Facebook reeled in more than 750 million users in seven short years and now
some alleged terrorist conspirators have made a federal case out of it in New
Bern.
It’s not the first time legal concerns about the social media site have
surfaced. But even as the clerk passed out copies of Maryland and South Carolina
cases where its user pages were at issue, U.S. Eastern District Federal Court
Judge Louise Flanagan told prosecuting and defense attorneys: “You are making
law in this case. The Facebook issue is huge.
“I am very cautious because of the significance of this,” Flanagan said,
after handing back a five-inch thick folder of Facebook printed pages to
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bowler.
Flanagan’s comments came near the close of court Wednesday in the
high-profile terrorism trial of three Wake County men accused of conspiracy in
the case.
She said the advertisements printed on the pages could adversely influence a
juror, cause them “to make judgment calls” about the defendants as users. She
expressed concern about her ruling because of the evolving nature of the social
media site as it defines a user’s interests or assigns potential “friends”
because of them.
Often users are paired with products or people because of interests gathered
by website visits from cookies collected by search engines and sites they visit.
Sometimes these are exchanged or funneled to advertisers.
The government had attempted to enter the Facebook exchanges as part of more
than 35,000 pages of evidence in the government’s case against Hysen Sherifi,
Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan and Ziyad Yaghi, who were charged in a Sept. 24, 2009
federal indictment.
The three men, part of a group known as the “Tar Heel terrorists” or
“homegrown terrorists,” all face charges of conspiracy to provide material
support for terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure.
Sherifi, 27, a Kosovo native who came as a refugee at age 15 during the war
there and is now a permanent U.S. resident, is also charged with illegal
possession of firearms and conspiracy to kill officials of the federal
government.
The Facebook exchanges surfaced as part of the testimony of the government’s
first witness, FBI Agent Paul Minella. Much of the evidence in the trial hinges
on whether information from Facebook pages can be introduced as evidence.
Defense attorneys, particular Hassan’s attorney Dan Boyce of Raleigh,
objected to the evidence as hearsay, setting in motion the court inquiry.
After excusing the jury for lunch, Flanagan heard from government attorneys
about several cases they say substantiate their claim to the legitimacy of the
Facebook exchanges but she still had questions and Boyce continued his
objections with conflicting case law.
Flanagan said she agreed with government attorneys’ general interpretation
that verifying the source of postings is similar to verifying wiretaps “but it’s
somewhat different, too.”
Boyce said he objected less to using the postings he could verify with
witnesses he could cross examine but continued his objection to using the
Facebook postings from those for whom he will not have that opportunity.
“I’m sensitive to that aspect of the argument,” Flanagan. “I’m somewhat in
agreement with what (government) counsel has said. Let’s look at the law.”
“Pull some cases,” Flanagan said. “I want to see those cases. This may go to
things like Twitter. I would benefit greatly from that.”
Wednesday morning’s testimony from Minella and cross examination by Sherifi’s
New Bern defense attorney, Robert J. McAfee, showed some connection between
Sherifi and Daniel Patrick “Safullah” Boyd, the man described as the “hub” of a
terrorism conspiracy that led to the Middle East and Kosovo.
Boyd and his two sons charged in the indictment have pleaded guilty and await
sentencing; the father faces up to life and 15 years in prison. He is expected
to testify in the trial over talk and interaction between 2006 and 2009 that
conspired and gave material support toward exercising a “violent jihad.”
But the FBI witness outlined undercover operations that McAfee contends lured
his client into places and situations, using a former bank robber paid more than
$111,000 plus a car and expenses valued at over $55,000. The money paid for the
bugged apartment where Sherifi lived with the man, and the tapped telephone and
hacked computer he used there.
McAfee substantiated that the informant known by codename “Jawbreaker” was
also given “special benefits” after he overstayed his visa and was in the U.S.
illegally.
In the beginning of Boyce’s cross examination of Minella, he substantiated
that his client Hassan was not in any of the photos, wiretaps and other
surveillance documents except for a summer 2007 trip to the Middle East.
Addressing Minella’s verification of Hassan’s purchase of a rifle at Dick’s
Sporting Goods in March 2007, Boyce said the purchase was entirely a legal and
constitutional act and that the information he provided checked out as
truthful.
Afternoon testimony from the government’s second witness, Abdullah Eddarkoui,
who was escorted in an out by agents, required a course for jurors in using the
court’s listening technology for segments of many conversations between
Eddarkoui and Boyd. Eddarkoui is Moroccan and speaks Arabic and French. He was
difficult to understand and, although he spoke in open court, the public and
press often could not hear him.
His testimony often came over the objections of defense attorneys but was
mostly permitted by Flanagan to allow the government to begin showing how
elements evolved in the conspiracy of a “violent jihad” with fellow mujahideen
or “fighters for God.”
There are hundreds of hours of audio tape collected over several years.
The trial of another of the eight charged in the indictment, defendant Anes
Subasic, who is defending himself, is ongoing in federal court in Greenville.
The eighth defendant, Jude Kenan Mohammad, has not been apprehended.
Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5665 or sbook@freedomenc.com.
NEW BERN, N.C. (AP) — Federal prosecutors played
tapes on Wednesday of a North Carolina man describing his plans to organize a
terrorist attack on the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.
The tape of Daniel Patrick Boyd, who pleaded
guilty to federal terrorism charges in February, was played during the trial of
three men accused of plotting terrorist attacks with him.
Boyd could be heard on the recording
bragging about how easy it would be for him and a team to gain access to the
Marine base and kidnap or kill service members and their families.
“My father was an officer,” Boyd, who converted to
Islam as a teenager, says on the tapes. “What will they say, their hero’s son
cutting their head off?”
What Boyd didn’t know was that the man he was
speaking to, Abdullah Eddarkoui, was a paid informant for the FBI who was
wearing a wire.
The secret recording Eddarkoui made of the
conversation outside Boyd’s house near Raleigh was so clear frogs could be heard
croaking in the background.
Eddarkoui was a key witness Wednesday as
prosecutors began building their case against three men alleged to have plotted
with Boyd and his sons to attack the Marine base and targets overseas.
Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi and Hysen
Sherifi have pleaded not guilty. A fourth defendant, Anes Subasic, has declined
to have an attorney represent him and will be tried following the conclusion of
the trial for the others.
FBI Agent Paul Minella, who recruited Eddarkoui to
work for the government, testified that a multiyear surveillance effort used
subpoenas and paid informants to collect a trove of evidence about the group,
including bank records, emails, Facebook posts and audio tapes.
Boyd pleaded guilty in February to charges of
conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder,
kidnap and injure persons in a foreign country. Now the man who liked to call himself “Safallah,”
the Arabic word for “Sword of God,” is expected to testify for
the prosecution.
Two of Boyd’s sons, Dylan and Zakariya Boyd, have
also pleaded guilty.
Eddarkoui, a Moroccan living in the United
States illegally, was working in a Durham beauty supply store in 2005
when Minella recruited him to infiltrate a Raleigh mosque and befriend Boyd,
according to testimony. His FBI code name was “Jawbreaker.”
In one of the tapes made by the informant, Boyd
describes a reconnaissance visit to Quantico and being surprised at how easily
he could drive along streets where Marine officers lived. The fact the Virginia
base is built around a town, he said, made it a better target than a more secure
facility, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
“The generals’ wives, they’re jogging,” he
said of Quantico. “Their children are playing.”
Boyd said it would be easy to enter the
home of a general and hold him hostage.
“I’ll kick in his door and take him from his bed,”
he said.
One of the defendants on trial Wednesday, Hysen
Sherifi, was present for some of the taped conversations. Boyd assured the
informant Sherifi would participate in an attack.
“Hysen … he will do it,” Boyd told Eddarkoui. “He
won’t question anything.”
Attorneys for Hassan, Yaghi and Sherfi said in
their opening arguments that the men are innocent and knew nothing of Boyd’s
plans. They also worked to undermine Eddarkoui’s credibility, pointing out that
he got a green card making him a legal United States resident after working with
the FBI.
He was also paid nearly $111,000 by the FBI over
five years and given another $55,000 for expenses that included buying a car and
paying rent for a Raleigh apartment wired with secret microphones.
In a taped conversation, Boyd expressed admiration
for terrorist leaders that included Osama bin Laden and said the orders he heard
from jihadist leaders with recordings on the Internet were clear: “Hit
everything you can that hurt America and the Jew.”
After prosecutors say he was foiled in a 2007 plot
to commit terrorist attacks in Israel, Boyd turned his attention to the
possibility of committing a terrorist attack at home. As an example, he gave the
1994 bombing of the World Trade Center carried out by a group of men from
New Jersey.
Though Boyd feared he was under surveillance, he
told Eddarkoui that the United States was still a good place to plot and execute
a terrorist attack.
“Before you had to be smart,” Boyd told the
government informant wearing a concealed microphone. “Now you have to be
really smart.”
In audio recordings of conversations between Boyd
and Jawbreaker that were played in court, Boyd talked about his intentions to
attack Quantico. He spoke of how easy it would be to get on the base because
it’s also a city.
“I did some preliminary reconnaissance,
and what I saw was amazing. I saw the residences of all their commanding
officers,” Boyd said in one recording, adding that Sherifi was in on the
plan.
Jawbreaker said Boyd was intensely loyal to
Afghanistan, where he traveled in 1989 to join the fight against Soviet
occupation. Boyd always wanted to fight non-Muslims, the informant said.
“Every single day, it was about jihad and
fighting,” Jawbreaker testified.
An FBI search of Boyd’s Willow Spring home in 2009
turned up about two dozen guns and more than 27,000 rounds of ammunition.
…
A seventh defendant, Anes Subasic, is representing
himself and will be tried after the case against Hassan, Yaghi and Sherifi is
finished. Their trial is expected to last five weeks.
Authorities believe another man charged in the
case, Jude Kenan Mohammad, 22, is in Pakistan. A ninth member
of the group, Bajram Asllani, 30, was arrested in Kosovo last year, but the U.S.
doesn’t have an extradition treaty with that country.
Jude Kenan Mohammad was the name used to stir up fear, and trample
liberties, this past 9/11.
