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AMP Report – September 11, 2007
Lodi Muslim community shocked at Hayat’s sentence
Muslim community in the town of Lodi received with shock the news of 24 years prison sentence for Hamid Hayat, 25, for providing material support to terrorists and lying to the FBI.
In Sacramento, U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. on September 10, 2007 sentenced Hamid Hayat, a US born American of Pakistani origin and resident of Lodi, for 24 years although he had faced a maximum of 39 years in federal prison. Burrell Jr. noted his lack of criminal record at the reduced sentence.
His father, Umer Hayat, said his son is innocent. "It's a sad day for us but we are confident he's going to get out on appeal," he said. The case now goes to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the myriad issues raised by the defense in an unsuccessful motion for a new trial will be hotly contested.
On April 25, 2006, a jury found Hayat, who was born in Stockton but has lived nearly half his life with relatives in Pakistan, guilty of undergoing terrorist training in Pakistan and returning to Lodi prepared to wage violent jihad -- or holy war -- against fellow U.S. citizens. He also was found guilty of lying to conceal the training and his terrorist intent when initially questioned by FBI agents.
The federal jury deliberated for nine days before convicting Hayat of all charges. One hold-out juror later said under oath that she had been pressured into convicting by a racist jury foreman. The foreman denied the accusation and the judge declined defense plea to order a new trial.
Hayat’s case was built mainly on the witness of a FBI mole, Naseem Khan, who befriended the Hayat family after he went to Lodi specifically to infiltrate its Muslim community. The informer was paid $ 250,000 for his nearly three years’ job. Naseem Khan befriended Hayat and began secretly taping their conversations. In hours of FBI interviews, which were videotaped and later played for the jury, Hayat denied his involvement in terrorism but ultimately gave a number of various camp descriptions.
Aside from those statements and satellite photos of what could be a military-style camp in Pakistan, the lead FBI agent on the case testified that there was no other proof that Hayat actually attended a camp. Instead, prosecutors focused on Hayat's own words, a potentially radical scrapbook he made as a teenager and conversations with the paid informant who encouraged Hayat to attend a training camp.
Hamid Hayat's trial attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, maintains that Hayat is innocent and was convicted based on stories he made up to appease FBI agents during hours of interrogation. "Only an innocent man can be so stubborn to take his case to trial in the wake of Sept. 11 politics," defense attorney Wazhma Mojaddidi said in court. Hayat even refused a 15-year plea deal offered before trial started, she said.
U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott told a news conference following the sentencing that the government's incentive to make such a deal would have been to gain "valuable intelligence" regarding terrorist activities in the United States and Pakistan, and to eliminate Hayat's appeal.
The Muslim community here has expressed strong skepticism of the government's methods. If nothing else, the government "sent a clear message to the Muslim community that you do not speak to the FBI without a lawyer present," said Basim Elkarra, executive director for the Central Valley branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Lodi Mosque President Mohammed Shoaib, said 24 years seemed harsh. "I don't think he was doing something," he said. "He was caught in the talking and not in the acting."
Taj Khan, a prominent figure in Lodi's Muslim community, maintained Hayat's innocence. He described the sentence a great injustice. Khan said Hayat was arrested and tried without doing anything illegal.
Some of the Muslim men leaving the Lodi mosque after prayers did not want to talk about the trial, fearing that their names would be connected to what they believe is an ongoing FBI investigation. Lodi News-Sentinel quoted one man who did not want to be named as saying:
"If I say anything, they can come and take me away. We don't know anything about it. We want to leave it peaceful."
Hayat has been jailed since June 5, 2005. He will be given credit for the two years and three months he has spent behind bars. If he earns the maximum amount of available good time, he will serve approximately another 18 years and two months and will be eligible to be released in late 2025.
The sentence came on Hayat's 25th birthday and a day before the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks targeting World Trade Center in New York City and Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Government prosecutors had asked for a sentence of at least 35 years but hailed Monday's sentence as a victory. On the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said, there have been no further terror attacks on America. "It is because of prosecutions like this that we have prevented another attack against the United States," he told the news conference.
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