TRAITOR AMERICAN MUSLIM SAILOR
Navy Case Goes To Jury
Former Sailor Allegedly Passed Information To Terrorists
Courant Staff Writer
March 4, 2008
NEW HAVEN - Government prosecutors
urged a jury Monday to convict a former Navy sailor of providing terrorists with
classified information about naval ship movements, saying the sailor admitted as
much in a coded admission that was secretly recorded by the FBI.
But the defense team for former navy Signalman Hassan Abu-Jihaad argued just as
forcefully for acquittal, hammering at what it called the "biggest flaw" in the
prosecution case the lack of any direct link between Abu-jihaad and a
classified discussion of U.S. ship vulnerabilities that was found in the
possession of a British Internet company tied to al-Qaida.
Over six days of trial, prosecutors presented evidence that they told jurors
supports the charges against Abu-jihaad that he provided material support to
terrorists and leaked classified information about national defense.
Abu-jihaad's lawyers presented only one
witness, a free-lance journalist who testified in support of the central defense
contention that anyone with a computer could have compiled the leaked
information from material posted on publicly available Internet sites by the
U.S. Navy and a variety of other sources.
Abu-jihaad, 32, who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2002, did not
testify. U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz turned the case over to
jurors Monday afternoon and instructed them to begin deliberating this morning.
Abu-jihaad is accused of intentionally jeopardizing the lives of U.S. military
personnel by providing detailed information about the movement and vulnerability
of a naval battle group deployed to the Persian Gulf to the operators of a
London Internet business called Azzam Publications. Government witnesses
testified that Azzam operated as an online adjunct to al-Qaida before it was
shut down by pressure from the U.S. government.
British law enforcement found what was referred to during the trial as the
Battle Group Document during a December 2003 search of the home of one of the
Azzam operators, Babar Ahmad. Ahmad is under indictment in a case related to
that of Abu-jihaad. Both are being tried in Connecticut because they are accused
of communicating by e-mail that passed through equipment maintained by a
Connecticut Internet service provider.
U.S. investigators found electronic evidence of numerous e-mail exchanges
between Abu-jihaad and the Azzam. Prosecutors produced evidence that they claim
shows he ordered al-Qaida propaganda videos from Azzam and expressed support for
the suicide attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. They also found that Azzam
had taken what prosecutors called the unusual step of saving a copy of his
e-mail address.
Although computer analysts could find no direct electronic link between Abu-jihaad
and transmission of the Battle Group document, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen
B. Reynolds told the jury Monday that an exhaustive, global investigation by a
variety of security agencies compiled enough other evidence to convict him of
the leak.
Among other things, Reyolds said, Abu-jihaad was the only member of the U.S.
armed forces in regular e-mail communication with Azzam at the time of the leak.
Perhaps more important, Reynolds said, Abu-jihaad admitted causing the leak in
crudely encoded conversations secretly recorded by the FBI in 2006.
Reynolds said that when pressed by other alleged terror sympathizers for
additional military intelligence, Abu-jihaad said he had lost access to the
information since separating from the Navy in 2002. Reynolds quoted Abu-jihaad
as saying he could no longer provide "hot meals" or "fresh meals" because he had
been out of the Navy for four years.
Reynolds replayed one of the recordings to jurors during his summation. On it,
Abu-jihaad can be heard saying: "I ain't been working in the field of making
meals in a long time. I've been out of that quatro years."
Abu-jihaad's obsession with coded talk was part of his effort to avoid detection
and was the reason he could not be linked to the leaked Battle Group document,
Reynolds said.
"There is no forensic link to the Battle Group Document itself because the
defendant told you himself in his own words that he covers his tracks," Reynolds
told jurors.
But Dan LaBelle, one of Abu-jihaad's lawyers, dismissed government allusions to
coded conversations and other counter-surveillance measures.
"Those conversations are so cryptic that nobody knows what they are actually
talking about," LaBelle told the jury. "There is no way you can draw that
conclusion from those conversations."
In fact, LaBelle said, Abu-jihaad was so "non-secretive" that he even told his
immediate supervisor aboard the destroyer USS Benfold, which was assigned to the
battle group, that he was ordering al-Qaida propaganda videos over the Internet.
LaBelle used most of his closing argument in an effort to persuade jurors that
the information about the battle group could have been collected from navy press
releases, newspaper reports and books on U.S and foreign navies.
But Reynolds said there was enough classified information in the leaked document
to suggest it could have been provided only by someone with access to the battle
group's navigational plans. As a signalman, who had a secret security clearance
and who was assigned to the Benfold's navigation division, Reynolds said, Abu-jihaad
had that access.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) A former Navy sailor has been convicted of leaking details about his own ship's movements to suspected terrorism supporters.
Jurors were in their second day of deliberations when they convicted Hassan Abu-Jihaad of Phoenix of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information.
Federal prosecutors said the 32-year-old sympathized with the enemy and admitted disclosing military intelligence.
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907
In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in
good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be
treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to
discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American,
and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man
who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.
We have room for but one flag, the American flag.... We have room for but one
language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one
sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.