6 at Guantánamo Said to Face Trial in 9/11 Case

Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said.

The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

The case could begin to fulfill a longtime goal of the Bush administration: establishing culpability for the terrorist attacks of 2001. It could also help the administration make its case that some detainees at Guantánamo, where 275 men remain, would pose a threat if they are not held at Guantánamo or elsewhere. Officials have long said that a half-dozen men held at Guantánamo played essential roles in the plot directed by Mr. Mohammed, from would-be hijackers to financiers.

But the case would also bring new scrutiny to the military commission system, which has a troubled history and has been criticized as a system designed to win convictions but that does not provide the legal protections of American civilian courts.

War-crimes charges against the men would almost certainly place the prosecutors in a battle over the treatment of inmates because at least two detainees tied to the 2001 terror attacks were subject to aggressive interrogation techniques that critics say amounted to torture.

One official who has been briefed on the case said the military prosecutors were considering seeking the death penalty for Mr. Mohammed, although no final decision appears to have been made. The official added that the military prosecutors had decided to focus on the Sept. 11 attacks in part as an effort to try to establish credibility for the military commission system before a new administration takes the White House next January.

“The thinking was 9/11 is the heart and soul of the whole thing. The thinking was: go for that,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no one in the government was authorized to speak about the case. Even if the charges are released soon, it would be many months before a trial could be held, lawyers said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, declined to comment specifically. But he added that the government was preparing a case against “individuals who have been involved in some of the most grievous acts of violence and terror against the United States and our allies.”

“The prosecution team is close to moving forward on referring charges on a number of individuals,” Mr. Whitman said.

Ever since President Bush announced in 2006 that he had transferred 14 “high value” detainees to Guantánamo from a secret C.I.A. detention program, it has been expected that the Pentagon would eventually lodge charges involving several of the numerous terror plots to which officials say several of those men were tied.

Officials have said detainees now held at Guantánamo are responsible for attacks that killed thousands of people, including the United States Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, the attack on the destroyer Cole in 2000, and the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002.

But it has always been clear that a case involving the Sept. 11 plot would be the centerpiece of the military commissions system and its most stringent test. After the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s first system for military commission trials in 2006, Congress enacted a new law.

Among other things, the Military Commissions Act provides that detainees charged with war crimes are entitled to military lawyers to defend them, a presumption of innocence and a right of appeal. But detainees’ lawyers and other critics have said that many flaws remain, including the fact that the system is under Pentagon control and even the judges are military officers.

Told of the possible charges, Carie Lemack, whose mother was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, said such a trial would be a grueling process for the families. But, Ms. Lemack said, “It is important that justice be brought to those who killed my mother and nearly 3,000 others.”
It was not clear Friday whether final decisions had been made about precise charges and which detainees are to be included.

But it is known that the prosecutors have considered charges of murder, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism because of the Sept. 11 deaths. It is also known that a joint team of military and Department of Justice lawyers working on the case have considered charging six of the best-known Guantánamo detainees.

Lawyers have said that two of those are men whose treatment in American hands would inevitably be a focus of defense lawyers in their cases.
One of them, Mr. Mohammed, known as KSM, was subject to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding while in secret C.I.A. custody, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, confirmed this week

The American-educated Mr. Mohammed was described by the Sept. 11 commission as the “self-cast star, the superterrorist,” with plans for destruction on a vast scale. At a Pentagon hearing last year, he claimed responsibility for more than 30 terrorist attacks and plots.

He was explicit about his role in the 2001 attacks. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he said.

The other detainee whose treatment could become a focus of any trial is Mohammed al-Qahtani, who has been held at Guantánamo since 2002. Pentagon officials have said he may have been the so-called “20th hijacker.” A month before the attacks, he flew from Dubai to Orlando, Fla., but was denied entry into the United States by an immigration official.

Pentagon investigators concluded in 2005 that he had been subject to abusive treatment at Guantánamo, including sleep deprivation, being forced to wear a bra and being led around on a leash.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, one of Mr. al-Qahtani’s lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said she had no information about whether he would be charged. “But if he is,” Ms. Gutierrez said, “I can assure you that his well-documented torture and the controversy over secret trials will be the focus.”

Zacarias Moussaoui, who at one point was identified by prosecutors as a potential “20th hijacker” pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005, and is serving a life term. He is the only person who has been tried in a United States court for involvement in the Sept. 11 plot.
Defense lawyers are also expected to use any commission cases to challenge the prosecutors over the C.I.A.’s destruction of tapes of interrogations of two detainees, which has been acknowledged by the agency.

Among the other four potential defendants are Guantánamo detainees who intelligence officials have said played critical support roles for the hijackers.
Officials say Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who had been a roommate of the lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in Hamburg, Germany, was the main intermediary between the hijackers and Al Qaeda leaders in the months before Sept. 11.

The Pentagon has described another detainee, Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mr. Mohammed, as “a key lieutenant for KSM during the operation on 11 September” who wired $114,500 to the hijackers.

Mr. al-Baluchi’s assistant was Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, according to various accounts. The September 11 commission said that Mr. al-Hawsawi had been assigned by Mr. Mohammed to help coordinate hijackers’ travel and was so centrally involved that he was their contact for unused money to be returned in the days before the attacks.

Finally, the detainee known as Khallad, who is missing part of his right leg as a result of what officials say is a long jihadist history, is believed to have had long ties to Mr. bin Laden. Officials have said Khallad helped select and train some of the hijackers and was originally slated to have been one of them himself.

Jailed preacher faces US extradition

Lawyers for Abu Hamza were scrambling last night to appeal against a formal order by the home secretary for the radical preacher's extradition to the US.
Jacqui Smith signed the order yesterday afternoon, meaning Abu Hamza would be sent to the US to face a possible life sentence on terrorism charges within a month, unless his lawyers appeal within 14 days.

Abu Hamza and his supporters used threats and violence to take over a mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, which they turned into an academy for jihadi terrorism. He is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for inciting hatred, but the government wants him sent to the US before his jail term is completed.

Abu Hamza's lawyer, Muddassar Arani, told the Guardian her client would appeal within the time limit set down in extradition law: "They've used evidence gained from torture to implicate him in terrorism," she said. She claimed that one person who implicated the preacher had been tortured in a US-run secret prison, and another alleged witness had been tortured in Guantánamo Bay.

Arani said one ground of appeal would be the threat that Abu Hamza would be held in a US supermax prison where he would be denied human contact: "It will be inhuman and degrading treatment, he will be in total isolation, he will have no human contact with anyone." The US alleges Hamza was in contact with Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists and aided the hostage-taking of 16 western tourists in Yemen in December 1998 that ended in the deaths of three Britons. He is also charged with attempting to set up a training camp for "violent jihad" in Oregon in 1999

U.S. says no one too young for Guantanamo court

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday.

Navy Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges against Canadian defendant Omar Khadr, who was shot and captured at age 15 in a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

"He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda," Kuebler said.

Khadr is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer in the firefight and planting roadside bombs intended to kill other U.S. or coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

Khadr is charged in the Guantanamo war court with murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al Qaeda, providing material support for terrorism and spying by conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Kuebler argued that U.S. and international law assume that children involved in an armed conflict are not there voluntarily, because they lack the experience and judgment to understand the risk of joining armed forces. Defense attorneys contend that any charges against Khadr should be pursued in a civilian court in a juvenile system where the goal is rehabilitation rather than punishment.

If the U.S. Congress intended to try children as war criminals, it would have explicitly authorized that in the 2006 law that serves as a framework for the Guantanamo court, Kuebler said.

But a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, arguing for the prosecution, said that if Congress intended to exclude juveniles from the Guantanamo war court, it would have explicitly written that, because lawmakers knew Khadr could face charges. Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term "person," which legally refers to "anyone born alive," Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said.

LAST WESTERNER

Khadr is the last citizen of a Western nation among the 275 captives being held at Guantanamo as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Charges are now pending against five of the Guantanamo prisoners. The Pentagon plans to try about 80 of them. But six years after the detention camp opened, only one captive has been convicted in Guantanamo's widely criticized tribunal system and that was through a plea deal.

Khadr sat quietly during the hearing, clad in a white tunic and trouser uniform signifying that he complies with camp rules. In his more than five years at Guantanamo, the once pimply faced boy has grown into a 21-year-old man with a short, bushy beard.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, did not indicate when he would rule on the request to drop the charges. The case is scheduled for trial in May, though Kuebler said it probably would be delayed.

The court released documents describing the battle in which Khadr was captured. U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed Speer, it said.

An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside -- a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.

The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."

Khadr was instead given medical treatment and sent to Guantanamo.

US censured for waterboarding by UN

The UN's chief torture investigator criticised the US government yesterday for defending the use of "waterboarding", an interrogation method often described as a form of torture.
Manfred Nowak, the special rapporteur on torture, said: "This is absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law. [The] time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable."

On Tuesday, the CIA admitted for the first time that it had used the technique, in which interrogators strap a suspect to a board and pour water through a cloth over the face, creating a sensation of drowning. Testifying before Congress, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, said the method had been used on the suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al-Qaida leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

He said waterboarding had not been used for five years, but yesterday the White House deputy spokesman Tony Fratto said the practice could be revived if authorised by the president. It would depend on the circumstances, including the belief that an attack might be imminent.
Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said: "I'm not willing any more to discuss these questions with the US government, when they still say that this is allowed. It's not allowed."

Top U.S. Court reviews cases on detainees

WASHINGTON : Two months after the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case on the rights of the Guantánamo detainees, an unanticipated development has suddenly scrambled the outlook for a straightforward resolution. Cases that have been proceeding on completely separate judicial tracks may be about to converge.

The Bush administration said on Monday that it would file an emergency appeal at the court, seeking review of a lower-court ruling that the government must supply more information to defend its designation of a detainee as an enemy combatant — entirely too much information, in the administration's view.

The appeal, to be filed by Feb. 14, a day before the justices' next closed-door conference, will ask the court to add the new case to an argument calendar that had appeared to be complete for the remainder of the term when the justices departed on their current recess two weeks ago.

On the surface, the two cases appear quite distinct. Boumediene v. Bush, the case the Supreme Court heard on Dec. 5, challenges Congress's withdrawal of the federal courts' jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees contesting their open-ended confinement. Whether the Military Commissions Act of 2006 violated the Constitution's injunction against the "suspension" of habeas corpus is a question steeped in constitutional history and theory.

By contrast, Bismullah v. Gates, the subject of the administration's new appeal, is as deep in the weeds of Congressional intent as the Boumediene case is high up in the realm of constitutional principle. It concerns the intricate system that Congress established in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 for determining whether a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay was being properly held as an enemy combatant. The dispute is over how extensive a record the government must supply when a prisoner designated as an enemy combatant then appeals to the forum provided by the 2005 law, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Below the surface, however, the two cases are inextricably entwined. They overlap on the question of judicial review of the enemy-combatant designation. Under the Supreme Court's precedents, habeas corpus — the historic method of challenging detention by the executive branch — is not always strictly required as long as the legislature has provided an "adequate substitute." So the question is whether the review that detainees may seek in the D. C. Circuit is extensive enough to qualify as such a substitute. In the Boumediene case, the detainees' lawyers have argued vigorously that it is not, while the administration has asserted just as forcefully that it is.

Which side is right depends on what the review consists of. The D. C. Circuit appeared well on the way to defining the scope of its review last July, when a three-judge panel of the 10-member appeals court rejected the administration's argument and ruled that the government had to turn over "relevant information in its possession that is reasonably available," including evidence withheld from the military's "combatant status review tribunal" that made the original enemy-combatant designation. The panel, including two of the appeals court's more conservative judges, Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, was unanimous.

Then things got complicated. The administration, arguing that the decision imposed an intolerable burden, asked the three judges to reconsider the case. In October, the panel refused. The administration next sought rehearing from the full court. Last Friday, the judges split 5 to 5, a tie that had the effect of denying rehearing and leaving the panel's opinion as the law.

This was no ordinary split. Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for four of those who voted for reconsideration, declared that the panel's opinion "endangers national security." Chief Judge Ginsburg, Judge Randolph's usual ideological ally, replied in defense of the opinion that "the court obviously must see all the government information" in order to fulfill the duty of appellate review that Congress gave it.

On Monday, the Justice Department asked the appeals court for a stay of the ruling to give the Supreme Court a chance to act, warning that "immediate and drastic consequences" would otherwise result.

The pressure on the justices to take up the Bismullah case may consequently be irresistible, even at the cost of upsetting their carefully composed schedule. The intriguing question is which side in the Boumediene case stands to benefit more. The answer is far from clear, due to a paradox that lies at the intersection of the two cases.

If the government's argument for a severely limited review in the D.C. Circuit wins the day, the detainees' lawyers would appear to be strengthened in their position that no adequate substitute for habeas corpus has been provided. On the other hand, a requirement, which the detainees seek, for a more robust appellate review could strengthen the government's hand in arguing that there is no need for habeas corpus after all. Each side, in other words, could be in the position of arguing against its own interest if the court grants review in the Bismullah case.

That would be only the latest twist in a legal dispute now in a third Supreme Court round with no obvious end in sight. What government information is "reasonably available?" What is the remedy for a faulty enemy-combatant designation? As the justices know as well as anyone, every answer leads to more questions.

CIA says it used waterboarding on three suspects

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.

"Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Congress is considering banning the simulated drowning technique. A Democratic senator and a human rights advocacy group urged a criminal investigation after Hayden made his remarks.

"Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a crime," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said at the Senate hearing on threats to the United States.

He said waterboarding has not been used in five years.

"The circumstances under which we are operating ... are frankly, different than they were in late 2001 and early 2002," Hayden said. "Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent. In addition to that, my agency ... had limited knowledge about al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden told reporters later that the interrogations of Mohammed and Zubaydah were particularly fruitful.

From the time of their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they were delivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006, the two suspects accounted for one-fourth of the human intelligence reports on al Qaeda, Hayden said.

Some analysts have questioned Mohammed's credibility under interrogation. But Hayden said most of the information was reliable and helped lead to other al Qaeda suspects.

He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and the agency works with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he said.

HARSH TACTICS

Hayden said fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation program launched after the September 11 attacks, with fewer than one-third of them subjected to any harsh interrogation techniques.

But applying the field manual's limitations to the CIA, he said, "would substantially increase the danger to America."

The CIA is the only U.S. agency that uses harsh interrogation techniques, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the hearing. The entire military adheres to the Army Field Manual and FBI Director Robert Mueller told the hearing his agency does not use coercive techniques.

A senior intelligence official said after the hearing that it was unclear whether the CIA could legally use waterboarding in the future, given changes in U.S. law. The Bush administration says it neither uses nor condones torture.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and judiciary committee member, demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey investigate the CIA waterboarding and vowed to delay the nomination for Mukasey's deputy until the attorney general responds to that and other issues.

A Justice Department investigation should explore whether waterboarding was authorized and whether those who authorized it violated the law," Durbin said in a letter to Mukasey.

The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a Justice Department investigation. Mukasey has said that probe was focused on the tapes' destruction rather than on the interrogation they depict, but investigators would be able to follow other evidence of illegal activity.

McConnell: When I Said Waterboarding Is ‘Torture,’ I Meant I Personally Don’t Like ‘Water Up My Nose’

In an interview with the New Yorker last month, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell admitted that if it were done to him, waterboarding “would be torture.” “If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful,” said McConnell. “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today, McConnell backed away from his previous statement, claiming that he had been taken “out of context.” McConnell said that he made his comment during a discussion about “being a water safety instructor” and how “some people” — like himself — “have difficulty putting their head under water”:

MCCONNELL: The discussion was about something entirely different. It was a personal discussion about when I grew up and what I was doing as a youngster. And the discussion was framed around being a water-safety instructor. Some people, and I’m one of them, have difficulty putting their head under water. If your head goes under water, I ingest water in my nose.

So what I was having a discussion with a journalist it was about being a water safety instructor and teaching people to swim. He said, “what about when water goes up your nose?” I said, “that’d be torturous. It’d be very painful for me.” Then it turned into a discussion of waterboarding. Maam, I made no statement or judgment regarding the legality of waterboarding.

McConnell said that after his interview for the New Yorker, he spoke to the journalist who wrote the article, Lawrence Wright, and asked him “not to put that in the article.” McConnell said he argued with Wright for ninety minutes in his effort to have the “torture” quote removed.

Last week, Attorney General Michael Mukasey admitted that he “would feel that” waterboarding “was” torture “if it were done to” him.

UPDATE: McConnell confirmed that waterboarding has been used on “only three detainees.”

UPDATE: TPMmuckraker has the entire New Yorker passage about waterboarding and water-safety instruction.

Absolved of terrorism, Haitian still in limbo

Lyglenson Lemorin must appear this week in front of a judge to argue that he's innocent of terrorism charges -- the very same charges a federal jury acquitted him of in December after a long trial in Miami.

It's not a case of double jeopardy. This time, Lemorin goes before an administrative judge in immigration court, which has a lower standard of proof and no jury of his peers. If he loses his case, he could be deported from Miami to his native Haiti.

Legal experts say Lemorin, 33, who is confined to an immigration facility, may be America's only lawful permanent resident to be booted out of the country despite being acquitted of terrorism charges and having no prior criminal record.

The case is being watched closely by lawyers around the country because it could encourage the government to take similar action against other law-abiding immigrants who are arrested but not convicted of a crime.

''I certainly don't know of a case quite like this one,'' said University of Virginia law professor David Martin, who served as general counsel for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.

Martin and other immigration experts said that while the U.S. government has a vital interest in ridding the country of terrorists, its move to deport the married father of two raises serious questions about whether authorities are unfairly trying to take double-barreled legal shots at him.

''To try to deport him on the same charges he was acquitted of is outrageous,'' said Marc Van Der Hout, a San Francisco attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, who has a long history of battling the government in deportation cases.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment about the case, but one immigration official said it appeared to be the first removal case of its kind. The vast majority of deportation cases involve foreign nationals in the country illegally or with criminal convictions.

A minuscule number of such cases in immigration court entail terrorism or national security charges, according to TRAC, a data research organization at Syracuse University.

While Lemorin's case appears unique, immigration authorities have stepped up efforts to deport some lawful permanent residents who have been acquitted of drug trafficking.

Lemorin, who was whisked away from South Florida to Georgia by federal agents in mid-December after he was acquitted of four terrorism conspiracy charges, will have his first appearance in an Atlanta immigration court on Thursday. He is charged with virtually the same ''material-support'' conspiracy offenses lodged against him and six other Miami men in the so-called Liberty City 7 case.

ACQUITTED BY JURY

In December, a 12-member jury acquitted Lemorin and deadlocked on the six other defendants, who were arrested in June 2006 on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up public and private buildings in a war against the United States. The remaining six defendants started another trial this past week.

Unlike the indictment, the immigration case makes no mention of al Qaeda. A charging document says Lemorin is a native and citizen of Haiti who was admitted as a lawful permanent resident at Miami International Airport on May 17, 1993. Like the indictment, it alleges that he conspired to bomb the FBI building in North Miami Beach and the Sears Tower in Chicago between November 2005 and June 2006.

The document says Lemorin is ''removable'' because he ``conspired to engage in a terrorist activity.''

A team of trial lawyers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement based in Miami is prosecuting the case, which will be heard by an administrative judge in Atlanta. The burden of proof is lower than ''beyond a reasonable doubt,'' the standard in criminal court. Instead, it is ''clear and convincing'' proof, which essentially means that the judge can order Lemorin's removal based on the weight of the evidence.

Lemorin recently obtained an immigration attorney in Atlanta with the help of the Florida Immigration Advocacy Center in Miami.

Lemorin, who faces a tough legal challenge to avoid deportation, was subject to a judge's gag order even after his acquittal because he is a potential witness in the Liberty City retrial. He is allowed to say only that he's innocent.

Lemorin's criminal defense attorney, Joel DeFabio, said his client wants to get his full story out so the public can see the reality of the government's allegations. ''He is not a terrorist and not a danger to the community,'' DeFabio said. ``He could be an asset to the Haitian-American community.''

His wife, Charlene Mingo Lemorin, said her husband's continued detention in a Lumpkin, Ga., immigration facility, has taken a heavy toll on his family. He had worked as a security guard and construction worker with the Liberty City group and was the family's ``bread and butter.''

''To look at the kind of man he is and to see what they have put him through, they should have some sympathy and some common sense,'' said Charlene, a U.S. citizen who lives in Miami Gardens. She said she has to undergo kidney dialysis because of complications from a pregnancy before her husband was arrested in 2006.

Charlene said her husband is afraid, confused and frustrated because he thought he would be a free man after his acquittal.

''I honestly thought in the United States and in a court of law you cannot charge a person twice for the same crime,'' she said. ``I feel like something is wrong with this whole situation. Because of their power, they think they can do whatever they please. But they don't realize they're destroying people's lives.''

Lemorin's case is analogous to a few high-profile immigration cases in recent years. Last October, the U.S. government agreed to end its 20-year effort to deport two immigrants accused of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The two Palestinians -- among a group dubbed the L.A. 8, which was accused of distributing a Popular Front magazine -- were lawful permanent residents with no criminal records, according to their attorney, Van Der Hout, of the National Lawyers Guild.

At the time, then-FBI Director William Webster testified before Congress that the agency had found no evidence of criminal or terrorist activity, noting that if they were U.S. citizens, there would not have been a basis to arrest them.

JUDGE'S VIEW

The government's decision to drop the deportation case against the last two defendants followed a federal immigration judge's opinion that it was ''an embarrassment to the rule of law'' that left ''a festering wound'' on the two Palestinian immigrants.

''You have a situation in the L.A. 8 case where the government admitted they did nothing criminal and wanted to use the immigration laws to get rid of them because they didn't like what they were doing politically,'' Van Der Hout said.

He said Lemorin's case is similar in that he was acquitted by a jury, but the government didn't like the outcome so authorities have sought to deport him. ''It's a much tougher row to hoe for the defendant because you have no jury, an immigration judge appointed by the government and lax rules of evidence,'' he said.