Warsame pleads guilty in deal with government (click title to entry - thank you)
by Elizabeth Stawicki, Minnesota Public Radio
May 20, 2009
St. Paul, Minn. — A former Minneapolis man who's been imprisoned for more than five years awaiting trial on terrorism charges has struck a plea deal with the U.S. government.
Mohamed Warsame pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide support to a terrorist organization. In exchange, the government will drop four other charges that include providing support to a terrorist organization and lying to the FBI.
Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent, lived in Minneapolis as a community college student before he was arrested in 2003. The government later charged him with providing support to al-Qaeda, alleging he took part in military camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan; attended lectures by Osama Bin Laden; taught English to al-Qaeda operatives, and lied to the FBI.
Warsame's lawyers say he's spent more time in prison awaiting trial longer than anyone else in U.S. history -- five and half years, primarily in solitary confinement. Warsame had maintained that he never knowingly attended an al Qaeda training camp but was on a spiritual journey seeking a "utopian" society in Afghanistan.
After court, Warsame's attorney David Thomas said his client pleaded guilty to the one count because it reduced the maximum time he could serve in prison from 30 to 12 1/2 years....
...But the latest snag was a delay by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2007, Judge Jack Tunheim ruled that FBI agents failed to read Warsame his rights during one of his interrogations. As a result, Tunheim said some, but not all, of Warsame's statements to the FBI could not be used against him in court. Federal prosecutors appealed that ruling and the 8th Circuit still has not issued its decision....
