Student Allegedly Talked of Assassination Plots

A federal judge ordered that an American student accused of conspiring with Al Qaeda be held without bail after authorities said Tuesday he had admitted discussing assassination plots against President Bush and other U.S. leaders, along with suicide hijackings and other terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, admitted on multiple occasions that after leaving his northern Virginia home to study in Saudi Arabia in 2002, he joined an Al Qaeda cell and discussed a wide range of attacks with other operatives, FBI agent Barry Cole testified during a bail hearing in U.S. District Court.

Cole and Assistant U.S. Atty. David Laufman told the court that Abu Ali and a second alleged Al Qaeda operative in Saudi custody had confirmed having many conversations about killing Bush -- including using three snipers to ensure success -- and kidnapping or killing members of Congress, administration officials and U.S. soldiers.

The two men also talked about blowing up ships and planes at American military installations, freeing Islamic militants at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and launching another “Sept. 11-type attack,” Cole testified.

In that last scenario, Cole said, Abu Ali and the second man concluded that they could board U.S.-bound jetliners in Britain or Australia and wait for the planes to enter U.S. airspace before hijacking them and flying them into landmark buildings. Laufman said the targets were along the East Coast, but did not identify them.

“There is clear and convincing evidence that this defendant presents an extraordinarily grave danger to this community and to this nation,” Laufman said in opposing defense motions that Abu Ali be released on bail.

“This defendant betrayed his country.... We know that because the defendant admitted this on multiple occasions and because the leader of the Al Qaeda cell confirmed it.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady agreed, and ruled after a three-hour hearing that Abu Ali must remain behind bars until his trial on charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, Abu Ali faces up to 80 years in federal prison.

Defense lawyer John Kenneth Zwerling did not contest the specifics of the government’s case. Instead, he said Abu Ali had been tortured by Saudi authorities into confessing to things he did not do or even discuss.

Zwerling also said the Justice Department ignored Abu Ali’s alleged confessions to Saudi authorities for more than a year, and that one FBI assistant director, Michael Mason, even told members of the Muslim community last year that U.S. authorities were not interested in detaining Abu Ali if the Saudi government ever released him.

Zwerling contended that the Justice Department only sought a grand jury indictment against Abu Ali as a way of shutting down a civil lawsuit his family filed against the U.S. government, alleging it was partially responsible for him being tortured and illegally detained by Riyadh.

The prosecution denied Tuesday that Ali had been tortured while in Saudi Arabia or that the United States did anything to put him in danger of being tortured while there.

Abu Ali was arrested in June 2003 while attending the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, but was never charged with a crime by Saudi authorities. He was returned to the United States last week and indicted by a federal grand jury.

Legal experts said that the case would be closely watched because it would test the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute a case based on evidence gathered by another government.

Abu Ali allegedly made his incriminating statements to Saudi interrogators and jail officials in 2003. He also wrote a confession that was approved by two Saudi magistrates, and then allowed himself to be videotaped reading it, according to court records filed in the case.

And that raises the question of whether Abu Ali’s statements are admissible as evidence in a U.S. court, especially since he is claiming that they were made under duress, several legal experts said.

“For a criminal case, it has to be firsthand evidence. They’d have to fly the Saudi guys over here to present it in court,” said one former federal prosecutor who has counseled the Bush administration on terrorism issues.

Even the signed confession could be ruled inadmissible unless prosecutors proved that Abu Ali did not make it under any kind of pressure, said the former prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities of the case.

On the flip side, the former prosecutor said, the murky legal statutes regarding such matters could someday force the U.S. government to free Abu Ali despite its belief that he posed a grave danger to U.S. citizens.

“In American law at the moment, until and unless you have admissible proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you cannot restrain a citizen in any fashion,” the former prosecutor said. “Now they have to prove the case. Absent that, they are back to having the guy out on the streets.”

Abu Ali, dressed in a green prison jumpsuit and showing no emotion, remained silent during the hearing. Dozens of family members were present to show support, but were told by a bailiff that they could not attempt to speak to Abu Ali, as they had in a previous court session last week.

“I cannot talk to my son after 20 months of detention?” asked his mother, Faten Abu Ali.

She described her son as a pious and peace-loving student who left his home in Falls Church to spend much of 2002 and 2003 studying Islam in Saudi Arabia.

Before that, Abu Ali was valedictorian of his graduating class at the Islamic Saudi Academy, an Alexandria, Va., school sponsored by the Saudi government.

But federal authorities painted a starkly different picture, saying Abu Ali had become radicalized even before leaving for Saudi Arabia. Once there, they said, he fell in with an Al Qaeda cell and became intent on attacking the United States.

FBI agent Cole and prosecutor Laufman acknowledged that none of the plots ever went past the discussion stage. But they said Abu Ali had told Saudi authorities that he was trained in weapons use, explosives and document forgery by Al Qaeda operatives while in the Gulf kingdom, and that he wanted so desperately to launch an attack on U.S. soil that he sought and received a special blessing from a radical Saudi cleric to do so as part of a jihad, or holy war, against the West.

And, Cole said, Abu Ali was given an option at one point that raised alarms within the FBI: An Al Qaeda leader told Abu Ali he could “martyr himself” in a terrorist attack overseas or return to the United States and quietly establish a sleeper cell.

In that case, Abu Ali was told he should “marry a Christian woman, assimilate into the community and he would be provided operatives” from Al Qaeda to help launch an attack.