Interesting prosecution under PATRIOT Act

Computer Student on Trial for Aid to Muslim Web Sites
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Published: April 27, 2004

OISE, Idaho, April 23 ?- Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

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Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad.

As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist.

"Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued against the expert guidance part of the antiterrorism law this year, in a case where it was struck down by a federal judge.

Mr. Hussayen, 34, a father of three who was pursuing a doctorate in computer sciences at the University of Idaho, is charged with three counts of conspiracy to support terrorism and 11 counts of visa and immigration fraud. His trial opened on April 14 and is expected to last until June.

The trial offers conflicting views of Mr. Hussayen, a son of the Saudi middle class. Defense lawyers have portrayed him as a loving family man who embraces Western values while holding to his Islamic faith; the prosecution team has presented him as a secret conspirator, aiding the cause of terrorism through his computer skills.

In the indictment, the government charged that Mr. Hussayen provided "computer advice and assistance, communications facilities, and financial instruments and services that assisted in the creation and maintenance of Internet Web sites and other Internet medium intended to recruit and raise funds for violent jihad, particularly in Palestine and Chechnya."

And they have argued that Mr. Hussayen's technical assistance, even if he did not share the beliefs of the groups he helped, were like providing a gun to an armed robber. ...
...One of the charities that Mr. Hussayen supported, Islamic Assembly of North America, still operates out of Ann Arbor, Mich. On its Web site, the group says its mission is to promote the spread of Islam, and the group solicits money from the public. Mr. Nevin said the charity has never been classified as terrorist by the government.

But the government said the Michigan charity was one of the Web sites that "accommodated materials that advocated violence against the United States."

Both sides in this case are looking to appeals that will probably turn on the part of the antiterrorism law thrown out by Judge Collins in January.

In that case, the judge ruled on behalf of several humanitarian groups that wanted to provide support to the nonviolent arms of two organizations designated as terrorist in Turkey and Sri Lanka. Judge Collins wrote that "a woman who buys cookies at a bake sale outside her grocery store to support displaced Kurdish refugees to find new homes could be held liable" if the sale was sponsored by a group designated terrorist.