IP: trapped in the system

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40563-2002Jan25.html

Abtracted for review:

The federal government has had Oulai in custody since Sept. 14, the day 
flight manuals and a stun gun were found in his luggage at a Florida 
airport and he was arrested as a suspected terrorist.

Since September, the Bush administration has followed a policy of 
concealment in his case and in those of hundreds of other foreigners 
similarly detained in the terrorism investigation.

Oulai is the first material witness who has managed to talk publicly from 
detention about his experience -- an experience that has taken him through 
the immigration system and a series of unconventional legal maneuvers that 
have kept him within the government's grasp.

At certain facilities where he has been held, administrators say they are 
not at liberty to confirm whether he was ever there.

His attorneys have been unable to procure copies of some legal documents 
that government attorneys have drafted to hold him in custody.

And his family and a legal representative for the Ivory Coast Embassy have 
been not been allowed inside the several courtrooms in which government 
attorneys have pursued their case against him.

"There is nothing about this case that we can discuss publicly."

Oulai, however, did so during 10 telephone conversations over the past 
month, and during a 45-minute visit at the jail one January evening.

The outlines and crucial details of his case have been verified by his 
attorneys; by local law enforcement officials, relatives and acquaintances; 
by a half-dozen people who have been questioned about him by the FBI, and 
by government documents that The Washington Post has obtained.

From such varied strands, however, it remains unclear why an investigation 
into a terrorist plot carried out by young Muslim extremists has implicated 
a 34-year-old Roman Catholic from West Africa.

He had booked a bargain Southwest Airlines flight out of Jacksonville, 
figuring it was worth the 5 1/2-hour drive.

He had just settled into a seat at Gate C-1 when two officers approached, 
according to a Jacksonville Port Authority police report of his arrest.

With his cell phone, he called a paralegal he knew in Philadelphia, another 
Ivory Coast native, to say he might need legal help.

There was no sign of a Tony Oulai in custody.

By then, a lawyer was also looking for him: Frank Lindner, a Philadelphia 
immigration attorney who works with the paralegal whom Oulai had called 
from Jacksonville.

SHU detainees are allowed from their cells for a shower every few days, for 
occasional phone calls and for exercise two hours a week.

Oulai had told them beforehand that he had put their names on a visitors 
list, in accord with the facility's rules.

On Oct. 10, the FBI issued an affidavit that federal prosecutors across the 
country have used to persuade judges that detainees in the terrorism probe 
should not be granted bond.

Using an unorthodox legal argument, the affidavit, signed by Michael 
Rolince, chief of the FBI's international terrorism section, says the 
investigation is "akin to the construction of a mosaic" and the involvement 
of any one suspect cannot be ruled out until the entire picture is understood.

In Oulai's case, the affidavit also contains what is, to this day, the only 
public government information about why investigators regard him as suspicious.

It focuses entirely on evidence from his arrest in Jacksonville -- the 
flight manuals, the stun gun and the Arabic-language materials that it says 
were in his checked luggage.

According to a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, guns, 
including stun guns, are permitted in checked luggage as long as they are 
unloaded, packed in a locked suitcase and disclosed to the airline -- which 
Oulai conceded he did not do.

Still, an immigration judge at Batavia ordered Oulai kept in custody.

Oulai's attorneys and family acknowledge an immigration violation on his 
part -- but not the one the INS alleged.

The government charged him with entering the country illegally; Oulai's 
attorneys have an entry document and work permits showing that he did not.

On Nov. 15, when Batavia's immigration judge ordered Oulai's deportation, 
Oulai promised he would not appeal.

That, Oulai and his attorneys thought, would end his legal dance with the 
U.S. government.

But four days later, federal law enforcement officials in Alexandria issued 
a new warrant, under seal.

Why, Sontan asked, was Oulai being held on a material witness warrant -- 
one that was based on a new, secret FBI affidavit that described him as 
Arabic when he clearly was a black African?

Sontan said Rolince got off the phone to check, then quickly called back to 
say that the U.S. attorney in Alexandria had issued the warrant and that it 
was out of his hands.

Using such a warrant so early in a case -- when a grand jury is still 
investigating, and particularly when the witness already is in federal 
custody -- was "cute," Kolken said.

Only in the final moments, he said, did the prosecutor mention Sept. 11.


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