High Court Will Not Block Anti-Terrorism Trial of Local Residents

Metropolitan News Enterprise, January 9, 2007

Page 1

From Staff and Wire Service Reports


The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear a challenge to an
indictment charging seven Los Angeles residents with aiding an Iranian
opposition group that has been designated as a foreign terrorist
organization.

The justices, without comment, left standing a 2004 ruling of the Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals that while the government's order making such a
designation may be appealed by the group, it cannot be collaterally attacked
by persons charged with a criminal offense of having contributed "material
support" to a group so designated.

That ruling overturned a decision by Senior U.S. District Judge Robert
Takasugi of the Central District of California, who held that the law
violates the First Amendment and the right of free association because it
does not allow a defendant to contest the government's determination that
the designated organization engages in or furthers terrorism.

The appellate panel reinstated an indictment charging seven Los Angeles
residents with raising money for a terror organization with links to Saddam
Hussein.

About 30 groups are currently designated as foreign terrorist organizations
under the law, part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996. Prosecutions of individuals under the statute were rare before Sept.
11, 2001, but the administration subsequently has used it to win dozens of
terror convictions nationwide, from Lackawanna, N.Y., to Seattle and
Portland, Ore.

Opposition Group

The defendants whose petition the high court declined to hear- Hossein
Afshari, Mohammad Omidvar, Hassan Rezaie, Roya Rahmani, Navid Taj, Mustafa
Ahmady, and Alireza Mohamad Moradi-were indicted in 2001 indictment on
charges of funneling several hundred thousand dollars to the Mujahedin-e
Khalq, or MEK.

According to the indictment, the Los Angeles defendants solicited donations
at the Los Angeles International Airport and wired money to an MEK bank
account in Turkey.

The group is also known as the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran or
the National Council of Resistance for Iran, among other names. It began as
a Marxist opposition group to the Shah of Iran, but when the Islamist regime
took hold following the Shah's overthrow, its members fled to France before
establishing a base of operations in border areas of Iraq.

The government alleged that the organization was engaged in anti-Iran
terrorism with the support of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq between 1997
and 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization in 1997 and has been
re-designated as such every two years since.

During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military briefly bombed MEK
camps until the group capitulated and agreed to disarm.

Statutory Review Period

The statute allows an organization 30 days to seek review of the designation
or re-designation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The
State Department is required to file an administrative record to enable the
court to determine whether the designation was contrary to law or
unsupported by substantial evidence.

The MEK unsuccessfully contested the original designation. Its challenge to
the 1999 renewal was initially successful, but the State Department upheld
its original decision on remand and the court affirmed on the basis of an
expanded administrative record.

The group also lost appeals in 2001 and 2003. Its petition to the Supreme
Court was supported by more than 150 members of Congress, led by Reps.
Robert Filner, a Democrat from San Diego, and Republican Tom Tancredo of
Colorado.

Supporters of the group have argued that the designations by the Clinton and
Bush administrations were factually unsupportable and were motivated by a
desire to appease Iran.

In his opinion for the Ninth Circuit, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said the
government need only prove the "fact that a particular organization was
designated at the time the material support was given, not whether the
government made a correct designation." The government, he noted, alleges
that the defendants were told about the designation before they sent money
to the MEK.

He distinguished a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an
Alabama obscenity conviction because the defendant, a news stand operator,
was not allowed to contest a local agency's conclusion that the material in
question was, in fact, obscene.

When the issue is foreign terrorism, the judge said, "the stakes and
incentives are far different" than in an obscenity case in which the initial
determination is made by a mere local agency. The judgment of the
administrative branch in the former case is entitled to great deference,
Kleinfeld said in an opinion joined by Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw and William
A. Fletcher.

The Fourth Circuit earlier reached a similar conclusion in upholding the
conviction of a man who funneled money to the militant Hezbollah
organization while insisting he had a right to challenge that group's
listing.



Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company


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