The federal courthouse in Brooklyn. Loretta E. Lynch expanded her office's global reach as United States attorney in the borough.​

Arrested in Djibouti while he was en route to Yemen from Somalia, far from his home in Britain, Madhi Hashi was baffled to find himself jailed in Manhattan.

He admitted to prison officials that he was a member of the Shabab, the Somali militant group. But he “did not understand why he had been brought to the United States to stand trial,” he said, according to court documents.

The world of soccer was roiled by a similar surprise late last month, heads snapping from Italy to Argentina, when Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that Brooklyn prosecutors had indicted FIFA officials from the other side of the globe, on corruption charges.

Using a growing body of law that allows the United States to prosecute foreign citizens for some actions, the government has been turning the federal courts into international law-enforcement arenas.

In terrorism cases, the broadening of a key law in 2004, the splintering of terrorist groups and a shift away from military detention has led the United States to bring more foreigners onto its soil, some with only a tenuous link to the United States.

Perhaps no federal prosecutor was more aggressive about expanding her office’s global reach than Ms. Lynch when she was the United States attorney in Brooklyn, and the FIFA arrests suggest that now that she leads the Justice Department, overseas cases are likely to become even more of a priority.

In the FIFA case, prosecutors chose not to invoke “extraterritorial jurisdiction.” Instead they relied on the defendants’ use of American banks and American locations to conduct meetings as the basis for charging them in federal court.

But in terrorism prosecutions, United States courts are trying people who were not targeting the United States, are not from the United States and, before their court cases, had never set foot in the United States. (In these cases, prosecutors say, the country extraditing or otherwise handing over custody of the defendant is, by definition, choosing to cooperate with the United States.)

The United States has become “the jailer, the military front and now the prosecutor” of global crimes, particularly terrorism, said Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law.

In Brooklyn, the trial earlier this year of Abid Naseer, a Pakistan-born Qaeda member plotting to set off a bomb in Manchester, England, saw a parade of MI5 agents, Manchester police officers and an English mall security expert.

Another man, Lawal Babafemi, who will be sentenced in the summer after pleading guilty to providing support for terrorism, was a Nigerian who traveled to Chad and Sudan before being smuggled to Yemen by a Ugandan, then was arrested and sent to Brooklyn after he returned to Nigeria.

Across the East River, in Manhattan federal court, Mohamed Ahmed, accused of terrorism, wrote to the court that he was detained, beaten and interrogated at the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Nigeria, denied help from the consulates of Sweden, where he was a permanent resident, and Eritrea, where he is a citizen, until he was blindfolded, put on a plane and sent to New York for prosecution.

Mr. Hashi’s case is another example of this phenomenon, illustrating how federal prosecutors are able to bring these cases, and why they choose to, despite protests from defense lawyers who say their clients are often tortured or denied their rights in the process.

Mr. Hashi was born in Somalia and moved to England in 1995. By 2009, he had gone to Somalia and joined the Somali-affiliated Shabab. By 2012, after Shabab intelligence imprisoned him because they thought he was a spy, he had decided to fight in Yemen instead, prosecutors said. En route, he was arrested in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, along with two other Shabab fighters, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohamed Yusuf, both of them Somali-born Swedes.

Mr. Hashi told the court that he watched Mr. Ahmed being tortured, and he was threatened with torture and sexual abuse, by Djiboutian law enforcement; when the F.B.I. joined in the interrogations, he says he was advised of his rights but remained fearful, and gave statements because of that fear.

Prosecutors conceded that to obtain information on any immediate threats, the F.B.I. initially interviewed men without advising them of their rights, but subsequently interviewed them separately and explained their rights to them; prosecutors eventually agreed not to use any of the statements taken in Djibouti at trial.

All three men were sent to the United States for prosecution in late 2012, and have been held in solitary confinement since.

Their lawyers in the United States filed a motion to dismiss the charges against them, which included providing material support to a terrorist group and conspiracy to provide such support. “Nothing that the government has provided to date shows that the defendant had any notice or reason to believe that he was subjecting himself to U.S. law and could be hauled into a U.S. court for his conduct,” Jane Simkin Smith and David Stern, lawyers for Mr. Yusuf, wrote in a motion that the other defendants joined.

Ms. Lynch announcing federal charges against FIFA officials last month. The case suggests that now that she leads the Justice Department, overseas cases are likely to become even more of a priority.​

Brooklyn prosecutors prevailed, however, pointing to earlier rulings about how terrorism law can be used globally.

In 2004, when Congress updated the terrorism law, it said that extraterritorial jurisdiction applies in six situations. One that was applied here was breathtakingly simple: that the person is “brought into” the country after the conduct in question. Here, the prosecutors and F.B.I. flew the men into Kennedy International Airport from Djibouti. As a Southern District federal judge, P. Kevin Castel, ruled in the case of Mr. Ahmed, bringing someone in “alone is a sufficient statutory predicate for jurisdiction.”

Prosecutors, though, are reluctant to rely entirely on the fact that the person was flown — by the United States government — into the United States, and here they relied on two additional justifications. One was that the defendants “aided and abetted” United States citizens when they recruited, talked to or fought alongside them in Somalia. Another was that the acts affected foreign or interstate commerce, where these defendants recruited people to go overseas and those people spent money getting there

Defense lawyers also raised a question of due process, or whether trying the defendants in the United States was fair. Prosecutors responded that there was a link to the United States: The Shabab was a designated foreign terrorist group that had denounced the United States. Also, the prosecutors — Shreve Ariail, Seth D. DuCharme and Richard M. Tucker — cited a 2011 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit: Defendants did not need to understand that they could be subject to criminal prosecution in the United States, “so long as they would reasonably understand that their conduct was criminal and subject them to prosecution somewhere.”

Judge Sandra L. Townes ruled in the prosecution’s favor, and the case went forward.

Federal prosecutors are going after these cases for several reasons, prosecutors and national security experts said. One is simply that they can, after Congress broadened extraterritorial jurisdiction for terrorism in 2004.

They see the cases as a smart alternative to diplomacy or drone strikes. The government can “gather information not only for use as evidence at trial but information to be used by the government to get smarter about the threats it’s trying to quell,” particularly when someone is captured overseas, said David Raskin, a former federal terrorism prosecutor who now teaches national security law at Columbia Law School and is a partner at Clifford Chance.

Military detention, which several senators have called for in cases involving terrorism suspects, is seen as problematic by national security experts, human rights groups and much of law enforcement; it is inefficient, and there are evidence problems. Moreover, human rights advocates say the detentions ignore due process.

Federal prosecution of foreigners “is not every foreign national for every bad thing, but it’s certainly much more broad than it used to be,” Mr. Raskin said.

However, leaving it to the United States to define who is a terrorist based on which groups are against it, and then prosecuting them, “is taking exceptionalism to a different level,” Ms. Greenberg said.

“We think this is very much about us,” she continued, “and we’re the best place to take care of these suspects, and we trust ourselves.”

Federal trials are far preferable to indefinite detention, Ms. Greenberg said, and represent a vote of confidence in the criminal justice system as opposed to other options, like unlawful interrogation or targeted killings. “On the downside, it takes on a global responsibility that could one day be troubling in its potential to creep into other areas of law enforcement on global issues, from drugs to cybercrime,” she said.

Mr. Hashi pleaded guilty last month along with his co-defendants, in return for a suggested 15-year sentence. At the hearing, he seemed polite and friendly, joking with the judge as he asked about where he would be sent once his prison term ended.

Susan G. Kellman, a lawyer for his co-defendant Mr. Ahmed, said afterward that the men remained confused by the role of the United States.

“They never wanted to harm the United States,” she said. “That’s what’s so frustrating for them. Their accuser is a country they never intended to hurt, never wanted to hurt.”

Source: The New York Times

 

Shit's getting all to real.... depressing.

Global Domination, New World Order, Corruption at the highest levels and all above the law, unlike the common man who pays the price. We are getting sold a bill of goods and it isn't pretty.

 

hey, all audio lovers,

seems like for the paranoid psychotic nation empire every individual is suspect, every person is one of its enemies.

looks like this is required for its meagre survival, here is hoping these are the last spasmodic movements of its long agony.

all the best for all of us...

 

The system is falling down on its knees, those are just its last breaths..
Question is - what happens when it's over?

 

hey, Andrew (long time, hmmmmm),

first, we will take one fucking really great looooong breath of shimmering sparking fresh new clean air...

from all that there exists, wish us the best...

 

...but what is unclear to me... is someone doing something to bring that agony to an end, or are we all waiting for them to destroy themselves from within ?!?

All that seems so confusing for an average human that wants just to live in peace on this wonderful planet

 

First off, “We think this is very much about us,” she continued, “and we’re the best place to take care of these suspects, and we trust ourselves.”, iterated the fox in regard to the hen house. How fucked up a thing is that to say, and secondly and all too unfortunately, there will be some entity to swarm on in and fill up the void left by the one departed as there is no entity able to cheque China that I can see. Rome is burning and I hear a madman scratching away on a fiddle somewhere out beyond my periphery.

 

Who'd a thunk it?

Dear People of the World:
The United States can and does incarcerate people indefinitely without charges in accordance with powers granted to the Department of Homeland Security.

Furthermore, the United States monitors electronically the personal communications of everyone on Earth by way of internet, telephone, etc.

Now here's the funny part: Everybody knows already where this road is headed:

The highway is alive tonight —
But where it's headed, everybody knows.
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad,
Who went against the 'legal' code.
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad.

 

hey, Rhodes,

because it exists, every doubt, question (expressed, unexpressed, does not matter), does bring it nearer then even nearer... *yes*

all the best for all of us, plus loads more of our best doubts, best questions...

 

@nadirtozenith:
I really hope You are right

All the best

 

​

... sorry guys, couldn`t help it ...

 

for all the people wishing for a hasty demise... I agree with you on this... there is NO POWER... that can cheque China...

for all it's flaws, if you wish the one country that can, to be gone, you will see a ravenous , careless, cuthroat power come to the fore

like nothing ever seen, I can only imagine that it's just thoughtless ignorance that does not see this... but I'm sure someone will tell me how harmless this

looming dragon is, and how much better it will be when they are pushing the rest of the world around...

 

hey, Herr Durr,

this is, perhaps, the territory that needs to be marked as HERE BE DRAGONS...

all the best...

 

indeed m8 ... no one on this site was even thought of when it took the Japanese navy to kill 3000 people at Pearl Harbor..

many people here were tots or teens when 19 guys killed 3000 people with 2 jet liners..


I would only hope someone is there to take a pic of their jaw dropping to their balls.. when 1 single allahu akbarring idiot with a suitcase nuke takes out a major world city
and 100,000 or so of it's inhabitants... that's THEIR holy grail...


very much about us? can't say I disagree...

 

This is the behavior of my country's government, not of my country. (In America, we don't say "our government," but "the government," as we feel that it represents us little in either our interests and intentions.)

If one views this sort of behavior as by a person, it is of a narcissistic paranoid personality lashing-out at perceived "threats" to its bloated but fragile sense of significance, or perhaps overcompensating with vindictive self-righteousness for its guilty conscience or secret shame.

 

hey, Herr Durr, audio lovers,

these are, perhaps, valid phenomena to fear (if one needs different fears in her, his, everyday life)... *yes*

valid fears, even if no one knows if the attack on the harbour was allowed to some degree to happen, or who financed, supplied the idea to, those nineteen accused of hijacking, piloting, the jetliners (but this also is couple of those territories that might be marked as mentioned above). *yes*
as for the allahu akbaring idiots, they exist, perhaps, as the same percentage as any other kind of idiots in any other grouping of grail seekers, malleable, also payable. *yes*

having grown up in one of those countries where one could not even believe the daily weather forecast coming from the media, one does not really take everything at its presented face value. *yes*

there exist, perhaps, other phenomena to being in fear of, the law of action and reaction, the law of attraction, etc. if one wants to subscribe to such some emotional burden. *yes*

as the court jester of the emperor of utopia, have great hopes that my boss will soon change his seat somewhere nearer to this planet. *yes*

all the best for all of us...

 

I suspect that the US will very soon be put in a corner for the rest of the world to point at and have as an example to avoid and stay as far away from as they can. (Not that it isn't so to an extent already) And its people will probably have to revolt soon. I mean, how long can this go on?

Oh, did NSA read that? I should be arrested. But I'm not going to self-censor. After all, they're all about freedom of expression.

How long before we face pro/persecution for "thought crimes"?

 

Though words are not actions and nor are they deeds, to jot down ones ideas in a public forum can be considered in this context a thought crime if meant to incite some actual action or deed by a second party (or in some way, argued to include intent to motivate) to violence or any other activity deemed counter to the controlling faction. You could be labelled a terrorist, and you all know what that means. George Washington is probably the USA's earliest and most famous terrorist with Thomas Jefferson coming in a close second, at least going by the current definition.



Definitions of Terrorism in the U.S. Code

18 U.S.C. § 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”:

"International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*

"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

18 U.S.C. § 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:

Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including § 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and § 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).

* FISA defines "international terrorism" in a nearly identical way, replacing "primarily" outside the U.S. with "totally" outside the U.S. 50 U.S.C. § 1801(c).

 

@Superliquid good one !


They don't even have to try that hard...

There's a book out there called "Three Felonies a Day,"


any podunk police force, govt, what have you .... can find "something" or multiple "somethings"
if they really want you.... either way... a bit chilling eh?


and it's not any one country that engages in this, but shamefully enough, compared to population
the USA is the most incarcerated country in the world...


hmmm find a happy place.. you'll be there for a while...

 

Well, I did say "revolt", not "riot" (although it could come to that). Again, semantics... I guess if they really want me, they CAN'T have me.