Lawyers for a Muslim scholar convicted in 2005 of soliciting treason on
Friday pressed a judge to order prosecutors to disclose information they
believe could show that American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki
was once a government informant.
Ali Al-Timimi of Fairfax was the spiritual leader for a group of
northern Virginia Muslims who played paintball to train for holy war. He
was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for exhorting some of
them to join the Taliban and fight against the U.S. after the Sept. 11
attacks. Several of them got as far as Pakistan, training with a
militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Al-Timimi's lawyers said Friday at a hearing in U.S. District Court in
Alexandria that they are suspicious about a 2002 visit al-Awlaki paid to
al-Timimi. The defense now suspects al-Awlaki, who has since been
killed, went there as an informant to get incriminating information on
al-Timimi. If so, they say al-Awlaki's role as an informant should have
been disclosed at trial.
At the meeting, al-Awlaki purportedly tried to get al-Timimi's help in
recruiting men for jihad, but al-Timimi rejected him. Al-Timimi's
lawyer, Jonathan Turley, said government documentation of the meeting
would refute the case made at trial by prosecutors that al-Timimi was
urging Muslims to fight. They also say it would show that al-Timimi had
been in the government's crosshairs back in 2002, which would have
contradicted other testimony that the government did not begin
investigating al-Timimi until 2003.
The suspicions about al-Awlaki stem from newly discovered information
that FBI agents involved in Al-Timimi's case may have facilitated
al-Awlaki's return to the United States in 2002. Al-Awlaki had been imam
of a northern Virginia mosque at the time of the 2001 attacks but left
the U.S. shortly thereafter.
He had contact with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and in years after
the 2001 attacks emerged as a top al-Qaida leader before being killed in
a drone strike in 2011. There has been debate as to whether al-Awlaki
hid long-held al-Qaida sympathies in his time in the U.S. or radicalized
after leaving the years after Sept. 11.
Also released earlier this year were FBI documents showing that agents
observed al-Awlaki in 2001 and 2002 hiring prostitutes, but never
brought charges against him.
Prosecutors say they've turned over everything required of them. In
court papers and at Friday's hearing, they gave no information on
whether al-Awlaki may have been an informant. Instead, they say they are
only obligated to turn over information that would assist the defense,
and said the law gives prosecutors the discretion to make that
determination.
The law "does not entitle any defendant to the disclosure of the extent
and nature of the government's investigative tools or tactics simply
because he suspects that materials are in the government's possession
that might prove interesting to him," prosecutor Gordon Kromberg wrote.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she will issue a written ruling
later on the motion, but expressed doubt about the defense requests.
She said she was persuaded in part because of secret evidence the
government submitted in the case, which even Turley, who holds a
security clearance, has not been allowed to see.
Al-Timimi attended Friday's hearing but did not speak, wearing a jail
jumpsuit and sporting long hair and a beard significantly grayer than at
his 2005 trial.
