Dearborn Hezbo Supporter Get Jail, Stern Talking To

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.