Terrorism Notebook
U.S. indicts two on charges of terrorism

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A federal grand jury in Miami charged Adham Amin Hassoun and Mohamed Hesham Youssef, who are in custody on other charges, with raising money to wage an Islamic holy war in places such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Kosovo starting in the mid-1990s.

The indictment alleged that Hassoun, a Palestinian national living in Florida, wrote a series of checks between 1994 and 2001 totaling more than $53,000 to unindicted co-conspirators and organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, which the U.S. government accuses of having ties to terrorist groups.

The Holy Land Foundation and seven of its leaders were indicted in July on charges of providing material support to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Hassoun, a computer scientist who came to the United States in the 1980s to study, has been charged with lying to immigration officials about his recruiting activities and illegal possession of a firearm. He is in custody in Florida. Youssef is serving a sentence in Egypt for "other terrorist activities," the government said.

The indictment cited numerous conversations between Hassoun and Youssef from 1996 to 2000, including one in 2000 in which they discussed support for the travel and terrorist training of the unnamed U.S. citizen who had gone to the "area of Osama."

Attorney General John Ashcroft declined to name the co-conspirator but said the man traveled to a terrorist training camp under the auspices of Osama bin Laden and returned to the United States in May 2002, dates that match the travel of Padilla. Padilla, a Chicago native, was captured in a highly publicized arrest at Chicago O'Hare International Airport in May 2002 as an "enemy combatant" in the war on terrorism and has been held without charges ever since. The government said he had plotted to explode a crude radioactive, or "dirty," bomb in the United States.

Deal might free U.S.-born suspect

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A lawyer for a U.S.-born terrorism suspect said yesterday that a deal had been tentatively reached with the government that will send the man to Saudi Arabia and spare him prosecution after being held more than two years without charge.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, 23, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, could become the first American classified as an enemy combatant to renounce his citizenship to avoid prosecution.

"There is an agreement in principle for his release," Hamdi's lawyer, Frank Dunham Jr., told The Associated Press. John Novatsky, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said negotiations were continuing.
 
Hamdi was captured fighting with Afghanistan's Taliban in late 2001 and held at the U.S. military outpost in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for three months before authorities realized he was a U.S. citizen. He was transferred to a brig in South Carolina and later to the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.

Saying he was forced to fight for the Taliban, Hamdi had challenged his status as an enemy combatant, a classification given to the 585 detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay that affords detainees fewer legal protections than prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

One restriction was not being allowed to see an attorney for months while in solitary confinement. But the Supreme Court ruled in June that enemy combatants may not be indefinitely detained without legal rights, allowing Hamdi to have a lawyer and contest his detention.

Hamdi is not facing any charges in Saudi Arabia.

There was no indication of compensation for Hamdi or an unidentified detainee at Guantánamo whose release was ordered last week by a review tribunal.