al-Qaeda beats the system

This is a post I wrote for the Red County National page and was their featured article earlier this afternoon. It's a reversal because generally my RC pieces start here and then go to that site. But I was asked to take on more reporterly assignments for the RC site and this is my first.

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In case you missed it, last Thursday a federal judge reduced the sentence of an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and enabled him to be freed-- in just five years.

Disdaining a maximum fifteen-year sentence, U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm, a Reagan appointee who recently announced his retirement upon confirmation of a successor, sentenced Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri to eight years and four months in prison. al-Marri's legal team pled for a shorter sentence based on time served as an enemy combatant before his case was shifted from the military justice system to a civilian court in February, shortly after President Obama took office.

The defendant, a citizen of both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, was taken into military custody in June 2003 after the Bush Administration reviewed his case and determined he was an enemy combatant. While al-Marri's legal team maintained he had the right to habeas corpus in 2004, the request was denied because of his non-citizen status and al-Marri remained in military prison. Once his case was moved to an Illinois federal court earlier this year, al-Marri pled guilty to one count of conspiring to provide support to terrorists, which carries the maximum penalty of fifteen years in prison.

Al-Marri, who graduated from Bradley University in 1991, purportedly returned to the United States with his wife and five children on September 10, 2001 to pursue graduate studies at the school, but in fact he rarely attended classes. He was first detained shortly after the September 11 attacks, and FBI agents found links on his laptop computer to sites of distributors of hydrogen cyanide, programs for computer hacking software and “proxy” software, as well. They also found dozens of bogus credit card numbers listed in al-Marri's laptop case.

It was deemed that possible targets he had in his sights included a number of dams and reservoirs, apparently part of an abortive plot to poison a domestic water supply.

Phone records acquired as part of the al-Marri investigation also reveal a number of calls placed to Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, a leading financier of al-Qaeda, at a phone number based in the United Arab Emirates. It's also alleged that al-Marri used an alias and dummy company to falsify credit card transactions during an earlier visit to the United States in 2000.

Yet despite the strong evidence that al-Marri was a “continuing grave threat” as an al-Qaeda operative, Judge Mihm reduced his sentence based on time already served. Worse, he credited al-Marri nine months for time served in military custody, in what his defense attorneys argued were “harsh” conditions!

While Judge Mihm may have been swayed by al-Marri's tearful defense testimony where he claimed he “was glad I have no blood on my hand," make no mistake: al Marri was an al Qaeda sleeper dedicated to doing great harm to America. Witness this statement from a now-unclassified declaration by Jeffery N. Rapp, Director of the Joint Intelligence Task Force on Combating Terrorism:

“Multiple intelligence sources confirm that Al-Marri is an al Qaeda “sleeper” agent sent to the United States for the purpose of engaging in and facilitating terrorist activities subsequent to September 11, 2001, and exploring ways to hack into the computer systems of U.S. banks and otherwise disrupt the U.S. financial system. Prior to arriving in the United States on September 10, 2001, Al-Marri was trained at an al Qaeda terror camp. He met personally with Osama Bin Laden (Bin Laden) and other known al Qaeda members and volunteered for a martyr mission or to do anything else that al Qaeda requested. Al-Marri was assisted in his al Qaeda assignment to the United States by known al Qaeda members and travelled to the United States with money provided for him by al Qaeda. Al-Marri currently possesses information of high intelligence value, including information about personnel and activities of Al Qaeda.

Yet this reality didn't faze Judge Mihm: “My personal belief as a judge is that (treatment) was totally unacceptable. That's not who we are,” he remarked.

The lenient sentence for al-Marri rightly worries domestic security advocates who already question the wisdom of trying detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts. Mihm's light sentence and his consideration of time served under military custody could set a precedent for future trials of the more than 200 detainees presently held in Cuba.

Thus, in just over five years, a known al-Qaeda operative will be free to return to his homeland and hatch more terrorist plots against America and her allies. With national security still in peril by those allied with al-Qaeda, punishment meted out off the battlefield isn't proving to be a strong deterrent against recruiting America-hating terrorists either overseas or domestically.

The sentence also shows that the January announcement by President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay by next year may do further damage to national security now and in the future. Placing the fate of suspected terrorists in the hands of civilian judges will prove harmful to both the concept of justice and the plan to deter Islamic terrorism on our own soil.

Hopefully, last week's sentencing travesty gave our young administration a dose of reality; perhaps now it will re-consider its plans to grant terrorists access to our courtrooms, a battlefield on which we most certainly will lose.