Had Al Capone been charged with a conspiracy to commit murder solely on account of his speech, convicted of the crime, and sentenced to life in prison, there would be a parallel at least in terms of form, but that still wouldn't say anything about the substance of the case in question, i.e. whether Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was an actual terrorist. That Capone was guilty wouldn't make Rahman guilty, even if two trials had taken analogical forms. In any event, there isn't even a formal parallel between two cases. Capone was charged with a tax evasion, convicted of it in 1931, and sentenced only to eleven years in prison and a fine of thousands of dollars. His sentence was later shortened to six and half years on account of his good behavior in prison, and Capone was released in 1939.
Presumably, Capone was at least really guilty of the crime of which he was charged and convicted. I don't believe that the prosecution proved that Rahman was in fact guilty of "seditious conspiracy," let alone actual terrorism.
<blockquote>[T]he radical Islamic fundamentalist ideologies of the defendants permeated the recent terrorism trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine coconspirators. The group was convicted of participating in an extensive plot "'to levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States, to oppose by force the authority of the United States, and by force to prevent, hinder and delay the execution of laws of the United States.'" n21 Inspired by Rahman's fiery sermonizing, members of the group assassinated a radical anti-Arab rabbi, Meir Kahane, in November 1990 n22 and plotted to blow up the United Nations and New York federal buildings, destroy the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in New York City, and kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak while he was on an official visit to the United States. n23 Law enforcement authorities arrested most of the defendants (but not Rahman himself) in a garage in Queens, New York, on June 24, 1993, while they were mixing explosives for an enormous bomb to be used in the scheme. n24
The distinguishing feature of the Rahman case was the unusual charge employed by the government against each defendant -- seditious conspiracy. n25 The seditious conspiracy statute, a rarely used criminal provision that originates from a Civil War law aimed at secessionists, allows defendants to be convicted simply for concocting general plots against the government, thus relieving the prosecution of any need to prove specific subversive acts. n26 As one commentator has noted, "'Essentially seditious conspiracy deals with a crime of the mind,'... 'It allows a conviction based on a sense that there is antipathy or hatred. You don't have to do anything; you just have to think it.'" n27 Although modern-day sedition trials are almost unheard of, n28 the breadth and severity of the seditious conspiracy statute make it a logical tool for future religiously motivated terrorism prosecutions. n29
As its name implies, the seditious conspiracy law is technically a conspiracy statute and thus contemplates some type of criminal agreement. n30 In Rahman's case, however, prosecutors interpreted the agreement requirement rather loosely, as they charged the Sheik with inciting his followers to undertake subversive actions rather than making specific terrorist plans with them. Rahman did not participate in either the actual plotting against the government or the preparatory activities undertaken by his fellow defendants. n31 Instead, he was convicted for providing religious encouragement to his coconspirators, both in a general sense and about the shape of their specific plans. n32 As Andrew McCarthy, one of the federal prosecutors on the case, stated: "'There is a difference between being the engineer of a specific act and someone who is the spiritual and ideological leader of the conspiracy,'... 'What the evidence I think sensibly shows is that there is an organization for terrorism in the United States. It's [sic] designer is the sheik.'" n33
On its face, the Rahman case may raise no difficult constitutional questions not already settled by the Supreme Court's rulings on the general legality of sedition statutes. n34 A closer examination of the evidence presented during the trial, however, reveals how terrorism prosecutions like Rahman's can implicate spiritual freedom by criminalizing the content of religious speech. To prove the seditious conspiracy charge against Rahman, the government showed the jury a videotape of one of the Sheik's fiery sermons in which he urged Muslims to wage war against all of Islam's enemies, including the United States. The tape portrayed Rahman arguing, "'Jihad is fighting the enemy, fighting the enemies for God's sake.'" n35 Another tape introduced by the prosecution portrayed Rahman exhorting his followers, "'The Koran makes [terrorism] among the means to perform jihad in [sic] the sake of Allah, which is to terrorize the enemies of God [who are] our enemies too... We must be terrorists and must terrorize the enemies of Islam and frighten them and... disturb them.'" n36 Additionally, the government argued that Rahman not only encouraged his congregants to wage jihad against the United States, but also gave them religious advice about their specific criminal plans by stating which schemes would be in accord with Islam. n37 Although the evidence sometimes seemed to blur the distinction between Rahman's religious and political views, given the frequent overlap between the two inherent in jihad, n38 Rahman's radical view of Islamic fundamentalism must have motivated his actions. Thus, Rahman was prosecuted essentially because of the content of his sermons and his religious advice. Indeed, the religious nature of the evidence presented against Rahman led one of his attorneys to argue that the federal government, terrified by the arrival of radical Islam in the United States, prosecuted Rahman to suppress his religious views. As Rahman's attorney asserted, "'This is clearly religious speech, nothing more -- he violated no law,'... 'The only reason he's on trial is because it's a Muslim who's saying this.'" n39
While the Rahman case itself raises several interesting questions about religious freedom, it is most useful as a prototype for future religiously motivated terrorism prosecutions. Trials like Rahman's are likely to occur with increasing frequency in the United States. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, U.S. officials now consider terrorism to be a top national security concern. n40
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Moreover, religious violence is by no means confined to radical Islamic sects. The issues raised by the Rahman case could just as easily resurface next in the context of Christian, rather than Islamic, fundamentalism. Substitute the words "Jesus Christ" for "Allah" and "abortionists" for "infidels" in Sheik Rahman's sermons, and the danger posed by radical fundamentalism of a different stripe becomes evident. In recent years, members of radical Christian groups have violently expressed their religious opposition to abortion through attacks on women's clinics and the murder of health care workers. n43 Jewish Zionist organizations, n44 Native American groups, n45 and a host of other spiritual bodies conceivably could join the fray in the name of their faiths and thereby subject their leaders to possible sedition charges. While the Rahman case provides a dramatic example of governmental criminalization of religious sermons, concern for the prosecutorial tactics employed in the case should not be confined to the narrow realm of radical Islamic fundamentalism. (Joseph Grinstein, "Note: Jihad and the Constitution: The First Amendment Implications of Combating Religiously Motivated Terrorism," 105 Yale L.J. 1347, March, 1996)</blockquote>
I agree with Rahman's attorney Lynne Stewart. Regardless of what we think of the content of Rahman's speech in question, "he violated no law." And it is against our interest in liberty for the jury in the Rahman case to have allowed the US government to interpret the "criminal agreement" requirement of the conspiracy statute so loosely and expansively. This precedent is sure to come back and haunt leftists, not just Stewart. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>