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Spanish Note on the New York Terrorist plot
Despite decades of terrorist violence, Spanish police would not have been permitted to do what the FBI has done in New York.
Spain has been suffering terrorism for over thirty years and some of the most violent terrorism occurred while the country was trying to create a democracy after forty years of fascist dictatorship. Perhaps because of the experience of fascism: torture, beatings, anonymous informers, etc, today's Spanish legal system is very punctilious in guaranteeing the rights of the accused.
In Spain "sting" operations are forbidden. Evidence procured by agents provocateurs would not be admissible in court.
It looks like the FBI, posing as Pakistani Al Qaeda talked a pitiful group of intellectually challenged petty street criminals into parking what they thought was a car full of explosives in front of a synagogue. The non-explosives were thoughtfully supplied by the FBI.
After parking the cars full of popcorn in front of the synagogue this gang of idiots was arrested while leaving the scene of the crime and their massive plot foiled. The FBI says these poor fools have no contacts whatsoever with any other terrorist groups anywhere. How could they when the only "terrorists" they ever met in their lives are the FBI agents who gave them the non-explosives?
In short, these men are going to go back to jail for many years because of their bad intentions, because, at worst, parking a harmless car in front of a synagogue is a parking violation not a felony. This is as if you said to me, "I really hate john over there!", and I handed you a water pistol and said, "Snuff the sunuvabitch!" and you squirted him with water and got sent up for attempted murder.
You could say that the role of the FBI here was literally "satanic", deliberately leading weak minded men "into temptation" and then betraying them. If the FBI hadn't intervened these people would have probably never got beyond mugging old ladies for their social security checks in all their lives. If people can go to jail for their bad thoughts, no wonder the USA has the world's largest prison population.
It would be interesting to know how much it cost the US treasury to set up and entrap this bunch of hopeless turkeys.
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Your argument is that they should suffer no consequences because their plot to kill people failed.
Intent is a pretty crucial component of most modern criminal justice systems (and it works the other way too, for unintentionally caused harm.)
While there is undoubtedly much to question about the FBI's handling of the matter, starting from whether the men would ever have done anything on their own all the way to whether jail is the correct place to send them, I think it is outright incorrect to flatly assert that the men are innocent of any wrongdoing -- not to mention that it detracts from otherwise valid critique of the case.
May 22, 2009 3:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Your argument is that they should suffer no consequences because their plot to kill people failed."
No that isn't the argument at all. Attempted murder is still a crime even if it fails. One argument here is that the plot could not possibly have succeeded. The water pistol, or unloaded real gun, line is accurate enough.
Conspiracy is the only legit charge I can envision, if it isn't plain entrapment. They did not have possession of explosives or illegal devices, if the bombs were fakes. They did not join a listed terrorist organization. They exercised freedom of speech for which they were not arrested over the course of a year so they couldn't have been making any really bad and illegal threats.
It just looks like bad theatre produced and directed by the FBI, so far. Mel Brooks, anyone?
May 22, 2009 4:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect we are fairly close on this issue, although I object to the repeated analogy: if A attacks B using a weapon A expects to function normally, it is inconsequential whether the weapon in fact functions as expected. Perhaps a more illustrative example would be, say, an attempted poisoning where the "poison" turns out to have just been almond extract.
Or, to make it personal: assume you are holding a gun you believe to be working. Will you fire that weapon at some random innocent person?
You are most certainly correct in that the men in question here could not be charged with murder (since none took place.) The applicable offences do include, however, attempted murder (actual steps taken) and/or conspiracy to commit murder (planning, specifically by multiple people.)
Burden of proof certainly remains, but if there is an act that would result in the intended crime being committed -- such as pulling a trigger or pushing the detonator button -- it can be presented as an attempt.
If the men genuinely thought they were setting off a bomb intending to kill people, yes, they are guilty of attempted murder (or a similar crime by other label.) Again, the prosecution must certainly present the case to this effect.
I am in no way arguing that the conviction was or was not correct; merely that the argument Mr. Seaton presented was incorrect and that in making the argument he was harmed the broader, valid criticism of FBI's conduct and policies.
May 22, 2009 5:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that intent is part of what one looks at in law.
Aside -- Planting a bomb is not attempted murder unless there were living humans who were the murder target(s). If the bomb goes off and kills people, then murder charges can be added to the underlying charges.
If the bombers had reason to believe the "bombs" would work, I think that's different than them being pawns in a chess game. That is, if the plotters had set off some test bombs, but then the FBI managed to defuse or neuter the bombs placed at the nominal crime scene, then the plotters weren't just pawns in an FBI theatrical event. No reason to believe it played out this way, is there?
May 22, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not sure where your scenario is going? Requiring some kind of "due diligence" to test the bomb first is completely superfluous (and, by the by, "setting off some test bombs" is not exactly a straightforward proposition.) If they thought it was a bomb and attempted to detonate it, that is the end of the story, regardless of whether they even looked inside the box (or whatever.)
There are no ifs, no buts. Intent is what matters.
So, could we drop that particular topic and maybe look into the bigger picture? If they attempted to detonate what they believed to be a legitimate bomb, nothing the FBI did wrong or even illegally (short of actual coercion, obviously) in any way erases their deed. Given that premise, those men are not suitable to be among the general population without treatment or rehabilitation.
Completely aside from this, it is perfectly justified to investigate the FBI's conduct in this case and prosecute as appropriate.
May 22, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're missing that a specific intent was lacking if they were merely pawns being promoted to knights of terror by the FBI via the "informant". That is, you raise the question of mental competency.
I think we're down to questions of fact.
btw -- Fuller, the FBI guy on the complaint, has a difficult history with informants.
May 22, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
What on earth are you talking about?
Please try to understand that I am not addressing whether these particular men were correctly found to have intended to commit murder, or to conspire to do so; or whether their mental faculties are such that they are fit to stand trial.
(You and Mr. Seaton, by the way, are the ones "raising the question of mental competency," not I. It is perhaps noteworthy that thus far there have not been, to my knowledge, any reports of any of the men being "intellectually challenged" as Mr. Seaton puts it.)
I have merely corrected the erroneous assertion made by Mr. Seaton and subsequently to a lesser degree yourself.
May 22, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe articles exists stating sub-sub-par IQ and schizophrenia as "challenges".
May 23, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please cite some reliable sources when asserting that these men suffer from developmental or mental retardation or problems.
May 23, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please chill out, dude. Read the press on the topic and define "reliable".
May 23, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Provide a link to any articles that assert a mental handicap (preferably with something more as the basis for that analysis than that the men are black and smoked pot.)
May 24, 2009 7:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Karl said:
"I suspect we are fairly close on this issue, although I object to the repeated analogy: if A attacks B using a weapon A expects to function normally, it is inconsequential whether the weapon in fact functions as expected. Perhaps a more illustrative example would be, say, an attempted poisoning where the "poison" turns out to have just been almond extract."
The problem is that in this situation, as has happened in other informant cases, A wouldn't have attacked B if the government agent hadn't led A to believe A had been given the means to do so.
I think David's post addresses this issue quite well - when the government goes looking for trouble, it has the means to makes sure it finds it.
May 22, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to overtrivialise, but it really is not a problem in considering their actions. They, it is alleged, were trying to detonate a bomb to murder innocent civilians because of their religion/ethnicity.
Would you go and kill people if only someone gave you a bomb?
And one very last time, it is completely fucking irrelevant. I have wasted time on arguing exactly about what I was trying warn about. By all means, let us discuss entrapment laws and such, but please for the love of all things good drop the idiotic argument that there was no actionable wrongdoing on the men's part (allegedly.)
May 23, 2009 4:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is what we have to show for the billions of dollars spent funding 'Homeland Security'. Pfahh!
May 22, 2009 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Uh, they're far from the first terrorists to be pretty freaking stupid and who enjoy smoking pot. History is replete with terrorists exactly like them:
Top 5 Most "Intellectually Challenged Moments in Terrorist History
May 23, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink