This doesn't sound fair to us. Canadian counter-terrorism expert David Hudak was tried in New Mexico on 9 federal charges relating to a training program he ran in Roswell, NM, and he was acquitted. His bond had been set at $10,000. Now the Bureau of Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) has moved to revoke that bond and have him held without bond. U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo is asking for an explanation:

"I find preliminarily that there is evidence of arbitrary behavior on the part of this federal agency," Armijo said of Homeland Security, as represented by Justice Department lawyers.

So far, the only explanation that has been forthcoming from ICE is that Hudak's visa is expired. Hudak's lawyers say the bond revocation is a vindictive action in retaliation for his acquittal. Hudak has been in custody for more than a year.

New York lawyer Lynne Stewart pleaded "not guilty" Friday to the new terrorism charge brought against her by the Justice Department. Elaine Cassel discusses the case in "Vengeance, Thy Name is Ashcroft":

At this point, it seems that the allegations are an absurd interpretation of the law: an attorney repeats something a client said to the press and that is defined as aiding and abetting terrorism? At this point, I can’t see that this charge is any "better" than the one Judge Koeltl dismissed.

That’s not the point, right now, as I see it. Rather, what is significant is that with the trial date less than two months away, Ashcroft came up with this to (1) get back at Stewart and her attorney, Michael Tigar, for their win on the prior terrorist charges and (2) try to insure that this time, the charges will stick. This time, the Judge won’t be so bold as to strike the charges, Ashcroft must be hoping.

....I wish we did not have a religious zealot, a wolf in wolf’s clothing, who holds himself out as a "Christian," as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. I wish we had someone who believed in justice, and in justice tempered with mercy.

Zacarias Moussaoui's redacted brief in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is now available online here. Oral arguments are set for Dec. 3. Moussaoui says the testimony of three government witnesses could save his life.

Terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui needs access to three al-Qaida prisoners to prove he was not part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy and to spare his life, his lawyers said Friday. With the government seeking the death penalty, the three witnesses could demonstrate that Moussaoui was, at most, a bit player in the conspiracy, the defense team told an appellate court in a written filing.

Oral arguments are December 3. At issue is whether Moussaoui will be given access to Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and one other prisoner. The trial judge ordered the government to make the witnesses available to Moussaoui and the Government has appealed.

The defense motion accused the government of ignoring the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants information that might exonerate them; and the Eighth Amendment, which provides protection against cruel and unusual punishment in this case, the death penalty. "No matter how well the government dresses up its arguments, the truth is that it seeks absolute power to withhold material, exculpatory witnesses in a death penalty case without suffering sanctions," the filing said.

But even if the government wins the argument over witness access, "the Eighth Amendment cannot tolerate a death sentence where the government has control over, but will not produce, witnesses" whose testimony could aid Moussaoui, the lawyers said.

The Government has filed new terror charges against New York lawyer Lynne Stewart.

The Court dismissed the original terror charge against her last July. That charge alleged that she helped her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, pass messages from prison.

The new charges accuse Ms. Stewart of conspiring to provide material support with a co-defendant, Mohammed Yousry, a translator, to the same client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in prison after being convicted of plotting to blow up New York landmarks. Ms. Stewart and Mr. Yousry are also charged with concealing their support for the sheik.

When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the original charges in 2002, he called it the first use of a rule allowing the Bureau of Prisons to monitor conversations between lawyers and inmates who are threats to commit "future acts of violence or terrorism." The judge who dismissed the charges in July found them to be constitutionally vague.

What's particularly chilling about the Lynne Stewart case is that the Government's evidence is based on attorney-client communications taped by the Government, pursuant to guidelines issued by Ashcroft.

More details on the new charges are available here.

Judge Brinkema warned Zacarias Moussaoui last week to shape up and stop filing derogatory motions or he'd lose the right to represent himself. Today she made good on the threat and reappointed Moussaoui's standby lawyers to represent him. Moussaoui's latest motions were over the top for what a lawyer might file, the Judge said. Those motions have not been made public, but here's what he filed last week:

Moussaoui said he wants "anthrax for Jew sympathiser only," called Attorney General John Ashcroft "the Democratic Jerk" and referred to Brinkema as "Leonie you Despotically Judge." Moussaoui, an acknowledged Osama bin Laden loyalist, is charged with participating in a broad conspiracy with the Sept. 11 hijackers to commit terrorism against the United States.

Moussaoui has excellent standby counsel. This is much better for him.

From now on, Brinkema said Friday, she will accept only pleadings submitted by the lawyers, while any motion submitted by Moussaoui "will simply be received for archival purposes." She said Moussaoui had 10 days to file a written notice of appeal.

The latest criticism of the Bush Administration's plan for military tribunals comes from an unlikely source: Philip Lacovara is a former deputy solicitor general of the United States and former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. During the Nixon era, he was in charge of the government's criminal and internal security cases before the Supreme Court. Now he serves on the board of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights and he criticizes the planned military tribunals in the op-ed Trial and Errors in today's Washington Post.

He debunks the Administration's (and its apologists') repeated ad nauseum assertion that the Ex Parte Quiran case from World War II authorizes the planned commissions:

In defending these military commissions, representatives of the Bush administration constantly refer to the well-known Quirin case -- in which the Roosevelt administration established a military commission during World War II to try eight Nazi saboteurs who had sneaked into the United States and thereby forfeited their status as soldiers entitled to be treated as POWs.

What they fail to note is that the Supreme Court decision in that case accorded much more in the way of legal rights to those eight Nazis than the administration is proposing today. The accused saboteurs retained the right to confidential communications with their counsel, access to all relevant evidence and Supreme Court review of the lawfulness of the proceedings against them. In a subsequent case involving the notorious Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this important principle, granting even enemy leaders the right to have civil courts review the lawfulness of their prosecution and conviction by military commissions.

Findlaw columnist and Human Rights Watch official Joanne Mariner today examines the plight of those "enemy combatants" being detained outside of Guantanamo Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees:

The most important aspect of Zacarias Moussaoui's prosecution may have little to do with Moussaoui himself.....The larger significance of Moussaoui's case lies elsewhere. It is, at present, the only legal peephole by which to glimpse the circumstances of a much more important group of terrorist suspects: those, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, who are held by the U.S. military for interrogation in "undisclosed locations."

....Right now, the detainees are missing, "disappeared," vanished with hardly a trace. No one knows where they are, and little is known about how they have been treated, although disturbing reports are occasionally leaked. These hidden detainees are in a frightening legal limbo. It is time for the judiciary -- and the Supreme Court, eventually -- to step in.

Sami Al-Arian, the Tampa professor charged with raising funds for terrorists, has a new lawyer--former NACDL President Bill Moffitt of Washington, D.C. Moffitt's first official attack is on the Al-Arian's pre-trial confinement conditions:

William B. Moffitt said the U.S. Justice Department's insistence that Sami Al-Arian be held under strict confinement at a federal prison northeast of Tampa is violating Al-Arian's right to assist in his own defense. A hearing will be held Nov. 7 in U.S. District Court in Tampa on the matter.

Moffitt said Al-Arian, who faces a 50-count indictment that he used an academic think tank and a charity at the University of South Florida as fronts for financing the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is being treated as though he has already been convicted of a crime. Al-Arian is housed in the same unit as inmates who have assaulted corrections officers or other prisoners and are considered too dangerous to be held elsewhere.

Moffitt is right. The Government should be made to justify its actions by spelling out its "security concerns." It shouldn't be able to simply invoke the term as a mantra to avoid scrutiny of questionable and disparate actions. Moffitt is a terrific lawyer. We're confident Al-Arian will receive a vigorous defense.

Sami Al-Arian, the Tampa professor charged with raising funds for terrorists, has a new lawyer--former NACDL President Bill Moffitt of Washington, D.C. Moffitt's first official attack is on the Al-Arian's pre-trial confinement conditions:

William B. Moffitt said the U.S. Justice Department's insistence that Sami Al-Arian be held under strict confinement at a federal prison northeast of Tampa is violating Al-Arian's right to assist in his own defense. A hearing will be held Nov. 7 in U.S. District Court in Tampa on the matter.

Moffitt said Al-Arian, who faces a 50-count indictment that he used an academic think tank and a charity at the University of South Florida as fronts for financing the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is being treated as though he has already been convicted of a crime. Al-Arian is housed in the same unit as inmates who have assaulted corrections officers or other prisoners and are considered too dangerous to be held elsewhere.

Moffitt is right. The Government should be made to justify its actions by spelling out its "security concerns." It shouldn't be able to simply invoke the term as a mantra to avoid scrutiny of questionable and disparate actions. Moffitt is a terrific lawyer. We're confident Al-Arian will receive a vigorous defense.

Time Magazine this week has a long report on how the Moussaoui case crumbled. Uncommon Thoughts says the FBI knows Moussaoui is not guilty.

From Ziska, who has been following the Portland case since the beginning. He hasn't been blogging much lately, but his old posts on the case are here. Today he e-mails:

There are some interesting aspects to the case. Everyone pled guilty to plea bargains. The ringleaders got 18 years, which is very high for what they actually did (try to go to Afghanistan) but low for what they're supposedly guilty of (being an al-Qaeda sleeper cell).

According to one story, the fact that the the "ringleaders" did not have to agree to cooperate in order to get a plea bargain was a victory for the defense, since no broader conspiracy was proved or even seriously alleged. Apparently also the plea bargain was motivated by the prosecution's unwillingness to deal with a FISA challenge: "The sources said the driving force behind the government's offer was to avoid possibly losing an argument on the merits of FISA as amended by the Patriot Act".

At the same time, it seems likely that the guilty pleas were motivated in part by the extraordinary powers granted the prosecution by the Patriot Act. None of the evidence against the defendant publicly available so far seems terribly compelling, though there may have been more that has not been released.

Kent Ford, the "ringleader" is a well-educated and talented individual whose parents are well thought of in the Portland political community.

ASHCROFT: "Sometimes the enemies are here at home," said Ashcroft, who also used the case to defend the USA Patriot Act. "We cannot overlook the threat posed by United States citizens."

The remaining two defendants in last year's Portland, Oregon terror case have pleaded guilty in federal court and agreed to spend 18 years in federal prison. The two pleaded guilty to conspiring to levy war against the U.S. Other co-defendants ,who had pleaded guilty earlier, agreed to testify against them.

Had the case not been resolved by guilty pleas, a hearing would have been held on the legality of evidence seized under provisions of the Patriot Act. The ACLU and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) filed a Friend of Court brief in the case.

Specifically, the ACLU, joined by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says the Justice Department's use of a secret court to get authority for electronic eavesdropping violates constitutional protections of privacy and free speech and against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Defense lawyers in the Portland case have challenged the government's use of secret court-approved wiretaps, the collection of e-mail messages and the planting of microphones in the home of one of the suspects. They claim the covert surveillance approved by a special court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, should not have been granted in the case because the defendants are not agents of foreign powers, spies or terrorists, as defined in the act.

We would have liked to have seen that motion litigated.