Wednesday, June 22, 2011

High-profile lawyers join terror support case

The courtroom of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller was filled to capacity on this afternoon, every seat taken by members from San Diego’s Somali community.

Dozens more supporters filled the hallways outside the courtroom, quietly waiting for the latest hearing in the case of four men charged with aiding a terrorist group in their home country. Each hearing has drawn the same large crowd of supporters, but last week’s unveiled one new element.

The quartet of defendants had new, retained lawyers from different corners of the United States, all experienced in high-profile cases of defending people charged with the same crimes the Somali men are facing here. They are part of a small but growing group of defense attorneys who work on domestic-terrorism cases, an area of criminal defense law that has largely formed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“It’s an emerging field,” said Jeffrey Addicott, a lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, who is not involved in the case. “It covers a number of issues, from detentions and military commissions to domestic issues of civil liberties.”

The specialty is challenging, with the evidence often involving classified materials. Lawyers usually need security clearances to review some of the material that forms the basis of the charges against the people they represent. They have to be versed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other national-security laws.

The participating defense attorneys said there’s much at stake.

“These cases are the most important cases that implicate the Constitution in our country today,” said Linda Moreno of Tampa, Fla. In the past few years, she has defended a professor at the University of South Florida accused of helping Palestinian terrorists and a leader of the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity accused of sending millions to support the militant organization Hamas.

“And there are also a host of fascinating issues you don’t see in run-of-the-mill criminal cases,” Moreno said.

No trial date has been set for the four men who were indicted by a San Diego grand jury last year. They are Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cab driver; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam of a mosque in City Heights; Issa Doreh, the former president of a nonprofit group aiding the Somali community; and Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, a 35-year-old from Anaheim.

Moalin and the other defendants were indicted in November for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and money laundering.

The indictments state that a military leader from al-Shabaab contacted Moalin in December 2007 and asked him to raise money for the East African militia, which a few months later was placed on an official U.S. government list of terrorist organizations.

Prosecutors said Moalin coordinated fundraising efforts and money transfers to Somalia with the co-defendants. In all, about $8,000 was sent to Somalia between February and July 2008, the indictment alleges. Moalin also is charged with directly supporting al-Shabaab in January 2008 by arranging for the use of a house in Somalia.

He and the other three men have pleaded not guilty.

In a different case, a 24-year-old woman, Nima Yusuf, is charged with supporting a terrorist group by sending $800 to al-Shabaab and agreeing to try to recruit one man in San Diego. She also has pleaded not guilty.

The four Somali men facing trial in San Diego are accused of the same overall crime as in the Holy Land case: providing material support to a terrorist group. That accusation, Addicott said, “has become the primary statute used by the government to prosecute serious cases of terrorism.” Prosecutors have to show that the organization receiving the money has been designated as a terrorist group, and that the funds or other support was provided “knowingly” or “intentionally.”

Moreno and the other defense lawyers in the San Diego case are being paid through fundraising efforts by the Muslim Legal Fund of America, a nonprofit organization formed in 2001 that supports legal cases involving Muslims. Khalid Meek, its executive director, said Somali immigrant communities nationwide asked the group to step in.

Meek said the legal costs could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. On June 11, he and Moreno — who is representing Mohamed Mohamud — appeared at a fundraiser in Minneapolis, which also has a large Somali immigrant community.

Lawyers said the prospect of large fees is not the draw in these cases.

“If you’re concerned about the preservation of civil liberties in this country, you have to become involved in these cases,” said Thomas Durkin, who is representing Ahmed Mohamud.

Durkin and Joshua Dratel, who is representing Moalin, also have represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the detention camp on the island of Cuba that holds alleged terrorists. Durkin’s clients have included Ramzi Binalshibh, described as a key figure in the 9/11 attacks.

Dratel worked alongside Moreno during the Holy Land Foundation trial, billed at the time as largest terrorism case in the country because the defendants were charged with funneling millions of dollars overseas. The first trial in Dallas ended in a mix of acquittals and deadlocks on numerous charges, and the second trial ended in convictions. The case is now on appeal.

greg.moran@uniontrib.com; (619) 293-1236; @gregmoran

Source: The Sun Diego Union Tribune

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