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April 01, 2002
Diary of a Terrorist's Lawyer
By Randall B. Hamud
"Hamud. You have proven to America that you
are not with us, but with the terrorists. We're sick
of seeing your face on television. Watch yourself,
Hamud. Watch yourself." ¶ It's December 16, 2001, and
a man who called once before has just called again
with a short hate-filled message for my answering
machine. There have been others-maybe a dozen. And
compared to some of those, this one shouldn't be so
upsetting. Not when anonymous callers are promising to
bomb my home. Still, I have a funny feeling about this
latest caller: something in the man's voice-a ring of
credibility, if you will-that leaves me on edge. The
next morning, I drive downtown and play the tape for
Antoine El-Assis-one of two police officers in San
Diego of Arabic descent.
Roughly 100,000 Arabs now live in this city,
and, like me, most are Muslim-although I have to say
I'm hardly the best example of a religiously devoted
person. I don't pray five times a day, as you're
supposed to. Nor do I speak Arabic or fast during
Ramadan. And after having gone to college and law
school in the 1960s, my view of the world is decidedly
secular. Still, I am the grandson of Middle Eastern
immigrants and retain a strong sense of pride in my
heritage.
My own father built houses for a living. He
was an olive-skinned, dark-haired man who migrated
from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1935 and died at age 48
of cancer. His was a short yet, as I understand it,
fairly happy life. But at one point in that life, I
know, he wanted to be a lawyer. He even went to night
school for a while until financial pressure forced him
to quit. So, I guess you could say that when I became
a lawyer, I picked up where he left off.
Like a lot of legal careers, though, mine up
till now hasn't been terribly eventful. I graduated
from UCLA Law School in 1970, spent a total of seven
years as a deputy city attorney in Compton and Los
Angeles, then spent seven more at the Atlantic
Richfield Oil Company as an in-house counsel. This
brought me to 1985, when I moved to San Diego and set
up shop as a sole practitioner. The cases I handled
were fairly typical-wrongful termination, race and sex
discrimination, personal injury, and the like. I also
became active in the Arab-American community. I served
two years as chair of the city's American Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee, for example. Currently,
I chair the police department's advisory board, which
deals with such issues as hate crimes and racial
profiling. I'd like to think we were making progress.
But the world changed dramatically on September 11,
and, like so many, I'm still trying to feel my way
through th! e fallout.
Officer El-Assis knew exactly what I was going
through. In fact, after I received the first three
death threats, he came to my house and tried to calm
both my 83-year-old mother and my companion, Ida.
"Don't worry. The sort of people who make these calls
usually never mean business," El-Assis said. But now,
with yet another menacing message to listen to, he
wants me to agree to a phone trap-one that would give
the police the ability to trace all of my incoming
calls, including those of my clients. "I'll think it
over," I tell him.
Being type-cast as a terrorist's lawyer, I've
found, often leaves you with few good options. What's
at stake is nothing less precious than the integrity
of the United States Constitution. However, in making
the choices I've made, I'm painfully aware of the toll
they've taken on my family. I've asked myself: How do
I justify this to my mother, who's been worried sick
over my personal safety? And what do I say to Ida?
This is the Arab-American woman I met in 1983, married
in 1985, divorced in 1996, and then started living
with again in 1998. I won't even try to explain all
that-except to say that after a very rocky period, we
seemed to have found our way back to each other. Then,
one day, she saw me on the news defending young men
who, in the eyes of the world, deserved to suffer for
unspecified crimes. It was enough to make her ill.
"How can you do this to us?" she asked.
"These guys need our help," I said. "They
didn't do anything wrong."
"It's not worth getting shot over."
"You're exaggerating."
"If you want to endanger yourself, that's
fine," she said. "But to endanger me and the rest of
your family-that's not right."
"Look," I said, "we just need to be a little
more careful."
I was feeling pretty bad by then, but I felt
even worse when she glared at me and then softly, but
ever so sarcastically, thanked me for putting her in
harm's way.
On September 11, at around 6:00 a.m., I was
jolted out of a pleasant slumber. It was my
29-year-old stepdaughter, Kristi, on the phone,
calling with the news that the World Trade Center had
been hit. A few minutes later, Ida and I were sitting
in front of the television, watching in horror as the
second hijacked airliner crashed into the center's
north tower. Then we saw the Pentagon in flames. "My
God," I remember thinking, "I hope no Arabs did this."
I also remember thinking about the last big terrorist
attack this country went through, when, in 1995, a
bomb went off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City. That one killed 168 people. It also
triggered a wave of violent incidents against Arabs
that continued right up until the arrest of Timothy
McVeigh. I must say, I was never so happy to see a
blond-haired, blue-eyed man in the news as I was when
I saw that guy. But now, of course, things would be
different! .
As the country mobilized, federal officials
quickly focused their attention on San Diego, since it
was here that two of the identified hijackers-Nawaf
Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdar-spent the better part of
the previous year. These men were from Saudi Arabia
and had initially landed in Los Angeles on tourist
visas before coming to San Diego. Passing themselves
off as students, they blended quite well into our
Arab-American community. They prayed at our mosques,
took a couple of flying lessons at a nearby airfield,
and casually interacted with a lot of
people-especially Muslims.
Before September 11, San Diego's Muslims had
enjoyed good relations with law enforcement. But the
country was now at war, and in war there's a natural
tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, which
made us feel particularly vulnerable to hate crimes.
Meanwhile, back in the nation's capital, we started to
hear some very ominous comments-especially from
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who, for all his later
denials, seemed to believe that due process was no
longer an affordable option. As he observed at one
point: "Our single objective is to prevent terrorist
attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the
streets."
My own involvement in all this began on
September 16. That's when a friend from one of the
local mosques asked me to speak to a man who needed
some legal advice. The next day, at a local
restaurant, I met with a soft-spoken, thirtysomething
gentleman I'll call Omar. At first we made small talk.
Then he turned quite grave. "I met [the two identified
terrorists] Alhazmi and Almihdar at the mosque," he
explained. "They said they were students, and they had
very limited English skills. So, I offered to help
them in various ways." This included translating a
number of documents for them. It also included helping
Alhazmi with a money transfer from the Middle East.
"What should I do?" he asked me. I advised him to go
straight to the FBI, explaining that if the feds
traced the cash transfer back to him, he'd have a
difficult time convincing anyone that he had been
duped. I also offered to accompany him.
We ended up making two visits to the FBI's San
Diego headquarters-the first on September 17, the
second on the 21st. On both occasions we sat with two
agents in a small room that had a video camera hanging
from the ceiling. I thought the interviews went pretty
well. Omar identified photographs and told the agents
everything he knew about the alleged terrorists. He
even provided them with documentation for the cash
transaction. The agents thanked us profusely and, to
my relief, never showed any inclination to take Omar
into custody. I suppose that my involvement with the
feds would have ended on a high note if it had ended
there. But near the end of our second visit, I got a
call on my cell phone.
I took the call out in the hallway. It was
from another Muslim friend of mine who wanted me to
meet with a man named Jamal Awadallah, who in turn had
a brother named Osama who needed help. The story I
subsequently heard from Jamal was rather confusing to
me, but the gist of it was that Osama-a 21-year-old
resident alien studying computer science at Grossmont
College-had been arrested without any charges filed
and was about to be shipped off to New York for at
least a year. "How do you know that?" I asked Jamal.
"Because," he answered, "that's what the FBI told
him."
To make sense of the Constitution, the great
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was guided by what he called
"the felt necessities of the times"-a notion that
liberals in particular warm up to since it makes the
Constitution a living document to advance the cause of
social justice. This made all the difference in the
world during the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
But there have also been times when the necessities
that were felt gave rein to some of the government's
darkest impulses. The anticommunist witch-hunts of the
1950s come immediately to mind. So does the internment
of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World
War II and the mass arrest and imprisonment of more
than 4,000 so-called anarchists in 1920 without charge
or recourse to counsel. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln
suspended the writ of habeas corpus and convened
military tribunals to try Southern sympathizers. And
just seven years after ratification of the Bill of Ri!
ghts, President John Adams signed into law the
Sedition Act, which effectively made it a crime to
criticize the government.
I don't doubt that men of good will were
behind much of this sad history-men who in defense of
their country felt the need to cut constitutional
corners. But if, with the benefit of hindsight, their
actions are judged to be reprehensible, it's only
because they betrayed a lack of confidence in the very
principles they were sworn to uphold. And this, I
think, is how John Ashcroft will ultimately be judged
for the rounding up of hundreds of Arab Muslim men
without any apparent regard for their rights under our
system of justice.
How did Ashcroft get away with it? In the most
egregious cases the answer, interestingly enough, has
to do with a radical reinterpretation of section 3144
of title 18 of the United States Code, otherwise known
as the material witness statute. The idea behind this
procedural statute was simple enough. It was to give
prosecutors the ability to hold witnesses for a
reasonable period-just long enough to get them in
front of a grand jury or deposition reporter-if deemed
to be a flight risk. Under Ashcroft's new paradigm,
though, reasonable was redefined as indefinite, and
flight risk was any male with ties to the Middle East.
And this apparently was how Osama Awadallah fell into
Ashcroft's dragnet.
At about 6:30, on the evening of September 21,
I arrived at San Diego's Metropolitan Correctional
Center (MCC)-a high-rise just behind the city's
superior court. I had never been inside a prison
before. But even if I had, I doubt I could ever have
imagined what was in store for me. At the front desk,
I identified myself as Osama Awadallah's lawyer and
asked to see him. The guard told me that no one by
that name was in custody. "That can't be," I said. In
fact, before leaving FBI headquarters with Omar, I had
confirmed Osama's location with one of the agents.
That didn't seem to impress the guard, though. He just
gave me a blank stare.
With cell phone in hand I walked outside the
facility and punched in the number that one of the FBI
agents had given me. "What the hell's going on here?"
I said when I got him on the line. "I brought you guys
some good information. I expect some reciprocity." The
agent apologized and said he'd make a few calls. I
stood there waiting for more than an hour. Then a
guard came to the prison door and motioned me back in.
He provided no explanation, nor did I ask for one. I
just went where he told me to go, which brought me to
a third-floor glass-enclosed conference room, where a
slight young man in a white jumpsuit sat slumped over
a round table. "Who are you?" he asked in English as I
sat in the chair facing him. "I'm Randy Hamud. I
understand you need a lawyer." This seemed to have a
calming effect on him, and he began to tell me his
life story. I sat back and listened for a while,
figuring that there'd be plenty of time for quest!
ions later. But about 45 minutes into his discourse I
happened to call him Osama, and it was enough to stop
him cold.
"Osama," he said. "Who's Osama?"
"What do you mean, 'Who's Osama?' You're
Osama. Aren't you?"
"No, I'm Mohdar. Mohdar Abdullah."
Mohdar was a 23-year-old ethnic Yemeni from
Somalia who came to San Diego in 1998 as a Somali
asylee. Like Osama, he too attended Grossmont College.
He also held a full-time job as an assistant manager
at the same Texaco station where one of the identified
terrorists had worked. The FBI first questioned Mohdar
on September 17. Four days later a young traditionally
dressed Muslim woman was sitting in the passenger's
seat of Mohdar's car. She was a friend of Mohdar's and
had asked him for a ride to work. Ten minutes later,
Mohdar pulled up to the front entrance of a Fry's
electronics store. Then, from out of nowhere, a half
dozen agents surrounded the car with their guns drawn.
Mohdar's passenger fainted, and by the time she
regained consciousness, Mohdar was gone.
Now, talking to this man who I thought was
Osama, I felt a rush of paranoia coming on. Was I
being set up? I wondered. After all, it's against the
law to talk to prisoners with whom you don't have any
official business. So I asked Mohdar if he needed a
lawyer. Mohdar said that he did. In fact, he had
repeatedly asked for one. I took out a pen and wrote
out a retainer agreement for him to sign. Then I went
back downstairs and once again asked for Osama.
"You were just speaking to him," the guard
said.
"No, that was Mohdar Abdullah. You brought me
the wrong guy."
This got the guard very agitated: "How did you
get in there with him in the first place?"
"Look," I said, "I just went where you told me
to go. Now can I see Awadallah?
"You're not seeing anyone else tonight," he
growled. And with that he showed me the door.
When I returned to the prison the next day and
finally met up with the real Osama, I found that his
English was not nearly as good as Mohdar's. I also
found Osama to be a very religious person. When he
spoke, it was always "Allah this" and "Allah that."
And, as far as I could tell, the most incriminating
thing the government had on him had to do with a piece
of paper that was found in a car at Dulles
International Airport-the same car that Alhazmi and
Almihdar used before boarding the plane that crashed
into the Pentagon. The piece of paper had Osama's name
and phone number on it. What the government seemed to
ignore, though, was that at the time of the terrorist
attacks the phone number on that piece of paper was an
old one that Osama had not used for more than a year
and a half.
Before the week was out, yet another
incarcerated material witness became my client. That
was Yazeed al-Salmi, a 23-year-old Saudi Arabian
national who came here on a valid student visa and had
the misfortune of briefly renting a room in the same
boarding house that the terrorists were living in.
I knew by then that I needed help. So, on the
evening of September 24 I sent an email over a chat
line that reaches about 150 local lawyers. I described
my situation and asked for assistance. I said I needed
criminal and immigration expertise and hoped to
organize a defense fund to pay their fees. I expected
to get at least a dozen offers of assistance. Not a
single offer came in. I realized then just how alone I
was.
Meanwhile, the fear remained that at any
moment my clients would be whisked off to New York by
the feds-a concern that was only exacerbated on my
third visit to the prison, when, in a rerun of what
had happened on the 21st, the guards once again played
dumb. "We don't know where your clients are," they
said. This time, though, before my clients were
miraculously "found," I let the FBI know how angry I
was by peppering my language with a few choice
expletives.
The next morning, I placed a call to the U.S.
Attorney's office to see when and where my clients
would be arraigned. An assistant U.S. Attorney told me
that the arraignment would happen at 10:30. Then he
called back and said it had been pushed back to 2:00
p.m. Then 4:00. As he explained it, his office was
still awaiting material witness arrest warrants from
the district court of the Southern District of New
York, where a grand jury had been empaneled to
investigate the terrorist attacks. He also strongly
advised me to keep my mouth shut. The New York court
had issued a seal order on all related proceedings, he
claimed.
"That may be so," I responded. "But I have yet
to be served with such an order. And until I am, I'm
keeping my options open."
With the benefit of hindsight, I realize now
what a great-albeit unintended-favor that prosecutor
did for me when he effectively put me on notice that a
window of opportunity was about to be slammed shut and
that if I had anything to gain by going public I had
to act fast. And so by 3:30 that very afternoon, I was
standing in front of the federal courthouse,
surrounded by about 50 reporters and cameramen,
drawing attention to the due process abuses. Of
course, I was drawing attention to myself as
well-which was driven home to me a few hours later
when I received my first death threat.
Crisis, they say, makes for strange
bedfellows. But crisis can also drive a wedge between
even the closest of allies, and, to be blunt about it,
I was disappointed with Ida. She kept telling me:
"People don't care about the Constitution. They're
angry, and as far as everyone is concerned, you're
representing terrorists."
"I don't have any respect for cowardice under
fire," I snapped back at her at one point.
The crisis also strained my relations with
some of the more devout Muslim men in San Diego. It's
not that I didn't respect their devotion. But neither
Ida nor I ever accepted the way they segregate
women-an aspect of today's resurgent fundamentalism
that we hadn't grown up with.
I've also found that the devout can be
incredibly impractical at times. For example, at a
meeting, we would be discussing one thing or another,
when five minutes before the designated prayer time
they'd all get up and leave. "Hey," I'd say, "can't we
finish this?" "Oh no," they'd answer. "Our prayers are
more effective when they're said at exactly the right
moment." It's ironic:
So much of the world views Muslims as
dangerous radicals. But the most observant Muslims I
know tend to be rather passive in nature, even
ineffectual. And so when Alhazmi and Almihdar showed
up in San Diego, they were like the proverbial wolves
among sheep.
Of the 13 mosques in and around San Diego, the
largest by far is Abu Bakr, also known as the Islamic
Center of San Diego, a beautiful white-domed building
north of downtown that draws about 1,400 worshipers
each week. The mosque also runs a school for about 130
children. On the day of the terrorist attacks, it
became an obvious focal point for people's rage. Some
made threatening phone calls, some drove by shouting
obscenities, a few threw paint balls, and a small
explosive device was detonated nearby.
The mosque responded to these threats by
hiring an armed guard service to patrol the grounds 24
hours a day. They also shut the school down for
awhile. Then Ashcroft began his mass arrests-first
200, then 400, then, before we knew it, we heard 1,200
were secretly being held.
There's something rather curious about this
material witness statute, though: To fall into its
grip, you need to be cooperative enough to give the
authorities some reason to believe that you have
inside information, and cooperation was certainly
something that my clients were guilty of. They tried
to answer every question the FBI asked, and even
allowed agents to search their homes and cars without
the benefit of an attorney. Then they were arrested.
If ever there was a way to deter cooperation from
others, the FBI had found it.
When my clients' hearing finally got under way
on September 25 (I had gotten a continuance because of
the absence of interpreters), the government, as
promised, presented the seal order from New York and
moved to extend the seal to San Diego. I objected. So
did an attorney for the San Diego Union Tribune. But
the federal magistrate promptly granted the
prosecutor's request, citing national security
concerns. I was now officially gagged. But the gag did
not apply to the four character witnesses whom I had
called to testify. And they later gave the press
plenty of details about how the proceeding dragged on
for more than four-and-a-half hours and how my
clients, charged with no crime, and showing no
inclination to run, were still denied bail.
September 25 was the last day I saw my clients
in San Diego. I had gotten to know each of them fairly
well by then. Yazeed was the cool, calm one. Mohdar
was more anxious and kept asking me the same questions
over and over, never wanting me to leave. But it was
Osama who seemed to have the most trouble adjusting to
incarceration, and he was especially upset when the
guards didn't respect the dietary restrictions that
went with his faith.
I did what I could to help keep their spirits
up. I told them that they had to look at this
experience as a challenge that would make them better
Muslims. I also impressed upon them the need to keep
their bodies, as well as their minds, in shape. "I
want you to be doing push-ups and sit-ups," I told
them. Then, sometime between the 26th and the 27th,
they vanished from MCC.
"If anyone has seen my clients, please tell me
where they are," I told a group of reporters in front
of the prison on the 27th. That was a Thursday.
Finally, on Monday, I got a call from a prosecutor at
the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan. "Your clients
are scheduled to be arraigned in two hours," he told
me. "Ah, excuse me," I said; I don't think I'll be
able to make that. Any chance we could move it back a
day?" He agreed to a 24-hour extension.
"Gee, these bastards really don't want me
going to New York." That was my first thought when two
FBI agents flashed their IDs at me at the San Diego
Airport, just as I was about to board a red-eye.
"What's up?" I asked as they motioned me over.
It turned out to be no big deal-just another
instance of racial profiling, which by now had become
the norm rather than the exception. In fact, one of
the agents apologized for the inconvenience when he
recognized me. But as we stood there chatting, I
noticed that I was drawing some icy stares from the
crowd. "Hey, can you guys do me a favor?" I said to
the agents. "Can you just stick around and make sure I
get on this flight?" I figured I might as well put
them to work on my behalf.
I got into JFK at about 7:00 a.m. the next
morning. There, I flagged a cab and met up with Abdeen
Jabara-a local criminal lawyer who had been
recommended to me through a mutual friend at the Arab
American Institute in Washington, D.C. Together, we
walked down strangely empty city streets to the
federal courthouse on Pearl Street, about four blocks
east of Ground Zero.
The October 2 hearing was originally sealed,
but I'm now at liberty to talk about it as a result of
a recent court order. I can describe, for example, how
in the first few moments of that proceeding the judge
made a tortured argument about how Jabara had a
conflict of interest and then abruptly removed him
from the courtroom, denying me the benefit of
co-counsel. I can also describe how, a short time
later, Osama tugged at my trousers and whispered to me
that he had been beaten up by the guards. "Your
honor," I said, "I would like to ask for a medical
examination of my client." The judge stared down from
his bench. "He looks okay to me," he said, adding,
"Bring a lawsuit later if you want to."
After the day's proceedings, I checked into
the nearby Soho Grand Hotel, where, from my room, I
could see the smoke rising from Ground Zero. It was an
eerie sight, especially at night when, with the klieg
lights turned on, you could almost see the souls
hovering above the rubble. As I said, I'm not a very
religious person, but during the three weeks I spent
in New York I often said a prayer for the victims of
9/11 before going to sleep.
As for Osama, Mohdar, and Yazeed, they slept
at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in South
Manhattan, a high-security facility that makes San
Diego's MCC look like a Hilton. Most striking to me
was how cold it was in there, like a meat locker. And
while the guards bundled up in warm jackets, the
prisoners were given only thin orange jumpsuits to
wear with no undershirts. Often, when my clients were
brought to me, they shivered so hard that their chains
rattled.
When I visited the facility, the guards put me
in a small steel room beneath a cold air vent, which
gave me a feel for what it was like to be their
prisoner. On one occasion, in fact, they made me wait
four hours in there without access to a restroom.
My clients were kept on the ninth floor in a
maximum-security unit reserved for the most hardened
criminals. There even the most basic of privileges
were denied them. They got no family visits, no mail,
no television, no writing material, and no reading
material other than the Quran. My clients were also
subjected to videotaped strip searches at least three
times a week. And they met with constant verbal abuse
from the guards. "Fucking terrorists," is how the
guards often addressed them.
I first visited the facility on October 3. But
it wasn't until the 4th, when Osama was wearing a
short-sleeved pullover top instead of the usual
long-sleeved jumpsuit, that I actually saw the bruises
on his body. We were in a conference room in the U.S.
Attorney's office on the fifth floor of the federal
courthouse. Several FBI agents and assistant U.S.
Attorneys were present, along with my new local
counsel, Jesse Berman, a noted criminal defense
attorney. As I could see then, Osama had a bruise that
ran across the back of his neck, where he claimed a
guard had hit him. Other bruises circumscribed his
upper arms. On his ankles and wrists I observed welts
and healing cuts, which he said he suffered when the
guards had pulled or stepped on his shackles.
I went ballistic-especially after one of the
prosecutors looked me straight in the eye and actually
had the audacity to accuse Osama of inflicting wounds
on himself. "I don't think so," I said. I then
suggested to the prosecutor that he ought to check
himself into MCC for awhile and see how long he'd last
in that dungeon. "I'll even go with you," I added.
"I'd like nothing better than to put you in there," he
smiled.
I gave the U.S. Attorney's office 24 hours to
get my clients out of that god-awful place. And when
nothing happened, I called every news organization I
could think of and told them how my clients were being
brutalized. The story ran nationally, and soon after
that the guards backed off on the physical abuse. They
even brought in a doctor to examine Osama. Meanwhile,
my own visibility was ratcheted up a few more notches.
Unnamed government sources would later say
that I was a shameless media hound. But given how
often the government was leaking half-truths,
distortions, and lies about my clients, I felt that I
was simply fighting fire with fire. I also felt that I
was standing up for the Constitution. I appeared on
ABC, CBS, and CNN. And on Court TV I debated Alan
Dershowitz.
Dershowitz, I thought, was on an especially
odd wicket. For here was one of the country's leading
progressives saying on national television that to
save lives judges should be willing to issue torture
orders to extract information from suspects. I wasn't
very impressed with his logic. And on the program, I
reminded him of a recent Washington Post article in
which former FBI counterintelligence chief Robert
Blitzer forcefully argued against the torture of
prisoners-purely on pragmatic grounds. It simply
wasn't a very effective way to elicit truthful
information, Blitzer said. I also asked Dershowitz to
think about the international implications of what he
was suggesting: "What do we say to China if we start
torturing people here under any rationale?"
On October 15, the Wall Street Journal ran a
feature about me headlined: "Muslim Lawyer Terms FBI
Probe Discriminatory." Also, that same day, I got a
call from Mike Wallace. Wallace, who is 83 but still
walks with the brisk gait of a 25-year-old, greeted me
at his Manhattan office along with two 60 Minutes
producers. They were planning a segment on the
so-called Patriot Act that had just passed through
Congress, and he wanted to put me on with Russ
Feingold (D-Wis.)-the only U.S. senator who had voted
against it. My conversation with Wallace lasted about
an hour. Then, for the next evening, he invited me to
dinner.
He took me to an elegant Italian restaurant on
Park Avenue, where we were joined by Jim Greenfield of
the New York Times, who had edited the Pentagon
Papers, and a prominent physician, Carmel Cohen, and
his wife, Babbette. Through two hours of animated
discussion, it seemed that we solved just about all of
the world's problems, although at one point I suppose
I did engender a certain amount of discomfort when I
suggested that if Ashcroft's persecution of Arabs was
allowed to continue, the Jews would undoubtedly be
next. "No," Dr. Cohen responded, "I don't think so.
Jews have become too successful in this country for
that to happen." I knew I was on thin ice. After all,
I was the only non-Jewish person at the table. But I
couldn't help thinking how similar Dr. Cohen's views
were to the sentiments of so many Jews who lived in
Weimar Germany-say around 1928.
The 60 Minutes segment taping was scheduled
for the morning of October 19. But before that
happened, I went through one of the most nightmarish
experiences of my life. I was at MCC again, on the
ninth-floor landing just outside the unit where my
clients were housed. As on my previous visits, I
walked over to the phone next to the sealed security
door. I never had to say anything. All I had to do was
pick up the phone and put it down, which signaled
someone inside to let me in. But on this particular
day, when I put the phone down, it started ringing.
This hadn't happened before. From the top of the
landing, I looked down at the guard's desk one floor
below and asked what I should do. "Pick it up," one of
the guards said. But as soon as I did, a stream of
invective came through. "Who the fuck is ringing my
bell?" the man on the other end said. I hung up. The
guards below asked what happened. I told them. The
phone rang ag! ain. I looked back down at the guards.
They motioned me to answer it. I did. The same voice
again screamed into my ear, "Who the fuck is ringing
my bell? Quit ringing my bell!" I hung up. Then a
female guard walked up the stairs and stood next to me
on the landing. The phone rang a third time. "Pick it
up," she said. I picked it up. Then all of sudden, the
steel door flew open, and I found myself face to face
with a very large, angry man.
"Why the fuck are you ringing my bell?" he
wanted to know.
"I'm here to see my clients," I stammered.
"Listen," he said, "you don't understand. This
is my house! And when you're in my house you do what
the fuck I say."
"I have to see my clients."
He studied me for a moment. "You know," he
said, "you look intoxicated."
"I'm not intoxicated. I just came from the
federal court."
"Well, you look intoxicated to me. Get the
fuck off my floor." Then three other large men
suddenly materialized, and together they escorted me
back to the elevator. I feared the worst: that they
were going to beat me up or drug me or something.
Instead, they left me in a locker area near the ground
floor front entrance and told me to wait for
questioning. Terrified, I slipped my business card to
another lawyer who happened to be entering the prison.
I told him to call Jesse Berman if anything happened
to me. Then I retrieved my cell phone from one of the
lockers and called Jesse myself. "Jesse," I said, "I'm
here at MCC, and the guards are messing with me. I
think I may be in danger."
"Just get the hell out of there," he advised.
A few minutes later another guard approached
me. "Look," I said, "if I'm not the fuck out of here
in five minutes the cavalry is coming. Do you
understand? Just give me my ID and let me the fuck out
of here!" They decided to oblige.
When I walked back to the hotel I had the
doorman confirm that I was stone-cold sober, just in
case I needed a witness. Then I tried to get some
sleep but wasn't very successful. Nor was I much
calmer the next morning at the CBS studios when I
tried to describe to the 60 Minutes producers what had
happened to me. Finally, Wallace himself came down.
"Randy," he said, with that famous clipped delivery of
his, "you're absolutely right. What happened to you
last night shouldn't have happened in America. No
doubt about it. But Randy, listen, we're going to be
taping in a few minutes, and you've got to calm down.
You must calm down. Because the last thing we want to
do right now is put a fired-up Arab on television." I
had to laugh.
By late October, Yazeed had been set free
after testifying before a grand jury. In a terse
statement, the Justice Department simply said that
Yazeed had been fully cooperative and was no longer
under suspicion. That was the closest they came to an
apology. But Osama and Mohdar weren't so lucky. On
October 19, Osama was charged with two counts of lying
to the grand jury on incidental matters unrelated
to the terrorist attacks. Then, on October 24,
Mohdar was charged with making false statements on a
visa application. Osama remained in New York. Mohdar
was flown back to San Diego where his indictment was
issued.
By then I had recruited Kerry Steigerwalt, a
highly respected criminal defense lawyer, to represent
Mohdar in San Diego. I also redoubled my efforts to
enlist the support of the Muslim community. The
mosques had committed to pay my New York expenses. But
their fund-raising efforts had fallen short because of
thousands of dollars in checks I had to write to New
York counsel. When I returned from New York I was in
the hole by about $5,000. It wasn't just about money,
though.
On the evening of November 19, the second day
of Ramadan, I went to the mosque that my clients
usually prayed at-the Al-Rabat mosque in La Mesa-to
try and get people to come down to the court and
testify on Mohdar's behalf for a second bail hearing.
Unlike the first hearing, this one would be held in
open court, which was enough to convince my original
four character witnesses not to testify. And this
meant I had to start from scratch. I prayed all eight
Ramadan prayers with the congregation. Then I asked
for permission to speak. "We have a very worldly
problem," I said. "One of our Muslim brothers, Mohdar
Abdullah, is in jail downtown. He has nothing to do
with terrorism. A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow
morning. I know this has been a very trying time for
all of us, but a good Muslim is only afraid of Allah,
not anyone else. We have to unite and help that boy.
I'm asking you to look deep into your consciences, and
for thos! e of you who know Mohdar please come to the
court tomorrow and tell the judge what a good man he
is. And if you don't know him, come anyway to show
solidarity."
There were about 300 worshippers in the room
that night, but the next morning only about 15 came to
the court, and only 4 of those knew Mohdar well enough
to testify. I suppose it could have been worse, and
with those few arrows in our quiver we managed to get
the feds to agree to a reduction of the proposed bail
from $2 million to $500,000 in both cash and security.
Of course, that was still a ridiculously large amount.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Osama's bail was
also set at half a million, although the judge now
presiding in the case did have the decency to declare
in open court that Osama was not a suspected
terrorist. She also stipulated that he only had to pay
10 percent of the bail in cash, which amounted to
$50,000-something I thought we could easily raise. I
was wrong. People were just too afraid in the current
environment to be identified as contributors.
But one day Ida and I were having lunch at a
local grille, and the most amazing thing happened. She
had calmed down quite a bit by then, if only because,
after three months, none of us had been shot at. "I
still think what you're doing is not worth the
effort," she said to me again. "And when people look
back on this, they won't say Randy Hamud saved the
Constitution; they'll say he represented terrorists.
But we can't," she added, "let Osama stay in that
horrible place any longer."
I studied her for a moment.
"How much up-front cash will it take to free
him?" she asked.
"Well," I said, "the total is $50,000. Osama's
brother told me he's raised $2,500. That leaves
$47,500."
"I'll just write a check on my equity line."
I sat there stunned.
"Why do you want to do this?" I asked.
"I'm just so sick of seeing Ashcroft in the
news every day, throwing out all this bullshit about
how rights aren't being violated. And I can't stand
how wimpy all these Muslim men are. They'll segregate
me and tell me how to dress, but they don't even have
the guts to write a check."
A week later Osama called Ida from his
brother's house in San Diego. "I will say a special
prayer for you every day," he told her. When Ida got
off the phone, I noticed that she was more than a
little misty-eyed.
"You see," I said. "I told you he was a good
boy."
Randall B. Hamud is a sole practitioner living
in San Diego.
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