary.

There isn't any doubt that the Geneva Conventions applied to Mowhoush, who was a military officer. Nor is there much doubt that the protections afforded by those agreements were ignored.

"It is estimated that MG Mowhoush was interrogated at least once each day he was in custody," the investigative summary says. "Approximately 24 to 48 hours prior to (Nov. 26), MG Mowhoush was questioned by (other governmental agency officials), and statements suggest that MG Mowhoush was beaten during that interrogation." A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment.

When Welshofer and his partner took over, they slid a sleeping bag over Mowhoush's head and rolled him from his back and to his stomach while asking questions, the documents allege. Then, Welshofer sat on Mowhoush's chest and placed his hands over the general's mouth, the report says. Mowhoush died during the interrogation, and both officers were reprimanded, the documents say.

The military later issued a press release stating that Mowhoush died of natural causes. No word yet on whether the investigation will affect the Welshofer's anticipated transfer to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., "to teach military intelligence."

NBC reports that experts doubt the credibility of Attorney General John Ashcroft's most recent terror threat announcement. Here's what Ashcroft said:

In warning Americans to brace for a possible attack, Ashcroft cited what he called “credible intelligence from multiple sources,” saying that “just after New Year's, al-Qaida announced openly that preparations for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete.… After the March 11 attack in Madrid, Spain, an al-Qaida spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete.”

Here's what the experts are now saying:

There's no evidence a credible al-Qaida spokesman ever said that, and the claims actually were made by a largely discredited group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, known for putting propaganda on the Internet....The group has claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London and the Madrid bombing. None of the claims was found to be credible.

A senior U.S. intelligence official previously told NBC News that this group has no known operational capability and may be no more than one man with a fax machine.

Ashcroft is now blaming the FBI for giving him the information.

Columnist Nat Hentoff recounts a Justice Department official's comment that the Government knows it is losing the fight over the Patriot Act.

by TChris

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (a/k/a Laci and Conner's Law, named after Laci Peterson and her unborn child) creates a separate crime when the victim of a federal crime is pregnant and the crime causes death or injury to "a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place." For the most part, "the punishment for that separate offense is the same as the punishment provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child's mother." The law took effect on April 1 over the objection of critics who believe that equating the life of a woman to the life of her fetus is a sneaky way of undermining the right to abortion.

It turns out that the law has a salutary effect, although one not envisioned by the politicians who were eager to exploit Laci Peterson's death for their own political purposes. Relying on that law, a federal judge ruled that a pregnant Mexican woman who is alleged to have falsely claimed citizenship while entering the U.S. cannot be deported because her unborn child is a citizen and the government has no right to deport citizens.

The Constitution provides that every person born in the U.S. is a citizen of the U.S. The woman's child hasn't been born, but under Laci and Conner's Law, that's a minor technicality; if a child who hasn't been born enjoys the same legal protections as a child who has been born, shouldn't the unborn child also be entitled to citizenship? If so, the government can't deport the noncitizen without simultaneously deporting the citizen, something the government is powerless to do.

The judge's decision will likely be overturned on appeal, but by then, the child will have been born and there will be no dispute about citizenship. The child, at least, will be entitled to stay in the country with its citizen father.

by TChris

Concerned about your privacy? You should be. Despite the Bush administration's asserted desire (back in 2002) to protect privacy by appointing a "privacy czar" to oversee each federal agency's "privacy advocate," the administration is more concerned about its own privacy than yours.

First there was the Patriot Act. Government agents can sneak into your home, snoop, and never tell you they were there. (TalkLeft recently reported on the use of the Patriot Act to seek evidence against Brandon Mayfield.) Then there were aborted attempts to implement the Total Information Awareness Project (TalkLeft coverage here) and DARPA's plan to spy on entire cities using blimps (TalkLeft coverage here). And then there's Matrix, the floundering attempt to create a crime-fighting database (TalkLeft coverage here).

Now the GAO tells us that the federal government has more than 120 programs to collect and analyze personal data so they can predict the behavior of individuals. According to Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), who asked for the GAO study:

"I am disturbed by the high number of data mining activities in the federal government involving personal information. The federal government collects and uses Americans' personal information and shares it with other agencies to an astonishing degree, raising serious privacy concerns."

Cynthia Webb has a good overview of privacy issues in the federal government. Meanwhile, where's the privacy czar that the administration promised back in 2002? Democrats are still trying to find one.

by TChris

More than 600 detainees were released from Abu Ghraib today, to the joy of their families, friends, and supporters.

Raising their voices in slow, melodic chants of "God is Greater," hundreds of Iraqis took over a highway in front of Abu Ghraib prison today to greet busloads of men freed from months of detention. Women wept and clung to each other as they strained to glimpse husbands or sons through the dusty windows of each bus that bounced along the dirt road leading out of the prison and rolled past them onto the highway. Men whistled and pumped their fists into the air in a show of solidarity.

The emotional scene at the prison was a testament to the extent that Iraqis have banded together in their outrage over the abuse, which Iraqi citizens have said reminded them of the treatment prisoners suffered under Saddam Hussein.

About 3,000 detainees remain, down from a high of 7,000. Most have been held without charges. More are expected to be released before June 30.