 JUDGE THROWS OUT CHARGES AGAINST IMMIGRANT STUDENT
This week a federal judge in New York threw out the government’s case against Osama Awadallah, a 21-year-old student from Jordan the government had accused of lying about his association with two of the September 11th hijackers. The government arrested and detained Awadallah shortly after September 11th, when his phone number was found in a car belonging to one of the hijackers.
According to the judge, material witnesses, which the government claimed Awadallah was, cannot be detained solely for the purpose of a grand jury investigation. Moreover, the judge found that Awadallah had been unlawfully arrested outside his home in San Diego.
In his testimony before the grand jury, Awadallah admitted meeting one of the hijackers, but denied knowing a second until confronted with a notebook in which he had written the second man’s name. Based on this, the government charged him with perjury. The judge found a number of unconstitutional actions in the government’s treatment of Awadallah, from coercing him into taking a lie detector test to failing to tell him he had a constitutional right to say no to agents’ request to search his home.
The government relied extensively on the detention of people as material witnesses, arresting dozens of people and holding them for various periods of time. The impact of this week’s decision on these cases is unclear, but it is almost certain that the government will appeal. Indeed, in a press conference shortly after the decision was issued, Attorney General John Ashcroft called it “an anomaly,” and noted that a number of other judges have upheld the practice of detaining material witnesses .
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