Here’s another lesson on how not to fight terrorism.
A Ford Motor Company engineer who was caught trying to smuggle $120,000 worth of high-tech equipment to Hezbollah was sentenced Friday to 10 years by a federal judge in Detroit.
According to the Department of Justice, Fawzi Mustapha Assi was the first person ever charged under the 1996 federal antiterrorism law that makes it illegal to provide material support to terrorist organizations.
Assi was first arrested at Metro Airport as he was headed for Lebanon on a one-way ticket on July 13, 1998, with luggage packed with high-tech military-use equipment.
Yes, that was 1998. More than ten years ago. He admitted to agents he was smuggling, described his Hezbollah contacts, and was indicted and headed for trial soon after when a federal judge, (Denise Page Hood), decided to release him on bond, with an electronic tether.
According to Debbie Schlussel, Judge Hood made this decision over objections from federal prosecutors.
Assi, who is after all an engineer, slipped his tether. And, reportedly, (he is after all a Hezbollah supporter) dressed up in a niqab, and made it to Canada and escaped to Lebanon.
In 2004, under extremely suspicious circumstances, Assi “voluntarily” decided to return to the U.S. to face trial. Still, he didn’t plead guilty until November 2007, at which time he admitted he was trying to supply Hezbollah.
For reasons unclear to us at DU, Assi was not charged with violating his bond, fleeing U.S jurisdiction, or with any other crime related to his absconding. Detroit News reporter Paul Egan steps gingerly around all this in his article, saying Assi “was charged with providing support to terrorists in 1998 and pleaded guilty last year, [and] has been in custody since May 2004 and will receive credit for the time he has served.”
Under his original charge, Assi faced up to 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen sentenced him to only ten years, including time served, and, apparently, no fine.
But, for the admitted terror supporter, smuggler, and fugitive, who as recently as June was telling Rosen he couldn’t give him a fair sentence because the judge (who is Jewish) is a “Zionist,” Rosen made this blistering statement (warning to delicate sensibilities: “You allowed the depth of your feeling for what was happening in your homeland to overcome your judgment. These were serious misjudgments.”
I’ve had traffic cops speak to me more harshly than that.
“Serious misjudgments”? How about, “these were serious crimes”??
Anyway, the fact that Assi was the first person charged under our antiterror statute, we let him run off, and then after all this time he only gets the minimum sentence--and practically an apology from the court--says something about some serious misjudgments about terrorism.
Showing posts with label Fawzi Mustapha Assi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fawzi Mustapha Assi. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Monday, November 26, 2007
Fighting Terror Is Not the Same as Fighting Crime
Here's an excerpt from an interesting piece in last Friday’s Detroit News:
Dearborn man accused of providing support to Hezbollah
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- A Dearborn man who has spent three years behind bars awaiting trial is expected to plead guilty in federal court Dec. 6 to providing support to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Fawzi Mustapha Assi, 47, was stopped in 1998 while attempting to depart from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with global positioning equipment, night vision goggles and a thermal-imaging camera.
The former Ford Motor Co. engineer was released on an electronic tether soon after his arrest and fled to Lebanon. He returned to the United States and surrendered in 2004.
Assi was the first person indicted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law that made it illegal to knowingly provide money or materials to terrorists. The U.S. State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist group in 1997.
Those who follow the Detroit-Dearborn are already aware that in most instances of criminal charges or investigations of people suspected of assisting terrorism, the favored beneficiary is almost always Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is very popular amongst the Lebanese Shia population of Dearborn. We have seen Hezbollah's supporters demonstrating openly, and vocally, in support of the Army of Allah. During one demonstration last summer thousands of Dearborn residents loudly declared Hezbollah Big Cheese Sheikh HassanNasrallah to be “Our leader!”
We've also seen a heap of examples of criminal activity intended to benefit Hezbollah, from fraudulent FBI and CIA agents, to marriage fraud, bribes paid to ICE officials, a local resident running around Hemlock Park with an AK-47, tax evasion, flight from prosecution, money laundering, mortgage fraud, and cigarette smuggling.
There are people who believe that the “so-called” war on terror is either completely non-existent, or, at best, exaggerated.
It can’t be a war, they say, because the people attacking us are not nation-states, the way Japan and Germany were in 1941.
Therefore, every act of terrorism can only be investigated and prosecuted as an individual criminal act, without regard to all the connected dots that lead to highly organized, and extremely dangerous terrorist organizations and paramilitary groups, nor to the states behind them, e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Iran.
This rule about only going to war against nation-states seems awfully arbitrary to me.
In human history, the rise of the nation-state is fairly recent, while warfare goes all the way back. If you’ve got an army, weapons, and a will to make war on someone, then it seems right to me that that someone has a right to make war in self-defense. Whether your defending your tribe, your extended family, your kingdom, your city-state, your right to self-defense should be the same.
By the same token, those who support armies that are sworn to make war on us aren’t merely criminals. They are themselves national enemies, because they have made common cause with our country's enemies. They aren't committing their crimes to get rich, but to assist a foreign army to destroy its foes--whether the foe is our ally, Israel, or us.
Which is why money laundering for Hezbollah, or cheating on your taxes to give the proceeds to Hezbollah, or smuggling cigarettes to earn money for Hezbollah, while they are still only criminal acts, are very similar to treason, or acts of war.
Dearborn man accused of providing support to Hezbollah
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- A Dearborn man who has spent three years behind bars awaiting trial is expected to plead guilty in federal court Dec. 6 to providing support to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Fawzi Mustapha Assi, 47, was stopped in 1998 while attempting to depart from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with global positioning equipment, night vision goggles and a thermal-imaging camera.
The former Ford Motor Co. engineer was released on an electronic tether soon after his arrest and fled to Lebanon. He returned to the United States and surrendered in 2004.
Assi was the first person indicted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law that made it illegal to knowingly provide money or materials to terrorists. The U.S. State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist group in 1997.
Those who follow the Detroit-Dearborn are already aware that in most instances of criminal charges or investigations of people suspected of assisting terrorism, the favored beneficiary is almost always Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is very popular amongst the Lebanese Shia population of Dearborn. We have seen Hezbollah's supporters demonstrating openly, and vocally, in support of the Army of Allah. During one demonstration last summer thousands of Dearborn residents loudly declared Hezbollah Big Cheese Sheikh HassanNasrallah to be “Our leader!”
We've also seen a heap of examples of criminal activity intended to benefit Hezbollah, from fraudulent FBI and CIA agents, to marriage fraud, bribes paid to ICE officials, a local resident running around Hemlock Park with an AK-47, tax evasion, flight from prosecution, money laundering, mortgage fraud, and cigarette smuggling.
There are people who believe that the “so-called” war on terror is either completely non-existent, or, at best, exaggerated.
It can’t be a war, they say, because the people attacking us are not nation-states, the way Japan and Germany were in 1941.
Therefore, every act of terrorism can only be investigated and prosecuted as an individual criminal act, without regard to all the connected dots that lead to highly organized, and extremely dangerous terrorist organizations and paramilitary groups, nor to the states behind them, e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Iran.
This rule about only going to war against nation-states seems awfully arbitrary to me.
In human history, the rise of the nation-state is fairly recent, while warfare goes all the way back. If you’ve got an army, weapons, and a will to make war on someone, then it seems right to me that that someone has a right to make war in self-defense. Whether your defending your tribe, your extended family, your kingdom, your city-state, your right to self-defense should be the same.
By the same token, those who support armies that are sworn to make war on us aren’t merely criminals. They are themselves national enemies, because they have made common cause with our country's enemies. They aren't committing their crimes to get rich, but to assist a foreign army to destroy its foes--whether the foe is our ally, Israel, or us.
Which is why money laundering for Hezbollah, or cheating on your taxes to give the proceeds to Hezbollah, or smuggling cigarettes to earn money for Hezbollah, while they are still only criminal acts, are very similar to treason, or acts of war.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
