Sami Omar Al-Hussayen (born 1973, Saudi Arabia), also known as Sami Al-Hussayen, is a teacher at a technical college in Riyadh. As a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
graduate student in computer science at the
University of Idaho
The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The University ...
in the United States, he was arrested and charged in 2003 by the United States with running websites as a webmaster that were linked to organizations that support
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
. Al-Hussayen is one of the few people at the time to have been charged under a provision that has been described as "overly broad and vague."
He was also charged with immigration violations.
[
]
''U.S. v. Al-Hussayen'' is considered a landmark case for civil liberties, related to provisions of the
USA Patriot Act
The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) was a landmark Act of Congress, Act of the United States Congress, signed into law by President of the United States, President George W. Bush. The formal name of the statute is the Uniti ...
in the United States. It was the first time that the government tried to use the material support statutes "to prosecute conduct that consisted
almost exclusively of operating and maintaining websites."
[Alan F. Williams, "PROSECUTING WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT UNDER THE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO TERRORISM STATUTES: TIME TO FIX WHAT’S BROKEN"](_blank)
''Legislation and Public Policy'', Vol. 11, No. 2:365, New York University, accessed 17 January 2013
Idaho's senior U.S. senator and one of its congressmen, both
Republicans, had already proposed amendments to the Act because of their concerns about its effects on civil liberties.
At an immigration hearing in 2003, the federal judge ordered Al-Hussayen deported. He was held in the United States to face terrorism and immigration charges, and was tried in 2004. He was acquitted that year of the three federal terrorism charges, which was considered a "stinging defeat" for the government;
he was also acquitted of three of eight immigration charges. The jury was deadlocked on the other immigration charges, and the judge called a mistrial.
Al-Hussayen accepted a deal, agreeing to deportation if the prosecutor dropped plans to retry him on the outstanding immigration charges. His wife and three sons returned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia before him, and he was deported in July 2004. He and his wife both work in Riyadh.
Arrest and charges
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen was arrested in late February 2003 in the town of
Moscow, Idaho
Moscow ( ) is a city in North Central Idaho, United States. Located along the state border with Washington, it had a population of 25,435 at the 2020 census. The county seat and largest city of Latah County, Moscow is the home of the Universit ...
, where he lived since 1999 as a Ph.D. graduate student in computer science at the
University of Idaho
The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The University ...
.
His wife and three sons were with him.
[
]
The federal government had two cases against him: federal charges related to support of terrorism, and one related to
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
issues. For the terrorism case, he was initially charged with seven counts of visa fraud, and four counts of lying to officials.
[ All charges related to his alleged work as a webmaster, as a foreign student on a ]student visa
A visa (from the Latin ''charta visa'', meaning "paper that has been seen") is a conditional authorization granted by a polity to a foreigner that allows them to enter, remain within, or leave its territory. Visas typically include limits on t ...
in the United States is not allowed to work for an employer not situated on the student's campus. Al-Hussayen maintained that he did volunteer work and was not receiving pay, and thus did not violate the conditions of his visa. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
In March 2003, the court ruled that Al-Hussayen should be set free without bail and remain under house arrest
In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if all ...
until his trial. But, federal immigration officials detained him for their case, and he was transferred to their custody.
Trials
At an immigration hearing in mid-2003, federal judge Anna Ho ordered Al-Hussayen to be deported to Saudi Arabia, his country of origin. He was held in federal custody pending a trial on terrorism and immigration charges, and he continued to work on his doctoral program while in jail.
In January 2004, US officials charged him with two federal counts of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists
In United States law, providing material support for terrorism is a crime prohibited by the USA PATRIOT Act and codified in title 18 of the United States Code, section2339Aan2339B It applies primarily to groups designated as terrorists by the St ...
by using his skills in computers.[ In March 2004, he was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to ]Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
, designated a terrorist organization by the US, through donation links on Web sites which he allegedly maintained. His formal indictments can be seen here.[
His trial began in April 2004 and he was defended by the attorney David Nevin.][
] The trial of Al-Hussayen lasted seven weeks. The defense called only one witness. He was acquitted of all three terrorism charges, which was described as a "stinging defeat" for the government.[Timothy Egan, "No Conviction for Student in Terror Case"](_blank)
''New York Times'', 11 June 2004, accessed 17 January 2013
He was acquitted of three of the eight immigration charges. As the jurors deadlocked on the remaining charges, District Judge Edward Lodge declared a mistrial for those remaining charges.[
] The remaining immigration charges would have to be retried.
Deportation
After his acquittal at the criminal trial, Al-Hussayen was still held in custody by immigration authorities. A few weeks later, he agreed not to appeal his deportation order if the prosecution agreed not to retry him for the remaining immigration charges.[
] He was deported to Saudi Arabia in July 2004. His wife and three sons returned there voluntarily to meet him, rather than await deportation orders.
Al-Hussayen and his family live in Riyadh
Riyadh (, ar, الرياض, 'ar-Riyāḍ, lit.: 'The Gardens' Najdi pronunciation: ), formerly known as Hajr al-Yamamah, is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of the Riyadh Province and the centre of the R ...
. He works as an instructor at a technical university, and his wife works as a kindergarten teacher.
Significance of the case
The USA Patriot Act
The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) was a landmark Act of Congress, Act of the United States Congress, signed into law by President of the United States, President George W. Bush. The formal name of the statute is the Uniti ...
of 2001 authorizes the federal government to prosecute people if they "provide expert advice or assistance" to terrorist groups. This question of guidance and association has troubled critics. Among them are two of Idaho's US Congressmen, who had already registered their opposition to provisions of the act: the Republicans Larry E. Craig, the senior U.S. senator, and Representative C. L. Otter, "have sponsored bills to amend the act, which they have called a threat to civil liberties."
In January 2004, the US District Court in Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
, California had ruled in another case that this provision is unconstitutional, as it violates First and Fifth amendment rights.[ ]U.S. District Court
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...
Judge Audrey B. Collins
Audrey Brodie Collins (born June 12, 1945) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California and an associate justice of the Second District Court of Appeal for the State of Calif ...
ruled that the USA Patriot Act's language, barring "expert advice or assistance" to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations, was "overly broad and vague."
"In that case, the judge ruled on behalf of several humanitarian groups that wanted to provide support to the nonviolent arms of two organizations designated as terrorist in Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
. Judge Collins wrote that 'a woman who buys cookies at a bake sale outside her grocery store to support displaced Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
refugees to find new homes could be held liable' if the sale was sponsored by a group designated terrorist." She "did not extend her ruling beyond the one case in California."
Rand Lewis, the director of the Martin Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution and the Martin School of International Affairs at the University of Idaho
The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The University ...
, said regarding the prosecution of Al-Hussayen:
"We have a law that is shaky at best. My feeling is that Sami 'U.S. v. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen''is going to be the test case in this,"[ and
"Passive supporters often don't know they're supporting terrorism. So when you get into these gray areas about what people know and what they don't know, I think the law is going to have a difficult time."]
The ''US v. Al-Hussayen'' case has been considered a landmark test by civil libertarians. It was the first time that the government tried to use the material support statutes to prosecute activities that were mostly operating and maintaining websites. Supporters of Al-Hussayen said that he was not responsible for what linked websites published, nor for the material on the websites that he created, unless he wrote it himself. He is one of the few individuals until then to have been prosecuted under this provision of the law.
What became a national debate was centered on one question: "Were Al-Hussayen's Internet activities constitutionally protected free speech or did they cross the line into criminal and material support to terrorism?"
In an associated case, ''Ashcroft v. al-Kidd
''Ashcroft v. al-Kidd'', 563 U.S. 731 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft could not be personally sued for his involvement in the detention of a U.S. citizen in the wak ...
'' (2011), Abdullah al-Kidd
Abdullah may refer to:
* Abdullah (name), a list of people with the given name or surname
* Abdullah, Kargı, Turkey, a village
* ''Abdullah'' (film), a 1980 Bollywood film directed by Sanjay Khan
* '' Abdullah: The Final Witness'', a 2015 Pakis ...
, an American citizen and convert to Islam, was arrested in 2003 and held for 16 days in maximum security prisons. He was under supervised release (house arrest) for 13 months. The federal government was holding him as a material witness against Al-Hussayen. After finally being released, al-Kidd sued Attorney General John Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) is an American lawyer, lobbyist and former politician who served as the 79th U.S. Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2005. A former U.S. Senator from Missouri and the 50th ...
personally, in a case in which he was represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
(ACLU). They said that they knew of 70 other Muslim men who had been similarly detained in the early years following the 9/11 attacks. In 2009 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Ashcroft could be sued and held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of al-Kidd.
In June 2011, the US Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
overturned the lower court's decision, agreeing unanimously that Ashcroft cannot be personally sued, as he had immunity
Immunity may refer to:
Medicine
* Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease
* ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press
Biology
* Immune system
Engineering
* Radiofrequence immunity desc ...
as a government official, unless he could be proven to have violated law. In addition, a majority ruled that al-Kidd could not have won his case on the merits. Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the American University
The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
School of Law, considered it a "narrow ruling" and said the court held that "Ashcroft did not, in fact, violate his l-Kidd's Fourth Amendment rights."
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hussayen, Sami Omar
Living people
Saudi Arabian people imprisoned abroad
University of Idaho alumni
People deported from the United States
1973 births
Human rights in the United States