Below is a lengthy but highly valuable account of the
wrongful use of the material witness statute. It's long but worth reading. 
jks

>
>Daily Journal
>California Lawyer Article
>www.dailyjournal.com
>© The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.
>-------------------------------------------
>
>April 01, 2002
>Diary of a Terrorist's Lawyer
>
>By Randall B. Hamud
>
>
>         "Hamud. You have proven to America that you
>are not with us, but with the terrorists. We're sick
>of seeing your face on television. Watch yourself,
>Hamud. Watch yourself." ¶ It's December 16, 2001, and
>a man who called once before has just called again
>with a short hate-filled message for my answering
>machine. There have been others-maybe a dozen. And
>compared to some of those, this one shouldn't be so
>upsetting. Not when anonymous callers are promising to
>bomb my home. Still, I have a funny feeling about this
>latest caller: something in the man's voice-a ring of
>credibility, if you will-that leaves me on edge. The
>next morning, I drive downtown and play the tape for
>Antoine El-Assis-one of two police officers in San
>Diego of Arabic descent.
>
>         Roughly 100,000 Arabs now live in this city,
>and, like me, most are Muslim-although I have to say
>I'm hardly the best example of a religiously devoted
>person. I don't pray five times a day, as you're
>supposed to. Nor do I speak Arabic or fast during
>Ramadan. And after having gone to college and law
>school in the 1960s, my view of the world is decidedly
>secular. Still, I am the grandson of Middle Eastern
>immigrants and retain a strong sense of pride in my
>heritage.
>
>         My own father built houses for a living. He
>was an olive-skinned, dark-haired man who migrated
>from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1935 and died at age 48
>of cancer. His was a short yet, as I understand it,
>fairly happy life. But at one point in that life, I
>know, he wanted to be a lawyer. He even went to night
>school for a while until financial pressure forced him
>to quit. So, I guess you could say that when I became
>a lawyer, I picked up where he left off.
>
>         Like a lot of legal careers, though, mine up
>till now hasn't been terribly eventful. I graduated
>from UCLA Law School in 1970, spent a total of seven
>years as a deputy city attorney in Compton and Los
>Angeles, then spent seven more at the Atlantic
>Richfield Oil Company as an in-house counsel. This
>brought me to 1985, when I moved to San Diego and set
>up shop as a sole practitioner. The cases I handled
>were fairly typical-wrongful termination, race and sex
>discrimination, personal injury, and the like. I also
>became active in the Arab-American community. I served
>two years as chair of the city's American Arab
>Anti-Discrimination Committee, for example. Currently,
>I chair the police department's advisory board, which
>deals with such issues as hate crimes and racial
>profiling. I'd like to think we were making progress.
>But the world changed dramatically on September 11,
>and, like so many, I'm still trying to feel my way
>through th! e fallout.
>
>         Officer El-Assis knew exactly what I was going
>through. In fact, after I received the first three
>death threats, he came to my house and tried to calm
>both my 83-year-old mother and my companion, Ida.
>"Don't worry. The sort of people who make these calls
>usually never mean business," El-Assis said. But now,
>with yet another menacing message to listen to, he
>wants me to agree to a phone trap-one that would give
>the police the ability to trace all of my incoming
>calls, including those of my clients. "I'll think it
>over," I tell him.
>
>         Being type-cast as a terrorist's lawyer, I've
>found, often leaves you with few good options. What's
>at stake is nothing less precious than the integrity
>of the United States Constitution. However, in making
>the choices I've made, I'm painfully aware of the toll
>they've taken on my family. I've asked myself: How do
>I justify this to my mother, who's been worried sick
>over my personal safety? And what do I say to Ida?
>This is the Arab-American woman I met in 1983, married
>in 1985, divorced in 1996, and then started living
>with again in 1998. I won't even try to explain all
>that-except to say that after a very rocky period, we
>seemed to have found our way back to each other. Then,
>one day, she saw me on the news defending young men
>who, in the eyes of the world, deserved to suffer for
>unspecified crimes. It was enough to make her ill.
>
>         "How can you do this to us?" she asked.
>
>         "These guys need our help," I said. "They
>didn't do anything wrong."
>
>         "It's not worth getting shot over."
>
>         "You're exaggerating."
>
>         "If you want to endanger yourself, that's
>fine," she said. "But to endanger me and the rest of
>your family-that's not right."
>
>         "Look," I said, "we just need to be a little
>more careful."
>
>         I was feeling pretty bad by then, but I felt
>even worse when she glared at me and then softly, but
>ever so sarcastically, thanked me for putting her in
>harm's way.
>
>         On September 11, at around 6:00 a.m., I was
>jolted out of a pleasant slumber. It was my
>29-year-old stepdaughter, Kristi, on the phone,
>calling with the news that the World Trade Center had
>been hit. A few minutes later, Ida and I were sitting
>in front of the television, watching in horror as the
>second hijacked airliner crashed into the center's
>north tower. Then we saw the Pentagon in flames. "My
>God," I remember thinking, "I hope no Arabs did this."
>I also remember thinking about the last big terrorist
>attack this country went through, when, in 1995, a
>bomb went off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
>in Oklahoma City. That one killed 168 people. It also
>triggered a wave of violent incidents against Arabs
>that continued right up until the arrest of Timothy
>McVeigh. I must say, I was never so happy to see a
>blond-haired, blue-eyed man in the news as I was when
>I saw that guy. But now, of course, things would be
>different! .
>
>         As the country mobilized, federal officials
>quickly focused their attention on San Diego, since it
>was here that two of the identified hijackers-Nawaf
>Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdar-spent the better part of
>the previous year. These men were from Saudi Arabia
>and had initially landed in Los Angeles on tourist
>visas before coming to San Diego. Passing themselves
>off as students, they blended quite well into our
>Arab-American community. They prayed at our mosques,
>took a couple of flying lessons at a nearby airfield,
>and casually interacted with a lot of
>people-especially Muslims.
>
>         Before September 11, San Diego's Muslims had
>enjoyed good relations with law enforcement. But the
>country was now at war, and in war there's a natural
>tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, which
>made us feel particularly vulnerable to hate crimes.
>Meanwhile, back in the nation's capital, we started to
>hear some very ominous comments-especially from
>Attorney General John Ashcroft, who, for all his later
>denials, seemed to believe that due process was no
>longer an affordable option. As he observed at one
>point: "Our single objective is to prevent terrorist
>attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the
>streets."
>
>         My own involvement in all this began on
>September 16. That's when a friend from one of the
>local mosques asked me to speak to a man who needed
>some legal advice. The next day, at a local
>restaurant, I met with a soft-spoken, thirtysomething
>gentleman I'll call Omar. At first we made small talk.
>Then he turned quite grave. "I met [the two identified
>terrorists] Alhazmi and Almihdar at the mosque," he
>explained. "They said they were students, and they had
>very limited English skills. So, I offered to help
>them in various ways." This included translating a
>number of documents for them. It also included helping
>Alhazmi with a money transfer from the Middle East.
>"What should I do?" he asked me. I advised him to go
>straight to the FBI, explaining that if the feds
>traced the cash transfer back to him, he'd have a
>difficult time convincing anyone that he had been
>duped. I also offered to accompany him.
>
>         We ended up making two visits to the FBI's San
>Diego headquarters-the first on September 17, the
>second on the 21st. On both occasions we sat with two
>agents in a small room that had a video camera hanging
>from the ceiling. I thought the interviews went pretty
>well. Omar identified photographs and told the agents
>everything he knew about the alleged terrorists. He
>even provided them with documentation for the cash
>transaction. The agents thanked us profusely and, to
>my relief, never showed any inclination to take Omar
>into custody. I suppose that my involvement with the
>feds would have ended on a high note if it had ended
>there. But near the end of our second visit, I got a
>call on my cell phone.
>
>         I took the call out in the hallway. It was
>from another Muslim friend of mine who wanted me to
>meet with a man named Jamal Awadallah, who in turn had
>a brother named Osama who needed help. The story I
>subsequently heard from Jamal was rather confusing to
>me, but the gist of it was that Osama-a 21-year-old
>resident alien studying computer science at Grossmont
>College-had been arrested without any charges filed
>and was about to be shipped off to New York for at
>least a year. "How do you know that?" I asked Jamal.
>"Because," he answered, "that's what the FBI told
>him."
>
>         To make sense of the Constitution, the great
>Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was guided by what he called
>"the felt necessities of the times"-a notion that
>liberals in particular warm up to since it makes the
>Constitution a living document to advance the cause of
>social justice. This made all the difference in the
>world during the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
>But there have also been times when the necessities
>that were felt gave rein to some of the government's
>darkest impulses. The anticommunist witch-hunts of the
>1950s come immediately to mind. So does the internment
>of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World
>War II and the mass arrest and imprisonment of more
>than 4,000 so-called anarchists in 1920 without charge
>or recourse to counsel. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln
>suspended the writ of habeas corpus and convened
>military tribunals to try Southern sympathizers. And
>just seven years after ratification of the Bill of Ri!
>ghts, President John Adams signed into law the
>Sedition Act, which effectively made it a crime to
>criticize the government.
>
>         I don't doubt that men of good will were
>behind much of this sad history-men who in defense of
>their country felt the need to cut constitutional
>corners. But if, with the benefit of hindsight, their
>actions are judged to be reprehensible, it's only
>because they betrayed a lack of confidence in the very
>principles they were sworn to uphold. And this, I
>think, is how John Ashcroft will ultimately be judged
>for the rounding up of hundreds of Arab Muslim men
>without any apparent regard for their rights under our
>system of justice.
>
>         How did Ashcroft get away with it? In the most
>egregious cases the answer, interestingly enough, has
>to do with a radical reinterpretation of section 3144
>of title 18 of the United States Code, otherwise known
>as the material witness statute. The idea behind this
>procedural statute was simple enough. It was to give
>prosecutors the ability to hold witnesses for a
>reasonable period-just long enough to get them in
>front of a grand jury or deposition reporter-if deemed
>to be a flight risk. Under Ashcroft's new paradigm,
>though, reasonable was redefined as indefinite, and
>flight risk was any male with ties to the Middle East.
>And this apparently was how Osama Awadallah fell into
>Ashcroft's dragnet.
>
>         At about 6:30, on the evening of September 21,
>I arrived at San Diego's Metropolitan Correctional
>Center (MCC)-a high-rise just behind the city's
>superior court. I had never been inside a prison
>before. But even if I had, I doubt I could ever have
>imagined what was in store for me. At the front desk,
>I identified myself as Osama Awadallah's lawyer and
>asked to see him. The guard told me that no one by
>that name was in custody. "That can't be," I said. In
>fact, before leaving FBI headquarters with Omar, I had
>confirmed Osama's location with one of the agents.
>That didn't seem to impress the guard, though. He just
>gave me a blank stare.
>
>         With cell phone in hand I walked outside the
>facility and punched in the number that one of the FBI
>agents had given me. "What the hell's going on here?"
>I said when I got him on the line. "I brought you guys
>some good information. I expect some reciprocity." The
>agent apologized and said he'd make a few calls. I
>stood there waiting for more than an hour. Then a
>guard came to the prison door and motioned me back in.
>He provided no explanation, nor did I ask for one. I
>just went where he told me to go, which brought me to
>a third-floor glass-enclosed conference room, where a
>slight young man in a white jumpsuit sat slumped over
>a round table. "Who are you?" he asked in English as I
>sat in the chair facing him. "I'm Randy Hamud. I
>understand you need a lawyer." This seemed to have a
>calming effect on him, and he began to tell me his
>life story. I sat back and listened for a while,
>figuring that there'd be plenty of time for quest!
>ions later. But about 45 minutes into his discourse I
>happened to call him Osama, and it was enough to stop
>him cold.
>
>         "Osama," he said. "Who's Osama?"
>
>         "What do you mean, 'Who's Osama?' You're
>Osama. Aren't you?"
>
>         "No, I'm Mohdar. Mohdar Abdullah."
>
>         Mohdar was a 23-year-old ethnic Yemeni from
>Somalia who came to San Diego in 1998 as a Somali
>asylee. Like Osama, he too attended Grossmont College.
>He also held a full-time job as an assistant manager
>at the same Texaco station where one of the identified
>terrorists had worked. The FBI first questioned Mohdar
>on September 17. Four days later a young traditionally
>dressed Muslim woman was sitting in the passenger's
>seat of Mohdar's car. She was a friend of Mohdar's and
>had asked him for a ride to work. Ten minutes later,
>Mohdar pulled up to the front entrance of a Fry's
>electronics store. Then, from out of nowhere, a half
>dozen agents surrounded the car with their guns drawn.
>Mohdar's passenger fainted, and by the time she
>regained consciousness, Mohdar was gone.
>
>         Now, talking to this man who I thought was
>Osama, I felt a rush of paranoia coming on. Was I
>being set up? I wondered. After all, it's against the
>law to talk to prisoners with whom you don't have any
>official business. So I asked Mohdar if he needed a
>lawyer. Mohdar said that he did. In fact, he had
>repeatedly asked for one. I took out a pen and wrote
>out a retainer agreement for him to sign. Then I went
>back downstairs and once again asked for Osama.
>
>         "You were just speaking to him," the guard
>said.
>
>         "No, that was Mohdar Abdullah. You brought me
>the wrong guy."
>
>         This got the guard very agitated: "How did you
>get in there with him in the first place?"
>
>         "Look," I said, "I just went where you told me
>to go. Now can I see Awadallah?
>
>         "You're not seeing anyone else tonight," he
>growled. And with that he showed me the door.
>
>         When I returned to the prison the next day and
>finally met up with the real Osama, I found that his
>English was not nearly as good as Mohdar's. I also
>found Osama to be a very religious person. When he
>spoke, it was always "Allah this" and "Allah that."
>And, as far as I could tell, the most incriminating
>thing the government had on him had to do with a piece
>of paper that was found in a car at Dulles
>International Airport-the same car that Alhazmi and
>Almihdar used before boarding the plane that crashed
>into the Pentagon. The piece of paper had Osama's name
>and phone number on it. What the government seemed to
>ignore, though, was that at the time of the terrorist
>attacks the phone number on that piece of paper was an
>old one that Osama had not used for more than a year
>and a half.
>
>         Before the week was out, yet another
>incarcerated material witness became my client. That
>was Yazeed al-Salmi, a 23-year-old Saudi Arabian
>national who came here on a valid student visa and had
>the misfortune of briefly renting a room in the same
>boarding house that the terrorists were living in.
>
>         I knew by then that I needed help. So, on the
>evening of September 24 I sent an email over a chat
>line that reaches about 150 local lawyers. I described
>my situation and asked for assistance. I said I needed
>criminal and immigration expertise and hoped to
>organize a defense fund to pay their fees. I expected
>to get at least a dozen offers of assistance. Not a
>single offer came in. I realized then just how alone I
>was.
>
>         Meanwhile, the fear remained that at any
>moment my clients would be whisked off to New York by
>the feds-a concern that was only exacerbated on my
>third visit to the prison, when, in a rerun of what
>had happened on the 21st, the guards once again played
>dumb. "We don't know where your clients are," they
>said. This time, though, before my clients were
>miraculously "found," I let the FBI know how angry I
>was by peppering my language with a few choice
>expletives.
>
>         The next morning, I placed a call to the U.S.
>Attorney's office to see when and where my clients
>would be arraigned. An assistant U.S. Attorney told me
>that the arraignment would happen at 10:30. Then he
>called back and said it had been pushed back to 2:00
>p.m. Then 4:00. As he explained it, his office was
>still awaiting material witness arrest warrants from
>the district court of the Southern District of New
>York, where a grand jury had been empaneled to
>investigate the terrorist attacks. He also strongly
>advised me to keep my mouth shut. The New York court
>had issued a seal order on all related proceedings, he
>claimed.
>
>         "That may be so," I responded. "But I have yet
>to be served with such an order. And until I am, I'm
>keeping my options open."
>
>         With the benefit of hindsight, I realize now
>what a great-albeit unintended-favor that prosecutor
>did for me when he effectively put me on notice that a
>window of opportunity was about to be slammed shut and
>that if I had anything to gain by going public I had
>to act fast. And so by 3:30 that very afternoon, I was
>standing in front of the federal courthouse,
>surrounded by about 50 reporters and cameramen,
>drawing attention to the due process abuses. Of
>course, I was drawing attention to myself as
>well-which was driven home to me a few hours later
>when I received my first death threat.
>
>         Crisis, they say, makes for strange
>bedfellows. But crisis can also drive a wedge between
>even the closest of allies, and, to be blunt about it,
>I was disappointed with Ida. She kept telling me:
>"People don't care about the Constitution. They're
>angry, and as far as everyone is concerned, you're
>representing terrorists."
>
>         "I don't have any respect for cowardice under
>fire," I snapped back at her at one point.
>
>         The crisis also strained my relations with
>some of the more devout Muslim men in San Diego. It's
>not that I didn't respect their devotion. But neither
>Ida nor I ever accepted the way they segregate
>women-an aspect of today's resurgent fundamentalism
>that we hadn't grown up with.
>
>         I've also found that the devout can be
>incredibly impractical at times. For example, at a
>meeting, we would be discussing one thing or another,
>when five minutes before the designated prayer time
>they'd all get up and leave. "Hey," I'd say, "can't we
>finish this?" "Oh no," they'd answer. "Our prayers are
>more effective when they're said at exactly the right
>moment." It's ironic:
>         So much of the world views Muslims as
>dangerous radicals. But the most observant Muslims I
>know tend to be rather passive in nature, even
>ineffectual. And so when Alhazmi and Almihdar showed
>up in San Diego, they were like the proverbial wolves
>among sheep.
>
>         Of the 13 mosques in and around San Diego, the
>largest by far is Abu Bakr, also known as the Islamic
>Center of San Diego, a beautiful white-domed building
>north of downtown that draws about 1,400 worshipers
>each week. The mosque also runs a school for about 130
>children. On the day of the terrorist attacks, it
>became an obvious focal point for people's rage. Some
>made threatening phone calls, some drove by shouting
>obscenities, a few threw paint balls, and a small
>explosive device was detonated nearby.
>
>         The mosque responded to these threats by
>hiring an armed guard service to patrol the grounds 24
>hours a day. They also shut the school down for
>awhile. Then Ashcroft began his mass arrests-first
>200, then 400, then, before we knew it, we heard 1,200
>were secretly being held.
>
>         There's something rather curious about this
>material witness statute, though: To fall into its
>grip, you need to be cooperative enough to give the
>authorities some reason to believe that you have
>inside information, and cooperation was certainly
>something that my clients were guilty of. They tried
>to answer every question the FBI asked, and even
>allowed agents to search their homes and cars without
>the benefit of an attorney. Then they were arrested.
>If ever there was a way to deter cooperation from
>others, the FBI had found it.
>
>         When my clients' hearing finally got under way
>on September 25 (I had gotten a continuance because of
>the absence of interpreters), the government, as
>promised, presented the seal order from New York and
>moved to extend the seal to San Diego. I objected. So
>did an attorney for the San Diego Union Tribune. But
>the federal magistrate promptly granted the
>prosecutor's request, citing national security
>concerns. I was now officially gagged. But the gag did
>not apply to the four character witnesses whom I had
>called to testify. And they later gave the press
>plenty of details about how the proceeding dragged on
>for more than four-and-a-half hours and how my
>clients, charged with no crime, and showing no
>inclination to run, were still denied bail.
>
>         September 25 was the last day I saw my clients
>in San Diego. I had gotten to know each of them fairly
>well by then. Yazeed was the cool, calm one. Mohdar
>was more anxious and kept asking me the same questions
>over and over, never wanting me to leave. But it was
>Osama who seemed to have the most trouble adjusting to
>incarceration, and he was especially upset when the
>guards didn't respect the dietary restrictions that
>went with his faith.
>
>         I did what I could to help keep their spirits
>up. I told them that they had to look at this
>experience as a challenge that would make them better
>Muslims. I also impressed upon them the need to keep
>their bodies, as well as their minds, in shape. "I
>want you to be doing push-ups and sit-ups," I told
>them. Then, sometime between the 26th and the 27th,
>they vanished from MCC.
>
>         "If anyone has seen my clients, please tell me
>where they are," I told a group of reporters in front
>of the prison on the 27th. That was a Thursday.
>Finally, on Monday, I got a call from a prosecutor at
>the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan. "Your clients
>are scheduled to be arraigned in two hours," he told
>me. "Ah, excuse me," I said; I don't think I'll be
>able to make that. Any chance we could move it back a
>day?" He agreed to a 24-hour extension.
>
>         "Gee, these bastards really don't want me
>going to New York." That was my first thought when two
>FBI agents flashed their IDs at me at the San Diego
>Airport, just as I was about to board a red-eye.
>"What's up?" I asked as they motioned me over.
>
>         It turned out to be no big deal-just another
>instance of racial profiling, which by now had become
>the norm rather than the exception. In fact, one of
>the agents apologized for the inconvenience when he
>recognized me. But as we stood there chatting, I
>noticed that I was drawing some icy stares from the
>crowd. "Hey, can you guys do me a favor?" I said to
>the agents. "Can you just stick around and make sure I
>get on this flight?" I figured I might as well put
>them to work on my behalf.
>
>         I got into JFK at about 7:00 a.m. the next
>morning. There, I flagged a cab and met up with Abdeen
>Jabara-a local criminal lawyer who had been
>recommended to me through a mutual friend at the Arab
>American Institute in Washington, D.C. Together, we
>walked down strangely empty city streets to the
>federal courthouse on Pearl Street, about four blocks
>east of Ground Zero.
>
>         The October 2 hearing was originally sealed,
>but I'm now at liberty to talk about it as a result of
>a recent court order. I can describe, for example, how
>in the first few moments of that proceeding the judge
>made a tortured argument about how Jabara had a
>conflict of interest and then abruptly removed him
>from the courtroom, denying me the benefit of
>co-counsel. I can also describe how, a short time
>later, Osama tugged at my trousers and whispered to me
>that he had been beaten up by the guards. "Your
>honor," I said, "I would like to ask for a medical
>examination of my client." The judge stared down from
>his bench. "He looks okay to me," he said, adding,
>"Bring a lawsuit later if you want to."
>
>         After the day's proceedings, I checked into
>the nearby Soho Grand Hotel, where, from my room, I
>could see the smoke rising from Ground Zero. It was an
>eerie sight, especially at night when, with the klieg
>lights turned on, you could almost see the souls
>hovering above the rubble. As I said, I'm not a very
>religious person, but during the three weeks I spent
>in New York I often said a prayer for the victims of
>9/11 before going to sleep.
>
>         As for Osama, Mohdar, and Yazeed, they slept
>at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in South
>Manhattan, a high-security facility that makes San
>Diego's MCC look like a Hilton. Most striking to me
>was how cold it was in there, like a meat locker. And
>while the guards bundled up in warm jackets, the
>prisoners were given only thin orange jumpsuits to
>wear with no undershirts. Often, when my clients were
>brought to me, they shivered so hard that their chains
>rattled.
>
>         When I visited the facility, the guards put me
>in a small steel room beneath a cold air vent, which
>gave me a feel for what it was like to be their
>prisoner. On one occasion, in fact, they made me wait
>four hours in there without access to a restroom.
>
>         My clients were kept on the ninth floor in a
>maximum-security unit reserved for the most hardened
>criminals. There even the most basic of privileges
>were denied them. They got no family visits, no mail,
>no television, no writing material, and no reading
>material other than the Quran. My clients were also
>subjected to videotaped strip searches at least three
>times a week. And they met with constant verbal abuse
>from the guards. "Fucking terrorists," is how the
>guards often addressed them.
>
>         I first visited the facility on October 3. But
>it wasn't until the 4th, when Osama was wearing a
>short-sleeved pullover top instead of the usual
>long-sleeved jumpsuit, that I actually saw the bruises
>on his body. We were in a conference room in the U.S.
>Attorney's office on the fifth floor of the federal
>courthouse. Several FBI agents and assistant U.S.
>Attorneys were present, along with my new local
>counsel, Jesse Berman, a noted criminal defense
>attorney. As I could see then, Osama had a bruise that
>ran across the back of his neck, where he claimed a
>guard had hit him. Other bruises circumscribed his
>upper arms. On his ankles and wrists I observed welts
>and healing cuts, which he said he suffered when the
>guards had pulled or stepped on his shackles.
>
>         I went ballistic-especially after one of the
>prosecutors looked me straight in the eye and actually
>had the audacity to accuse Osama of inflicting wounds
>on himself. "I don't think so," I said. I then
>suggested to the prosecutor that he ought to check
>himself into MCC for awhile and see how long he'd last
>in that dungeon. "I'll even go with you," I added.
>"I'd like nothing better than to put you in there," he
>smiled.
>
>         I gave the U.S. Attorney's office 24 hours to
>get my clients out of that god-awful place. And when
>nothing happened, I called every news organization I
>could think of and told them how my clients were being
>brutalized. The story ran nationally, and soon after
>that the guards backed off on the physical abuse. They
>even brought in a doctor to examine Osama. Meanwhile,
>my own visibility was ratcheted up a few more notches.
>
>         Unnamed government sources would later say
>that I was a shameless media hound. But given how
>often the government was leaking half-truths,
>distortions, and lies about my clients, I felt that I
>was simply fighting fire with fire. I also felt that I
>was standing up for the Constitution. I appeared on
>ABC, CBS, and CNN. And on Court TV I debated Alan
>Dershowitz.
>
>         Dershowitz, I thought, was on an especially
>odd wicket. For here was one of the country's leading
>progressives saying on national television that to
>save lives judges should be willing to issue torture
>orders to extract information from suspects. I wasn't
>very impressed with his logic. And on the program, I
>reminded him of a recent Washington Post article in
>which former FBI counterintelligence chief Robert
>Blitzer forcefully argued against the torture of
>prisoners-purely on pragmatic grounds. It simply
>wasn't a very effective way to elicit truthful
>information, Blitzer said. I also asked Dershowitz to
>think about the international implications of what he
>was suggesting: "What do we say to China if we start
>torturing people here under any rationale?"
>
>         On October 15, the Wall Street Journal ran a
>feature about me headlined: "Muslim Lawyer Terms FBI
>Probe Discriminatory." Also, that same day, I got a
>call from Mike Wallace. Wallace, who is 83 but still
>walks with the brisk gait of a 25-year-old, greeted me
>at his Manhattan office along with two 60 Minutes
>producers. They were planning a segment on the
>so-called Patriot Act that had just passed through
>Congress, and he wanted to put me on with Russ
>Feingold (D-Wis.)-the only U.S. senator who had voted
>against it. My conversation with Wallace lasted about
>an hour. Then, for the next evening, he invited me to
>dinner.
>
>         He took me to an elegant Italian restaurant on
>Park Avenue, where we were joined by Jim Greenfield of
>the New York Times, who had edited the Pentagon
>Papers, and a prominent physician, Carmel Cohen, and
>his wife, Babbette. Through two hours of animated
>discussion, it seemed that we solved just about all of
>the world's problems, although at one point I suppose
>I did engender a certain amount of discomfort when I
>suggested that if Ashcroft's persecution of Arabs was
>allowed to continue, the Jews would undoubtedly be
>next. "No," Dr. Cohen responded, "I don't think so.
>Jews have become too successful in this country for
>that to happen." I knew I was on thin ice. After all,
>I was the only non-Jewish person at the table. But I
>couldn't help thinking how similar Dr. Cohen's views
>were to the sentiments of so many Jews who lived in
>Weimar Germany-say around 1928.
>
>         The 60 Minutes segment taping was scheduled
>for the morning of October 19. But before that
>happened, I went through one of the most nightmarish
>experiences of my life. I was at MCC again, on the
>ninth-floor landing just outside the unit where my
>clients were housed. As on my previous visits, I
>walked over to the phone next to the sealed security
>door. I never had to say anything. All I had to do was
>pick up the phone and put it down, which signaled
>someone inside to let me in. But on this particular
>day, when I put the phone down, it started ringing.
>This hadn't happened before. From the top of the
>landing, I looked down at the guard's desk one floor
>below and asked what I should do. "Pick it up," one of
>the guards said. But as soon as I did, a stream of
>invective came through. "Who the fuck is ringing my
>bell?" the man on the other end said. I hung up. The
>guards below asked what happened. I told them. The
>phone rang ag! ain. I looked back down at the guards.
>They motioned me to answer it. I did. The same voice
>again screamed into my ear, "Who the fuck is ringing
>my bell? Quit ringing my bell!" I hung up. Then a
>female guard walked up the stairs and stood next to me
>on the landing. The phone rang a third time. "Pick it
>up," she said. I picked it up. Then all of sudden, the
>steel door flew open, and I found myself face to face
>with a very large, angry man.
>
>         "Why the fuck are you ringing my bell?" he
>wanted to know.
>
>         "I'm here to see my clients," I stammered.
>
>         "Listen," he said, "you don't understand. This
>is my house! And when you're in my house you do what
>the fuck I say."
>
>         "I have to see my clients."
>
>         He studied me for a moment. "You know," he
>said, "you look intoxicated."
>
>         "I'm not intoxicated. I just came from the
>federal court."
>
>         "Well, you look intoxicated to me. Get the
>fuck off my floor." Then three other large men
>suddenly materialized, and together they escorted me
>back to the elevator. I feared the worst: that they
>were going to beat me up or drug me or something.
>Instead, they left me in a locker area near the ground
>floor front entrance and told me to wait for
>questioning. Terrified, I slipped my business card to
>another lawyer who happened to be entering the prison.
>I told him to call Jesse Berman if anything happened
>to me. Then I retrieved my cell phone from one of the
>lockers and called Jesse myself. "Jesse," I said, "I'm
>here at MCC, and the guards are messing with me. I
>think I may be in danger."
>
>         "Just get the hell out of there," he advised.
>
>         A few minutes later another guard approached
>me. "Look," I said, "if I'm not the fuck out of here
>in five minutes the cavalry is coming. Do you
>understand? Just give me my ID and let me the fuck out
>of here!" They decided to oblige.
>
>         When I walked back to the hotel I had the
>doorman confirm that I was stone-cold sober, just in
>case I needed a witness. Then I tried to get some
>sleep but wasn't very successful. Nor was I much
>calmer the next morning at the CBS studios when I
>tried to describe to the 60 Minutes producers what had
>happened to me. Finally, Wallace himself came down.
>"Randy," he said, with that famous clipped delivery of
>his, "you're absolutely right. What happened to you
>last night shouldn't have happened in America. No
>doubt about it. But Randy, listen, we're going to be
>taping in a few minutes, and you've got to calm down.
>You must calm down. Because the last thing we want to
>do right now is put a fired-up Arab on television." I
>had to laugh.
>
>         By late October, Yazeed had been set free
>after testifying before a grand jury. In a terse
>statement, the Justice Department simply said that
>Yazeed had been fully cooperative and was no longer
>under suspicion. That was the closest they came to an
>apology. But Osama and Mohdar weren't so lucky. On
>October 19, Osama was charged with two counts of lying
>to the grand jury on incidental matters unrelated
>         to the terrorist attacks. Then, on October 24,
>Mohdar was charged with making false statements on a
>visa application. Osama remained in New York. Mohdar
>was flown back to San Diego where his indictment was
>issued.
>
>         By then I had recruited Kerry Steigerwalt, a
>highly respected criminal defense lawyer, to represent
>Mohdar in San Diego. I also redoubled my efforts to
>enlist the support of the Muslim community. The
>mosques had committed to pay my New York expenses. But
>their fund-raising efforts had fallen short because of
>thousands of dollars in checks I had to write to New
>York counsel. When I returned from New York I was in
>the hole by about $5,000. It wasn't just about money,
>though.
>
>         On the evening of November 19, the second day
>of Ramadan, I went to the mosque that my clients
>usually prayed at-the Al-Rabat mosque in La Mesa-to
>try and get people to come down to the court and
>testify on Mohdar's behalf for a second bail hearing.
>Unlike the first hearing, this one would be held in
>open court, which was enough to convince my original
>four character witnesses not to testify. And this
>meant I had to start from scratch. I prayed all eight
>Ramadan prayers with the congregation. Then I asked
>for permission to speak. "We have a very worldly
>problem," I said. "One of our Muslim brothers, Mohdar
>Abdullah, is in jail downtown. He has nothing to do
>with terrorism. A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow
>morning. I know this has been a very trying time for
>all of us, but a good Muslim is only afraid of Allah,
>not anyone else. We have to unite and help that boy.
>I'm asking you to look deep into your consciences, and
>for thos! e of you who know Mohdar please come to the
>court tomorrow and tell the judge what a good man he
>is. And if you don't know him, come anyway to show
>solidarity."
>
>         There were about 300 worshippers in the room
>that night, but the next morning only about 15 came to
>the court, and only 4 of those knew Mohdar well enough
>to testify. I suppose it could have been worse, and
>with those few arrows in our quiver we managed to get
>the feds to agree to a reduction of the proposed bail
>from $2 million to $500,000 in both cash and security.
>Of course, that was still a ridiculously large amount.
>
>         Meanwhile, back in New York, Osama's bail was
>also set at half a million, although the judge now
>presiding in the case did have the decency to declare
>in open court that Osama was not a suspected
>terrorist. She also stipulated that he only had to pay
>10 percent of the bail in cash, which amounted to
>$50,000-something I thought we could easily raise. I
>was wrong. People were just too afraid in the current
>environment to be identified as contributors.
>
>         But one day Ida and I were having lunch at a
>local grille, and the most amazing thing happened. She
>had calmed down quite a bit by then, if only because,
>after three months, none of us had been shot at. "I
>still think what you're doing is not worth the
>effort," she said to me again. "And when people look
>back on this, they won't say Randy Hamud saved the
>Constitution; they'll say he represented terrorists.
>But we can't," she added, "let Osama stay in that
>horrible place any longer."
>
>         I studied her for a moment.
>
>         "How much up-front cash will it take to free
>him?" she asked.
>
>         "Well," I said, "the total is $50,000. Osama's
>brother told me he's raised $2,500. That leaves
>$47,500."
>
>         "I'll just write a check on my equity line."
>
>         I sat there stunned.
>
>         "Why do you want to do this?" I asked.
>
>         "I'm just so sick of seeing Ashcroft in the
>news every day, throwing out all this bullshit about
>how rights aren't being violated. And I can't stand
>how wimpy all these Muslim men are. They'll segregate
>me and tell me how to dress, but they don't even have
>the guts to write a check."
>
>         A week later Osama called Ida from his
>brother's house in San Diego. "I will say a special
>prayer for you every day," he told her. When Ida got
>off the phone, I noticed that she was more than a
>little misty-eyed.
>
>         "You see," I said. "I told you he was a good
>boy."
>
>         Randall B. Hamud is a sole practitioner living
>in San Diego.
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
>http://launch.yahoo.com
>
>------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
>Take the Yahoo! Groups survey for a chance to win $1,000.
>Your opinion is very important to us!
>http://us.click.yahoo.com/NOFBfD/uAJEAA/Ey.GAA/W_EolB/TM
>---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>




_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

Reply via email to