The LWOT: Khalden trainer gets 34 months; Government invokes state secrets in controversial case

Khalden trainer to serve 34 months

The Department of Defense announced last Friday that in keeping with a secret plea deal, Noor Uthman Muhammed, who pled guilty at Guantánamo Bay last Tuesday to being an instructor at the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan during the 1990s, will serve 34 months in confinement in exchange for testimony at future military trials and in federal court (CNN, Miami Herald, Esquire). A military jury sentenced Muhammed to the maximum 14 years in confinement, a sentence superseded by the plea deal.

The Afghanistan High Peace Council, the body appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to promote reconciliation between senior Taliban members and the Afghan government, will reportedly travel to Guantánamo to seek the release of several former high-ranking Taliban officials held at the prison (AP). Bonus: New America Foundation President Steve Coll has reported for the first time that the United States is in direct, informal talks with the Taliban (New Yorker).

A federal judge earlier this month denied the habeas petition for a Yemeni Guantánamo detainee, Mashour Abdullah Muqbel Alsabri, who the Pentagon claims fought with al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002 (AP, Lawfare Blog).

And the Supreme Court on Friday received the final submission in the case of five Uighur Muslim Guantánamo detainees who have been cleared for release from the prison, but want to be released into the United States (SCOTUS Blog, LAT). The brief, in a case known informally as "Kiyemba III" argues that lower court rulings forbidding the transfer of prisoners to the United States usurped the court’s ruling granting Gitmo detainees habeas rights, and that as a result the court does not in practice have the power to order a detainee freed from the prison.

Government invokes state secrets in controversial case

In a must-read story this week, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen report on the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege in an attempt to prevent disclosure of information on a former government contractor who claimed to have developed software that could identify terrorists and decipher coded messages in Al Jazeera broadcasts (NYT). The software’s conclusions led to several false terrorism alerts, yet the company continued to receive millions of dollars in contracts from the military Special Operations Command, the Air Force, and the CIA years after officials suspected the product was a hoax:

Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.

Mr. Montgomery’s former lawyer, Michael Flynn – who now describes Mr. Montgomery as a "con man" – says he believes that the administration has been shutting off scrutiny of Mr. Montgomery’s business for fear of revealing that the government has been duped.

Supreme Court to hear challenge to material witness statute

On Mar. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Abdullah al-Kidd, who is suing former Attorney General John Ashcroft over al-Kidd’s 16-day detention under harsh conditions in 2003 under the material witness statute (NYT). While the material witness statute allows for the detention without charge of individuals deemed necessary for a prosecution, al-Kidd claims that his detention was preventive and unrelated to the material witness statute, but was rather an excuse to investigate al-Kidd on suspicion of terrorism.

Lawyers for Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts man accused of plotting to provide material support to al Qaeda and to attack a judge and a shopping mall, have filed another request for bail for their client while he awaits trial (AP). And New America Foundation counterterrorism fellow Brian Fishman today analyzes the upcoming hearings into Muslim radicalization to take place before Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) Homeland Security Committee (LAT):

The challenge now is to design a serious hearing that advances Congress’ understanding of the threat, provides a basis for more effective counter-terrorism policy and establishes a narrative to counter Al Qaeda’s propaganda. Unfortunately, early indications suggest that the hearing is instead shaping up to be a politicized circus.

Britain missed chance to ID 7/7 bombers

The inquest into the 7/7 London transit bombings heard evidence Feb. 21 that British authorities had a covert surveillance picture showing two 7/7 plotters, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, a year before the bombings, but cropped the photos to the point that they were unrecognizable before sending them for identification to an imprisoned terrorist in the United States, Mohammed Junaid Babar (Guardian, Telegraph). Babar helped set up a training camp where Khan trained, and identified him in photographs showed to him after the bombings. The photo was taken in a service station as Khan and Tanweer returned from a meeting with Omar Khyam, the ringleader of a plot to set off fertilizer bombs in London disrupted in 2004.

And two convicted British terrorists involved in major investigations, Kamel Bourgass and Tanvir Hussain, have lost a bid in a British court to reverse their segregation from other prisoners, after claims that the men tried to intimidate and convert prisoners to Islam (BBC).

Trials and Tribulations

• An Indian court affirmed Feb. 21 the death sentence for Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people in the heart of India’s financial capital (AP).
• Reps. Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Steve Israel (D-NY) have reportedly placed language into a bill in the House of Representatives that would avoid cuts and could even raise anti-terrorism funding to New York City, while funding is cut to dozens of other cities (WSJ).
• A man acquitted in the "Liberty Seven" terrorism plot, Lyglenson Lemorin, has been told by a federal judge that he cannot return to the United States from Haiti, where he was deported last month (Miami Herald).
• Several senior former government officials have called on Secretary of State Hillary of Clinton to remove the Iranian organization Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) from the list of banned terrorist organizations, in the hopes of raising pressure against the Iranian regime (AP).
• Three tourists were shot dead by Islamic militants in the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria this weekend, the latest in a string of attacks in the restive North Caucacus region (Guardian).
• The Canadian Press reports this week on the troubled mental history of Roger Stockham, arrested for attempting to attack a mosque in Dearborn, MI last month (Canadian Press).
• Justin Elliot this weekend looked at the continued media silence over an attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, WA last month, narrowly averted when city workers discovered the bomb (Salon).