The LWOT: Mohamud arrest sparks debate on entrapment; terrorist-linked passport forging ring broken up

Mohamud arrest continues to raise questions about stings

After the arrest last week of Mohammed Osman Mohamud in Oregon, experts and commentators continue to question the FBI’s use of sting operations to arrest terrorism suspects, who are often caught as part of plots shaped and heavily assisted by federal agents and informants (Washington Post).These operations are time and resource-intensive, and concerns that authorities are manufacturing plots and targeting Muslims could strain the relationship between local and federal authorities and Muslim communities (NYT, Guardian).

Mohamud’s lawyers have stated their intention to argue that their client was entrapped, though no one has argued a successful entrapment defense in a terrorism case since 9/11 (NYT, WSJ, NPR, NYT).Mohamud’s lawyers have also filed a court order requesting that the FBI’s tapes and recording equipment be preserved, in light of a malfunction that ruined the crucial recording of a July 30 meeting between undercover agents and Mohamud (OregonLive.com).Friends and community members continued to express disbelief at Mohamud’s alleged attack planning, as news emerged that Mohamud was investigated for a drunken sexual assault last year at Oregon State University, where he was a student at the time (NPR, CBS).

In a speech Dec. 1 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Director Michael Leiter highlighted the dramatically accelerated danger from homegrown terrorists, and warned that a successful attack in the near future was likely (ABC, CNN). Still, he cautioned that in the face of this threat, or that posed by al Qaeda linked groups (Telegraph):

We should not assume that the terrorists are ten feet tall. The fact that they get through at times in a relatively free and open society does not mean that they are all-powerful. We have to be taller than them. We have to be more resilient than them.

Authorities break up forging ring linked to al Qaeda

Authorities in Spain and Thailand have arrested 10 men, seven in Spain and three in Thailand, who allegedly formed an "important" passport theft and forging ring connected to al Qaeda, the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba group, and the Tamil Tigers (AFP, BBC, AJE). According to police, the ring, reportedly led out of Thailand by Pakistani national Muhammad Athar Butt, stole passports in Barcelona before sending them to Thailand, where they were altered and then passed to terrorist groups (NYT, Telegraph). 

The U.S. Treasury Department on Dec. 2 designated as terrorists three Pakistanis wanted by Pakistani authorities for involvement with the militant groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (CNN, Treasury).The militants are LeJ senior leader Amanullah Afridi and chief operational commander Mati ur-Rehman, and JEM leader Abdul Rauf Azhar.

Wikileaks reveal new Gitmo details

Wikileaks documents continue to reveal new details surrounding the efforts to repatriate Guantánamo Bay detainees and investigate Bush-era abuses and renditions; one cable shows concern among U.S. officials in Spain over investigations into "extraordinary rendition" flights that may have passed through the country, as well as Spanish anti-terrorism judge Balthazar Garzón’s investigations into detainee treatment (Guardian, Guardian). Others detail Britain’s refusal to take in additional detainees in February 2009; European concerns of Chinese pressure not to take Uighur detainees; and American efforts to praise Belgium in the hopes of securing an agreement on the country taking more detainees (Guardian, Guardian, Guardian).

The leaks also detail a February 2009 meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, in which Kouchner asked Clinton to intervene to considering freeing detainee Omar Khadr, who was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15, and in October pled guilty to the killing of a U.S. Special Forces soldier during the fight (Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun).  The cable also quotes Clinton describing Guantánamo as a "cancer" during the meeting.

A Washington court has granted a Gitmo detainee who has been on a five-year hunger strike, Abdul Rahman Shalabi, access to outside doctors who will evaluate his condition and help with his treatment (AP). Carol Rosenberg this week discusses improvements in the camp’s once-dreaded Cell Block 6, which now has big screen TV’s and a relaxed atmosphere, where more than half of the base’s remaining 174 detainees live (Miami Herald).And the Columbia Journalism Review this week profiles Rosenberg’s coverage of the prison since 2002, noting (CJR):

As much as any single person, she has been the keeper of the record of what has been one of the most controversial chapters in America’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11: the government’s experiment in detention-without-trial for the hundreds of men scooped up around the world for their alleged connections to al-Qaeda and other U.S. enemies.

Trials and Tribulations

• Documents released as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union show that certain legal limits on the surveillance of Americans were violated inadvertently during wiretap investigations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that violations continued to occur as of March 2009 (Washington Post).
• A British man currently serving a life sentence for membership in al Qaeda and running a terrorist cell, Rangzieb Ahmed, is appealing his conviction on the grounds that British agents were allegedly complicit in his torture at the hands of Pakistani intelligence (BBC, AJE, Guardian). The case has already caused controversy over government attempts to have some arguments heard in closed, secret court sessions.
• Transportation Safety Administration chief John Pistole announced Nov. 30 that all air passengers traveling in the United States will be screened against a terrorism watch list maintained by the FBI (Washington Post).
• Mohammed Wali Zazi, the father of New York Subway bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi, faces eight new charges in his son’s case, including obstruction of justice and witness tampering (WSJ).
• EU Counterterrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told representatives of the bloc’s countries in a meeting Dec. 2 that the organization must spend more on counterterrorism assistance, and take strides to deal with Europeans traveling to war zones to fight and train with militant groups (Reuters). And German officials are questioning the reliability of an informant whose information about "hit teams" dispatched to Germany prompted the country’s recent – and ongoing – heightened terror alert level (WSJ).
• A Saudi former Gitmo detainee, alum of the Saudi extremist rehabilitation program, and member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Mohammed al-Awfi, appeared this week on Yemeni television to urge others to give up violence and seek "the right track" (AFP).And the Wall Street Journal reports that despite progress combating terrorist financing, Saudi Arabia is "almost completely dependent" on U.S. intelligence and advice, according to a State Department cable from this past February (WSJ).
• Nearly seven months after his arrest in Chile at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, authorities there decided not to press charges against a Pakistani man they initially thought had explosive residue on his person (AFP).