Tuesday, December 14, 2010

So dangerous no country will have him but we'll let him roam free...

Feds to halt GPS tracking of terror-linked felon

Seattle Times staff reporter

The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to drop efforts to use GPS to track the whereabouts of a convicted felon with ties to Islamic terrorism who has been ordered deported but has nowhere to go.

Instead, Semi Osman has agreed to stay in touch with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials through other, unspecified but less-restrictive means, according to a source familiar with the outcome of the case who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

ICE, meantime, will continue to try to find a country that will take the 40-year-old Osman, who was a key player in the failed 1999 effort by James Ujaama and others to establish a terrorist training camp on a ranch in south-central Oregon, according to the source.

In April, Osman — who has served time in both federal and state prison — sued ICE and Homeland Security, arguing that ICE's efforts to track his whereabouts through the use of GPS monitoring violated a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits the indefinite detention of immigrant detainees whose deportation isn't likely in the foreseeable future.

Osman has volunteered for deportation, but so far no country will take him, according to court records.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., acknowledged the case had been dismissed but would provide no details.

Chris Kerkering, Osman's federal public defender in Seattle, also declined to comment on the record.

Osman was arrested on gun charges in 2002 as part of the FBI's investigation of Islamic radicals who took over a now-defunct mosque in Seattle's Central Area, where Osman was the imam, or prayer leader.

He did 11 months in federal prison for possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number and nearly four years in state prison for molesting a 10-year-old relative — he is a registered sex offender — and was ordered deported.

After he was released from prison in 2006 after serving time for the sex offense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement took him into custody, and he was held pending his removal from the country.

But nobody would take him.

His native Sierra Leone has denied he's a citizen because his parents were Lebanese. Lebanon doesn't want him, even though he was issued a passport as a child.

Great Britain, which had given Osman an "overseas territory" passport before he came to the United States in 1988, won't take him, either, according to court records.

In 2007, Osman petitioned for release from ICE custody, citing the 2001 Supreme Court decision.

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security objected, saying Osman's close ties to Ujaama and other Islamic radicals remained a deep concern of the government. In a 2007 review of his detention, ICE agents cited a "proven nexus between Osman and terrorism."

In 2008, as the case was pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ICE agreed to release Osman, subject to restrictive supervision that required him to wear a GPS monitor on his ankle at all times. In his latest petition, Osman asked the court to relieve him of that burden as well, again citing the government's failed efforts to find someplace to send him.

Osman came to the United States in 1988, served in the Army and Navy Reserve, and became the imam at the Masjid Dar-us-Salaam, a small storefront mosque in Seattle's Central District.

It was there, according to court documents and trial testimony, that he met Ujaama and became enthralled with the radical teachings of Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, the imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in London.

Ujaama has pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism and has agreed to testify against others in hopes of winning leniency on a possible 30-year prison sentence pending in Seattle federal court.

Last year, Ujaama was the key witness in the New York trial of one of the men sent to the U.S. by al-Masri to help set up the training camp in Oregon.


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