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U.S. District Judge Scheindlin dismissed the indictment after concluding that Osama Awadallah,
21, was unlawfully arrested after he was taken from his San Diego home several days after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Judge concluded that Awadallah was unlawfully seized.
The ruling states that federal statute does not authorize the detention of material witnesses for a
grand jury investigation. It was not immediately clear what effect this ruling could have on an
unknown number of material witnesses being held by the Department of Justice since the terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In her ruling Judge Scheindlin also threw out evidence seized after Awadallah, was taken into
custody on Sept. 21. The evidence included videotapes and a picture of Osama bin Laden.
The judge enumerated several factors indicating that Awadallah's consent to go with FBI agents
to their office and later to submit to a lie detector test was the product of coercion.
The ruling cites action of the FBI agents which were consistent with taking a person into custody
or detention. They repeatedly made a show of force by telling him he could not drive his own car,
frisked him, refused to let him inside his apartment and ordered him to keep a door open as he
urinated.
The series of abuses by the FBI in this case can only be described as frightening. Awadallah was
told that the FBI agents would "tear up" his apartment if they did get a warrant. The agents also
failed to tell Awadallah that he had the right to refuse any searches when they asked him to sign a
form consenting to a search.
Awadallah was charged with perjury for allegedly lying about his knowledge of one of the alleged
hijackers blamed for the suicide attack on the Pentagon.
In grand jury appearances, Awadallah admitted meeting alleged hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi 30 to 40
times but denied knowing associate Khalid al-Mihdhar. Confronted with an exam booklet in which
he had written the name Khalid, he later admitted he knew both of them.
Judge Scheindlin was critical of Attorney General John Ashcroft and his prosecutors. She wrote
that they had violated the Constitution by improperly using the material-witness statute to jail
witnesses for the grand jury investigation. Scheindlin concluded that the statute, which
prosecutors have used to hold witnesses and suspects such as the man alleged to be the 20th
hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, "does not authorize the detention of material witnesses for a grand
jury investigation."
She sharply criticized Ashcroft for his statement that "aggressive detention of lawbreakers and
material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks."Scheindlin said
detention violated Awadallah's Fourth Amendment right to unreasonable seizure.
"Relying on the material-witness statute to detain people who are presumed innocent under our
Constitution in order to prevent potential crimes is an illegitimate use of the statute," she wrote.
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