What Kleinman is seeking is to have Yousef’s SAMs revised, or removed. His reasoning is that because SAMs, according to the relevant legal code, are authorized only if there is a determination by the relevant authorities “that there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communication or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.”
The SAMs, as Yousef’s do, can “include housing the inmate in administrative detention and/or limiting certain privileges, including, but not limited to, correspondence, visiting, interviews with representatives of the news media, and use of the telephone, as is reasonably necessary to protect persons against the risk of acts of violence or terrorism.”
But, Kleinman said, by law the restrictions can only be imposed in 120-day increments.
And that’s why the lawyer is comfortable challenging the system, repeatedly asking that the limitations imposed on Yousef be justified in accordance with the law. Kleinman points out that the requirements of repeated determinations and short-term durations must mean that a defendant’s original conviction cannot justify, without any more, the repeated imposition of the restrictions.
Kleinman told The Jewish Press, “the rules are there for a reason, and if we ignore them because the defendant is odious, the entire system breaks down.” He said, “the constitution, due process: these rules either apply to everybody or they apply to nobody.”
Surely Kleinman makes the right case for his client and for the American legal system.
But there’s one more bizarre twist to this tale.
WHAT A FAMILY How can an article be written about Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, without mentioning that Yousef is the cousin of Khaled Sheik Mohammed, who, according to the 911 Commission, the principal architect of the 9/11 bombings, in other words, of the Second World Trade Center Bombing.
But we’re not done yet. Yousef is also the cousin of one of the financiers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. Aziz Ali was also involved with financing the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Aziz Ali’s wife, Aafia Siddiqui, who is related to Yousef not by blood but by marriage, is yet another convicted terrorist who is in prison in the U.S.
Siddiqui, who was educated at Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recently in the news. Her release was demanded by the Masked Brigade, the al Qaeda affiliate responsible for a hostage siege at a natural gas complex in Algeria in January of this year, in retaliation for the French military effort against Islamists in Mali. Scores of people, including three Americans, were killed in the ensuing blaze.
The other terrorist whose release was demanded was Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheik,” who is considered the spiritual mastermind of the ’93 World Trade Center bombing.