Judge Rejects 9/11 Perjury Indictment

Decrying the U.S. government’s handling of the case, a federal judge Tuesday dismissed the perjury indictment of a Jordanian-born college student from San Diego who had initially denied, then admitted, knowing one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In ruling that authorities had misbehaved in the case of Osama Awadallah, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin declared unconstitutional the Bush administration’s policy of holding material witnesses in prison before they appeared in front of a grand jury investigating the attacks.

Awadallah has been free on bail since December.

“Since 1789, no Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation,” she wrote.

If upheld, the ruling could have a significant impact on the government’s handling of grand jury witnesses in its terrorism crackdown.

Criticizing Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft by name, Scheindlin attacked his philosophy of aggressively detaining material witnesses as “an illegitimate use” of the law.

Ashcroft called the decision “an anomaly” by a single trial judge, and defended the use of material witness warrants to aid the terror investigation.

“The department’s use of material witness warrants is fully consistent with the law and long-standing practice,” Ashcroft said, adding that “numerous other judges” have authorized such warrants in similar circumstances. Manhattan U.S. Atty. James B. Comey said the government is considering an appeal.

Jesse Berman, one of Awadallah’s lawyers, said he hoped the decision would have some influence on Ashcroft and the government’s handling of its search for terrorists.

“Maybe they should be a bit more contrite before trying to play macho with the public. Certainly hundreds of people have been treated not just in a shabby way, but in a brutal way,” Berman said. Shortly after Sept. 11, agents found a scrap of paper with the words “Osama 589-5316” in the glove compartment of a car abandoned by Nawaf al-Hazmi, a hijacker of American Airlines Flight 77 at Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

The FBI traced the number to a home where Awadallah, a 21-year-old student at Grossmont College in El Cajon, lived briefly two years earlier.

He was arrested Sept. 20 in San Diego and brought to New York. In grand jury appearances, he admitted meeting Al-Hazmi at work and at a mosque, but denied knowing Khalid al-Mihdhar, another hijacker.

When shown a college examination book in which he had written the name Khalid, he admitted knowing the second man and was charged with perjury.

Scheindlin found that Awadallah’s arrest warrant contained intentional misrepresentations and omissions.

She said that an FBI affidavit accompanying the warrant failed to disclose that Awadallah had substantial ties to San Diego, he had been extremely cooperative, and the phone number found in the hijacker’s car had not been used by Awadallah for 18 months.

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau in Washington contributed to this story.