Joobo the King of Wisdom

Whoops...Clinton Did That "No Warrant" Surveillance on Foreign Terror Suspects, Too

A man who helped to finance Hamas, one of the groups from those peaceful Palestinians*, is about to go on trial in Illinois. The case is no big deal - but it is the details behind the story which have to be read to be believed.

And, of course, the ACLU fights for terror suspects.

Figures.

ACLU filing challenges Hamas-case evidence

Two civil liberties groups filed legal briefs this week in support of a Virginia man accused of helping to fund Mideast terrorists, arguing that federal agents had no right to search his home without a warrant in 1993.

The prosecution of Abdelhaleem Ashqar in federal court in Chicago is the first case to test whether national security concerns can justify searching a person's home without a warrant, the two groups said.

"We've always been opposed to warrantless physical searches," said Harvey Grossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "You physically break into the home when people aren't there. It's like burglary."

The Center for National Security Studies, based in Washington, D.C., joined with the ACLU in the friend-of-the-court brief, which supports Ashqar's attempt to prevent evidence from the search from being used against him.

Federal prosecutors allege that Ashqar and two other men, Muhammed Salah of Bridgeview and Mousa Abu Marzook, participated in a 15-year conspiracy to finance the group Hamas, laundering millions of dollars, some of which went to buy weapons. Marzook is a fugitive believed to be living in Syria.

The ACLU files only two or three amicus briefs a year in the federal trial courts in Chicago and rarely gets involved in a motion to suppress evidence, Grossman said Tuesday. "But this is a very important case," he said. "There are no decisions in this area whatsoever."

However, we have that part of the story which always exposes the hilarity of the whole "Bush Spied on Americans" canard:

A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment Tuesday. But in a court filing in August, prosecutors argued that the search of Ashqar's home in Oxford, Miss., was unlike a normal search of a suspect's residence.

"The 4th Amendment does not require the government to obtain court approval for a foreign intelligence search of an agent of a foreign power," prosecutors wrote.

Ashqar was a graduate student at the University of Mississippi when federal agents conducted the search, photographing his papers and other personal property, Ashqar's attorney, Thomas A. Durkin, said in court filings.

The search was conducted under the administration of Bill Clinton and approved by his attorney general, Janet Reno, according to court records.

Wait a second here! Do you mean to tell us that Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, those paragons of virtue, clean living, and serious obstruction of justice, broke into someone's home and did surveillance, all without a warrant?

My God! Those are crimes! Those are crimes, you hear!

Impeachment! Impeachment for these lawbreakers! We demand it now!

*Yeah, right.