Mike Hawash entered a not guilty plea yesterday in the Oregon terror case. Trial is set for October 1. An op-ed column today examines whether the Government's use of a material witness warrant against Hawash constituted an abuse of the material witness statute.

In order to obtain the material witness warrant against Hawash, the Government had to tell the Court that Hawash was a flight risk and that his testimony was needed before the grand jury.

Hawash was not brought to testify before the grand jury. After five weeks in custody, and one day before his scheduled release, he was charged as a defendant in an existing case.

Hawash's case raises some very troubling questions: If the government had a basis for criminally charging Hawash all along, why didn't it offer that as the reason for his detention, rather than invoking the material witness statute? Was the reason for detaining Hawash as a material witness so that the government could use the intimidating confinement to obtain information, while avoiding the basic protections that are given criminal defendants? What motivated the government's conduct?

....For five weeks, unless he was scheduled to be somewhere else, the government kept him in solitary confinement in an 8-foot by 12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whenever he left his cell, prison guards would strip-search him and place him in chains before he was moved about. Hawash could call home only once a week and only received a visit from his wife or attorney three times a week. What interest has been asserted by the government to justify this deprivation?

Lawyer Brian Lehman, author of this commentary, makes the argument that the Government's use of the material witness warrant in Hawash's situation (and others similarly situated) may violate the Fourth Amendment.

At the board meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) in New York this weekend, we were fortunate to be able to hear accounts of the Moussaoui, Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Lynne Stewart cases from their lawyers, two of whom flew to New York just to provide us with historical details of the cases, status updates, and details of unjust Government's conduct.

Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-Mass) also flew up to New York to receive our Champion of Justice award for his tireless work on the Innocence Protection Act. This is the second time in a month we have listened to Congressman Delahunt (we met with him in Washington in March as part of an NACDL legislative delegation which we wrote about here.) We are very impressed with Delahunt--he is a former elected District Attorney who truly cares about justice--from the Innocence Protection Act, to exposing proseuctorial and FBI misconduct and supporting grand jury reform, to upholding our civil liberties and opposing the Patriot Act.

Zacarias Moussaoui wants John Ashcroft to take a quiz:

Zacarias Moussaoui wants Attorney General John Ashcroft to answer a multiple choice quiz about the government's theory of his role as a terrorist conspirator. Several of 17 handwritten pleadings released Thursday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema have a version of the quiz, which asks Ashcroft to check one of four boxes.

The choices are:

20th hijacker.
5th plane pilot missing in action.
I, Ashcroft don't know.
Let's kill him anyway.

Other handwritten pleadings of Moussaoui have him predicting he will win the case and be able to leave the U.S.-

Referring to defense lawyer Frank Dunham, Moussaoui said, "No doubt that Dunham will go crazy when I, Zacarias Moussaoui, will leave the United Satan on a 747-400 1st class. Non-smoking. No drink. No women."

In another motion, he challenged President Bush to "stop playing chicken and ... come out and fight hand-to-hand combat with knife if he want to kill me."

Moussaoui said he would call experts during the penalty phase of his case to show the United States has a history of "dirty foreign policy."

But Moussaoui said he has tried without success to obtain tapes from the History Channel "to deepen my understanding on the average American mind (if they have any)."

If Moussaoui is correct and walks after being tried in federal court, we think he ought to have his own cable show, broadcast from Europe, with Comical Ali as his "Ed McMahon" sidekick. Between the two of them.....

From Behind the Homefront:

GOVERNMENT USING "SLEIGHT OF HAND" TO CLOSE MOUSSAOUI PROCEEDINGS. Eleven media organizations organizations contend the government is using "sleight of hand" to keep proceedings secret in a dispute over terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui's access to an al-Qaida prisoner. The brief filed Tuesday in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the group, which includes the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, contends the public's right to attend hearings and view the court record is not eliminated by a law guiding use of classified information in court proceedings.

Supporters rallied at the Portland courthouse Tuesday to show support for Mike Hawash, charged in the Oregon terror case. You can read the federal complaint against him here.

Hawash appeared in court Tuesday and the judge scheduled a preliminary hearing or arraignment for Monday, May 6. If the grand jury returns an indictment before then (and it is expected to Friday,) there will be no preliminary hearing as the grand jury will have already made the probable cause determination. Monday's hearing will then be an arraignment, where Hawash pleads not guilty to the charges.

A detention hearing is also scheduled for Monday, at which time the Government will argue that bail should not be set for Hawash and he should be detained pending trial. The Government will argue he is a flight risk and/or a danger to the community. One secret bail hearing was held while Hawash was being detained as a material witness, and the Judge sided with the Government.

Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times recaps the case thus far. CNN has this report.

Mike's friends issued this statement on their support site, Free Mike Hawash.org. Bloggers covering the Hawash case include Tristero, One True B!x and Reach M High Cowboy.

If you are new to the case, our coverage since the beginning is here.

Zacarias Moussaoui won another motion Monday when the Judge ruled that prosecutors must disclose to him their new theory of the case.

The prosecutors had disclosed an unclassified version of their new theory (likely that of Moussaoui being the pilot of a 5th plane on Sept. 11 that was supposed to hit the White House) to Moussaoui's standby counsel. Moussaoui is not speaking with them. He filed a "Motion to Know How the United Satan is Lying to Murder Me By Legal Means" asking to have the same information disclosed to him.

The Judge ruled that because prosecutors had disclosed the information to his defense lawyers, they also had to share it with Moussaoui.

Bump and Update: This from Reuters on the Criminal Complaint filed:

According to the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Hawash decided after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to travel to Afghanistan, via China and Pakistan, to join forces with Taliban and al Qaeda troops fighting....Hawash allegedly traveled with the other defendants to China but returned to the United States in November 2001 after failing to enter Afghanistan. "Mike's friends and those who know him think the idea that Mike would have fought for the Taliban or traveled to Afghanistan is absurd," friends of Hawash said in a statement.

The complaint is 41 pages. We haven't read it yet, but we suspect that much of it is boilerplate about Al Qaeda in general and the other six defendants in the Oregon case. Here's a link to it.

Later....we've read the whole thing. Most of it is about Bilal. We're not impressed. Hawash knew the other six, helped one set up a landscaping business in Oregon, and went to Hong Kong/China around the same time as the others. They attended the same mosque in Oregon. While a witness in China identified the other six from photos, they couldn't identify Hawash. Their search for incriminating cell and other phone calls on Hawash's phones seems to have come up empty. He isn't mentioned by name in the emails seized from the computers of the other six.

The Government's interest in him sprang from two neighbors calling the police after the other six were arrested to say he wasn't as friendly after Sept. 11 and dressed in eastern type clothes more often. In sum, it looks to us like Hawash went to China and came home, end of story.

Hawash is set for a detention (bail) hearing tomorrow. There will be organized protests at the courthouse.

******

Update: According to the website established by friends of Mike Hawash, the charges came by way of Complaint vs. grand jury indictment. The site says the grand jury has not met yet. You can view the affidavit of the task force agent here.

******

The grand jury returned an Indictment today charging Mike Hawash as the seventh defendant in the Oregon terror case. Hawash is charged with plotting to wage war against U.S. troops. He faces one count of "conspiracy to levy war and two counts of conspiring to provide material support to the two groups."

Hawash has been in custody on a material witness warrant since March. Our prior coverage of him is here.

The federal judge presiding over the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui ruled in his favor Thursday on the issue of whether he can read the Government's alternative proposal to allowing him to conduct live interviews of captured Al Qaeda members who might provide testimony favorable to his defense.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui is entitled to see a top secret government plan for giving him access to information from a senior al-Qaida captive.

The government attempted to submit the material to the court and keep it from Moussaoui for the time being. Classified as "Top Secret/Codeword," the information was provided as a substitute for allowing Moussaoui to interview the prisoner, Ramzi Binalshibh, via video hookup.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who ordered the hookup in January, said Moussaoui must see the substitute proposal now.

Either this is a very fair judge, or a slick attempt to create justification for the Government's dismissal of the federal case against Moussaoui in favor of a military tribunal.

Wednesday we wrote about another federal terrorism case unraveling in Detroit.

Another of Ashcroft's terror cases bites the dust. Omar Shishani, held in Detroit for nine months on terror charges related to his possession of $12 million in counterfeit checks, pleaded guilty to counterfeit security charges Tuesday while all terror-related charges were dropped.

Today there is a new development regarding Shishani: He is going to be a witness for the defense in the ongoing Detroit terror trial of the four men accused of operating a sleeer cell. Shishani is expected to discredit the Government's star witness.

While in jail, Shishani was incarcerated with Youssef Hmimssa, a convicted credit card thief, who has provided the most damning testimony thus far against Karim Koubriti, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, Ahmed Hannan and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi.

Hmimssa had testified earlier in the trial that the four men are Muslim extremists who were trying to buy Stinger missiles and planning attacks in the United States and abroad that might have included shooting down airplanes and driving truck bombs into stadiums.

But Shishani's attorney, Corbett Edge O'Meara, said his client shared adjoining cells with Hmimssa in February and March and began to talk about the terror trial. Shishani asked Hmimssa if the defendants subscribed to a radical branch of Islam that advocates killing those who don't conform to it.

" 'I don't know,' " O'Meara said Hmimssa told his client. " 'I just want revenge for them ruining my life.' "

Prosecutors have assured Shishani, who entered his own guilty plea yesterday, that he won't get a stiffer sentence if he testifies for the defense in the terror trial.

Another of Ashcroft's terror cases bites the dust. Omar Shishani, held in Detroit for nine months on terror charges related to his possession of $12 million in counterfeit checks, pleaded guilty to counterfeit security charges Tuesday while all terror-related charges were dropped.

"He is not a terrorist," said Shishani's attorney, Corbett O'Meara. "It is symptomatic of our nation's hysteria that he was ever branded a terrorist. This was garden-variety financial fraud." ....A federal law enforcement source said an exhaustive investigation turned up no evidence of ties between Shishani and terrorism.

Shishani faces up to five years in jail for conspiracy and possession of counterfeit securities.

In between his rants at everyone in the criminal justice system, Moussaoui is raising a credible defense. We wrote about it, as well as the Government's creative new "5th hijacker" theory, in detail last week here, so we won't repeat ourselves. But the new details today of Moussaoui's striking out are too classic to pass over:

Legal experts say they're fascinated by the handwritten pleadings that place demands for access to witnesses and documents alongside insults and bizarre statements. Recently Moussaoui suggested the need to bang the judge's head against the wall, derided Attorney General John Ashcroft's Christianity, described one defense lawyer as fat and others as the racist, the Kamikaze and the Jew.

Moussaoui doesn't cooperate with the court-appointed lawyers, who were retained to represent his interests against terrorism charges that carry the death penalty.

...Other experts praised Brinkema for doing her constitutional duty despite a stream of insults directed toward her by Moussaoui. Moussaoui often addresses her as "death judge" and recently referred to Ashcroft as a "natural born liar" who "claim to be a Christian who will not announce my death on Good Friday."

We too praise Judge Brinkema for having the stamina to stay with the case, make sense of Moussaoui's hand-written demands and order the Government to produce the witnesses that could help his defense.

Moussaoui's complaints that prosecutors are withholding crucial information have persuaded the judge to question whether the government can give the acknowledged al-Qaida member a fair trial in open court.

In one recent motion, Moussaoui cited news reports that suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had told interrogators the defendant was not part of the conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

He asked the judge "to force the United Satan to give me the exculpatory statement of my brother Mohammed," because "brother Mohammed has told to the U.S. official that I was not 9/11."

Reportedly, Ramzi Binalshibh will do the same. If the Government doesn't have the goods to tie Moussaoui to Sept. 11 after all this time, they ought to acknowledge it and let him plead to a non-capital offense. We suspect, however, that Ashcroft couldn't stand the loss of face that would entail--to be beaten by a pro-se member of Al Qaeda with no legal training and for whom English is a second or third language. This case is indeed a farce, but its a farce of the Government's making.

The brother of Zacarias Moussoaoui writes about "My Brother Zac" in Saturday's Guardian. Abd Samad Moussaoui describes a childhood "beset by racism in France and the indoctrination he believes his brother received in London, which drove him into the arms of al-Qaida."

The article is an edited "extract" from Abd's forthcoming book, Zacarias Moussaoui: The Making Of A Terrorist, scheduled for release May 22 by Serpent Books.