Fear Mongering Fueled Lodi Terror' Hamid Hayat Case By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Fear Mongering Fueled Lodi Terror' Hamid Hayat Case

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Al-Jazeerah, October 22, 2006

Trial begins on Nov. 17, 2006 of Hamid Hayat, a US-born American of Pakistani origin, who was convicted by jury last April on charges of providing material support to terrorists. He was also found guilty of undergoing terrorist training in Pakistan and returning to California’s town of Lodi prepared to wage “jihad” against his fellow Americans.

His lawyer, Wazhma Mojaddidi, has filed a motion for retrial on the plea that the judge has refused to allow crucial testimony while a juror filed an affidavit in the court saying that she was bullied into a guilty verdict by fellow jurors who exhibited a pattern of misconduct and racism.

The judge barred much of the testimony Mojaddidi had sought to introduce during the two-month trial, including that of a retired 35-year FBI agent who planned to tell the jury he believed the FBI bungled the case against Hamid Hayat, 23, and his father, Umer Hayat, 48, who was freed last month after his first terror trial ended last April in a mistrial. He pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge of making a false claim on a customs form and was released in August.

Both Hamid and Umer Hayat were detained in June 2005 along with two Pakistani religious leaders - Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Khan - in what authorities suggested was part of a terrorist cell in Lodi, 35 miles south of the California state capital. The two imams and one man's son were deported for immigration violations. However the Hayats were the only people criminally charged in the probe. Fearmongering - that generates political support, a fact that the Bush administration has used after 9/11 -- not actual security threat fueled the much publicized “terror case” against the two Pakistan Americans, argues the Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline program "The Enemy Within."

In the summer of 2005 the Bush administration was in the midst of transforming the FBI from its traditional role as the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency into an agency whose priority was hunting for domestic terrorists and Al-Qaeda "sleeper cells."

But while neglecting other forms of violent crime, the bureau reported it could find no evidence of such groups. Nor could the 9/11 Commission. “People talked about cells and sleeper cells and all of that,” Thomas H. Kean, the former commission co-chairman, told the Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman, but “we didn’t find any.” Instead, to gain credibility in its new role, the FBI leveled important-sounding charges against small-time crooks. A recent study quoted by Frontline found that almost all of the government’s 441 “terrorism-related” cases since 9/11 involved relatively petty charges, like visa violations and financial fraud — not plans to carry out violent acts. In such an atmosphere, Nassim Khan, a convenience store clerk, told the FBI a bizarre story about once seeing Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, in a Lodi mosque in December 2001. He was hired as an undercover informer, given a hidden tape recorder and sent to spy on two imams at the mosque. Interestingly, the idea that Zawahiri had visited Lodi was totally ludicrous, and prosecutors later admitted that the informant was mistaken.

After nearly three years of recordings, however, the investigation turned up no evidence of terrorism. Unable to bring any criminal charges, the government deported the imams on immigration charges. Undaunted, Nasim Khan, having been paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars, came up with another possible Qaeda cell: the Hayat family, which had taken him in and practically adopted him as a son.

The Hayats are United States citizens; Umer Hayat (naturalized citizen) drove an ice cream truck in Lodi. His US-born son, Hamid, was a sixth-grade dropout. In 2003 the family traveled briefly to Pakistan for Hamid’s marriage. When the rest of the family returned, Hamid stayed behind on his honeymoon and then to care for his ill mother. Nasim Khan had long been pushing Hamid to get involved in radical Islamic activities. Now, by telephone, Nasim Khan insisted that Hamid join a jihadi training camp. “No, no, no vacation, man,” he said in a recorded phone call with Hamid. “If you — you’re sitting there, in Pakistan. You told me: ‘I’m going to a camp. I’ll do that.’ You’re sitting idle. You’re wasting time.” Hamid refused Nasim Khan’s demands, but the prodding continued.

In the summer of 2005, when Hamid returned to Lodi, the FBI was waiting for him. Interrogated along with his father for 15 hours in separate rooms without a lawyer, they were both later arrested. Hamid was charged with attending a jihadi training camp in Pakistan — something both he and his father confessed to after the nonstop interrogation.

“The Enemy Within” shows that the FBI quickly announced that it had discovered a violent Al-Qaeda terrorist cell hidden deep in America’s heartland and that John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, even highlighted the case — one of only two — in testimony on Capitol Hill. John Negroponte told Congress in February 2006: "A network of Islamic extremists in Lodi maintain[ed] connections with Pakistani militant groups, recruited U.S. citizens for training …, and sponsored Pakistani citizens for travel to the U.S. to work at mosques and madrassas. …[and] allegedly raised funds for international jihadist groups."

However, the Frontline program demonstrates that it was all smoke and no fire, according to the New York Times whose special project reporter, Lowell Bergman, worked as a Frontline correspondent in The Enemy Within.

James Wedick, a recently retired and much decorated FBI agent, agreed to review the interrogation tapes of Hamid and his father on behalf of their defense team. About the FBI interrogations he told Frontline, “I was shocked.” After listening to an excerpt of Hamid’s interrogation, Wedick noted: “They’re leading him, and it’s ridiculous, it’s shameful; it’s shameful because I’ve never seen the department do this before.” After denying any connection to terrorist camps for hours, Hamid changed his story only after the constant badgering. Hamid’s father also continuously denied that his son attended a terrorist camp and changed his story only after the F.B.I. played him the tape of Hamid’s “confession.”

“They more or less answered the way the bureau wanted them to answer,” Wedick said. “All they wanted to do was go home. They had no thoughts that if they cooperated with the F.B.I. that either of them would spend the rest of their lives in jail.” The trial judge barred Wedick from taking the stand, saying only that his testimony had the “potential for confusing the jury,” according to “The Enemy Within.”

Hamid Hayat, convicted of material support of terrorism and lying to the FBI, faces a possible 39-year sentence and has filed an appeal. His hearing is scheduled for November 17. His father, Umer, was released in August after his case resulted in a hung jury, and the prosecution decided not to retry him after he pleaded guilty to an unrelated customs charge. So Al Qaeda in Lodi, Calif., turned out to be an ice cream truck driver and his not-particularly-intelligent son. In the end there was no terror cell, “Frontline” reports, just an ice cream truck driver now homeless and living in a garage, and his son facing the likelihood that he will spend much of his life in jail. The New York Times pointed out that “The Enemy Within” argues compellingly that the Lodi case, a showcase trial in the Bush administration’s war on domestic terrorism, was largely created out of whole cloth. The country was never in danger from the Hayats but may well be entering a dangerous period of unnecessary and abusive prosecutions. The administration and television found common ground in Lodi, with results that are chillingly reminiscent of the Red scare of the 1950’s, the paper pointed out. Critics of the U.S. war on terror, both in and out of government, fear that cases like Lodi demonstrate that the Bush administration, the Justice Department and the FBI have exaggerated the terrorist threat inside America. "Terrorism itself can be a rallying cry for political purposes," says John Brennan founder of the National Counterterrorism Center and 23-year veteran of the CIA. "There is a legitimate concern about terrorism. However, you don't want to overhype it, and I think there has been some of that over the past couple of years."

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine the American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

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