nationalsecuritylaw United States v. Hamdan (E.D. Pa.) (extradition to face material support charges)

No, not that Hamdan…

* United States v. Hamdan (E.D. Pa.) (extradition to face material support charges)

From DOJ’s press release:

PHILADELPHIA – Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, a dual citizen of the United States and Lebanon and a former resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia today after being extradited from Paraguay. He is being held pending a detention hearing.

Hamdan is among several defendants charged in a conspiracy to provide material support to Hizballah, a designated foreign terrorist organization. He was indicted Nov. 24, 2009, along with nine co-defendants. Hamdan was taken into U.S. custody in Asuncion, Paraguay, on Thursday, by U.S. Marshals who escorted him to Washington, D.C., where members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force took him into custody.

At the time of the indictment, Hamdan had left the United States. On June 15, 2010, Paraguayan authorities arrested him in the Tri-Border Area of Paraguay for the crime of material support of terrorism.

Hamdan is charged in 28 of the 31 counts in the indictment, including conspiring to provide material support to Hizballah in the form of proceeds from the sale of counterfeit money, stolen (genuine) money and fraudulent passports. According to the indictment, Hamdan and several other defendants were also charged with several counts of transporting stolen goods, trafficking in counterfeit goods and making false statements to government officials.

According to a related criminal complaint, Hamdan began purchasing purportedly stolen cellular telephones from a cooperating witness acting as an agent of the government and participated in the purchase and transportation of purportedly stolen goods on numerous occasions. These stolen goods included cellular telephones, laptop computers, Sony Play Station 2 systems and automobiles, which the conspirators caused to be transported to destinations outside Pennsylvania, including overseas destinations such as Lebanon and Benin (Africa). Hamdan also allegedly bought counterfeit goods — namely, counterfeit Nike® shoes and Mitchell & Ness® sports jerseys — from the cooperating witness.

The complaint details efforts by defendants Moussa Ali Hamdan and his co-defendants to sell the cooperating witness counterfeit U.S. currency for the purpose of raising funds for Hizballah. In total, the conspirators provided the cooperating witness with approximately $10,000 in counterfeit U.S. currency. The complaint also alleges that certain of Hamdan’s co-defendants generated additional funds for Hizballah by selling fraudulent passports. The cooperating witness and the defendants participated in the purchase of two fake passports — one from the United Kingdom and one from Canada — for the benefit of Hizballah. Hamdan allegedly agreed to pay $10,000 towards the purchase of these passports, in order to satisfy a debt he owed to the cooperating witness.

If convicted of all charges, Hamdan faces a statutory maximum sentence of 260 years in prison.

By Robert M. Chesney

Robert M. Chesney is Charles I. Francis Professor in Law at UT-Austin School of Law. Chesney is a national security law specialist, with a particular interest in problems associated with terrorism. Professor Chesney recently served in the Justice Department in connection with the Detainee Policy Task Force created by Executive Order 13493. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, a senior editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, an associate member of the Intelligence Science Board, a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the American Law Institute. Professor Chesney has published extensively on topics ranging from detention and prosecution in the counterterrorism context to the states secrets privilege. He served previously as chair of the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools and as editor of the National Security Law Report (published by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security). His upcoming projects include two books under contract with Oxford University Press, one concerning the evolution of detention law and policy and the other examining the judicial role in national security affairs.

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