Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

On September 21, 2001, the FBI arrested Awadallah, a permanent resident and
Jordanian national attending Grossman College in San Diego, alleging that he had
information relevant to the September 11 investigation. The FBI located Awadallah after
the government linked him to a telephone number found in a car abandoned by one of
the suspected hijackers. As the government quickly determined, Awadallah had not used
that telephone number for seventeen months.
The day before his arrest, eight government agents visited Awadallah at his house and
requested that he join them for questioning. According to the government, Awadallah
“was very, very cooperative,” consented to eight hours of voluntarily questioning, and
allowed the government to search his car. 232 The next day, while Awadallah was
voluntarily at FBI headquarters, the FBI applied for a material witness warrant to arrest
him. The government argued that “if [Awadallah] is not detained, there is no assurance
that he would appear in the grand jury as directed,” because he “maintain[s] substantial
family ties in Jordan and elsewhere overseas,” and because he had been a co-worker with
two of the hijackers.
Judge Shira Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
reviewed Awadallah’s material witness warrant in a collateral proceeding and ruled it was
invalid. She found, among other things, that the government failed to establish that there
was probable cause to believe that Awadallah would not comply with a subpoena to
testify. The court pointed to Awadallah’s family ties (his U.S. citizen father and three
brothers in San Diego, one of whom is also U.S. citizen), his previous cooperation with
the FBI, and the absence of any prior conduct that would subject him to prosecution.
The Second Circuit reversed Judge Scheindlin’s decision and held that the material
witness warrant was valid. The court ruled there was probable cause that Awadallah was
a flight risk because “in the wake of a mass atrocity and in the midst of an investigation
that galvanized the nation, Awadallah did not step forward to share information he had
about one or more of the hijackers, whose names and faces had been widely publicized
across the country.” 233 The court made no mention of his voluntary interviews with the
FBI, government admissions that he was “cooperative,” his legal immigration status, or
his family ties.
232
Ibid.
233
Ibid., p. 70.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G) 70