Al-Hussayen trial will continue

BOISE – Prosecutors have shown enough evidence of a conspiracy to aid terrorists that they can start introducing additional evidence against Sami Al-Hussayen, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, even if the evidence isn’t directly about anything he did.

“In the interest of time, the court finds that the government has arguably established conspiracy,” U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge said. However, he said, “The jury will ultimately have to decide whether or not a conspiracy exists beyond a reasonable doubt.”

He added, “The law does not require a formal agreement, and one can become a member in a conspiracy by willingly participating in the illegal plan” without full knowledge of its aims. “The defendant has been established for various Web sites as a supervisor, manager, person with authority to sign…”

The ruling Tuesday was key because it opens the door to evidence about actions by others who may have been “co-conspirators.” Previously, such evidence was excluded as second-hand or hearsay statements. Al-Hussayen, a University of Idaho graduate student in computer science, faces charges of providing material support to terrorists, in part by doing volunteer work on Web sites for Islamic groups including the Islamic Assembly of North America.

Prosecutors, in court documents filed a day earlier, said they have proven that Al-Hussayen conspired with IANA and its employees to support terrorists, though Al-Hussayen is the only one who’s been charged. They pointed in particular to four fatwas, or religious verdicts, offering religious justification for suicide attacks, and a controversial anti-Israel lecture by an extremist Saudi sheikh, all of which went out on the Internet on sites connected to Al-Hussayen.

The 34-year-old Saudi student maintains his innocence, and the defense says the government’s alleged evidence of conspiracy is merely free speech and religious expression, protected by the First Amendment.

The judge cautioned, “If the evidence is not developed, some of the exhibits may very well constitute protected speech as the defense contends.” That could cause them to be stricken, and potentially cause the terrorism charges to be dropped.

The judge warned prosecutors that his ruling didn’t mean the “floodgates are open” to any and all inflammatory evidence. But the very next thing the attorneys took up was whether or not jurors should be shown portions of a one-hour movie entitled “Russian Hell 2000” on the war in Chechnya.

“This movie does have violent graphic images, I believe, of a person being executed,” said lead defense attorney David Nevin. He noted that the movie was not posted on any site connected to Al-Hussayen, nor was there a link to it from any site the defendant managed.

But prosecutors said one site, while not linked, carried a banner proclaiming that the movie was “coming soon.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist said the prosecution has a witness who will testify that he watched the movie on the Internet as part of his recruitment to go fight in Chechnya, after hearing about it from the “coming soon” banner.

The judge said he wanted to watch the movie before deciding if it would be appropriate to show to the jury. He also asked attorneys on both sides to provide legal arguments today on whether or not the movie is appropriate evidence.

After the judge’s ruling, prosecutors spent much of the rest of the day introducing into evidence an array of Web pages, fatwas and articles supportive of Muslim fighters in Chechnya and Palestine. Several of the articles called on all Muslims to help the cause, by offering prayers, contributing their financial support, or even by going to fight themselves.

Most of the new evidence involved two sub-sites of the popular www.islamway.com Web site, islamway.com/qoqaz and islamway.com/Palestine. Prosecutors pointed in particular to a link from the Palestine sub-site that they said steered viewers to another site to donate money to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization.

That link is a key piece of evidence in one of the three terrorism charges Al-Hussayen faces.

Nevin objected to virtually all of the new evidence, and argued repeatedly that neither Al-Hussayen nor IANA had anything to do with the two sub-sites. When IANA purchased the islamway.com site from its original owner in 2001, links to both of those sub-sites had disappeared.

Under cross-examination, FBI intelligence analyst John Pulcastro repeatedly refused to answer Nevin’s question about whether www.islamway.com carried links to the two sub-sites after May 2001, insisting instead that the sub-sites still existed for those who knew where to find them directly without links.

Nevin also pointed out that on several Web pages Pulcastro had identified as evidence from those sub-sites, a logo appears of the company that formerly operated islamway.com, Rayyan Media of Quebec, Canada.