DOJ Moves to Cut Prison Term for Convicted Terrorist

Just when you thought it was not possible for the Eric Holder Justice Department to become any more hostile to the national and homeland security interests of the American people, along comes yet another travesty.

This one threatens both, as it apparently would involve turning loose in America a convicted terrorist known to be a top Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic) operative and al-Qaida financier: Abdurahman Alamoudi.

According to a short Associated Press report on July 8: Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to cut the 23-year prison term being served by an American Muslim activist who admitted participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Alamoudi — who famously declared his support for Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally in Lafayette Square in October 2000 and was recognized by the Justice Department as a Muslim Brother — has been incarcerated with other top terrorists in the Supermax facility in Colorado. As an American citizen, he would presumably be allowed to stay in this country upon his release.

Can it be precluded that, once he is freed, Alamoudi would take up again with those he did so much to help sponsor, foster, and run as one of the leading Muslim Brothers in the country?

Lest we forget, as a driving force behind many of the myriad MB front organizations in the United States, he previously was deeply involved with the fulfillment of the Ikhwan's mission here as described in its 1991 strategic plan.

That plan, which was found by the FBI in 2004 when they discovered the secret archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Annandale, Va., is entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America." (It is reprinted in its entirety as Appendix 2 of Shariah: The Threat to America.)

According to this memorandum, the Brotherhood's mission in America is "a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within . . . by their [read, our] hands and the hands of the believers."

This objective is, of course, identical to that of al-Qaida, the other jihadist enterprise for whom Alamoudi previously worked. Who knows, if freed, could he rejoin its ranks, too?

At the very least, one has to assume that Abdurahman Alamoudi would be able to reconnect with the Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and prison systems whom the Clinton administration allowed him to recruit, train, and credential.

As no evident effort has been made to relieve his hand-picked folks from their clerical responsibilities ministering to such exceedingly sensitive populations, putting Alamoudi back in business — or at least back in touch — with them could intensify the grave security threat they might pose even now.

So what possible justification could the Holder Justice Department have for releasing such an individual just nine years into a 23-year sentence? The AP story notes that, "The documents explaining why prosecutors want to cut Alamoudi's sentence are under seal, but such reductions are allowed only when a defendant provides substantial assistance to the government."

We can only speculate about what such "assistance" might be.

Could Alamoudi be telling the feds insights about his former paymaster, Moammar Gadhafi, that could be helpful in removing the latter from power? As it is not entirely clear whether such an outcome is actually the goal of the United States, France, or NATO in Libya at this point, it is hard to see that possible help as justification for running the serious risks associated with springing so dangerous an individual.

Perhaps, alternatively, Alamoudi might have spilled the beans about his friends in the Brotherhood's vast North American infrastructure.

Did he provide further confirmation of the subversive role being played as part of what the Ikhwan calls its "civilization jihad" by, for example, organizations and members of: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim Community Association (MCA), the Islamic Council of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Fiqh Council?

Such insights seem unlikely to have been valued by the Obama administration, though, since it continues to have extensive dealings with such groups and individuals associated with them.

If anything, such ties with MB fronts and operatives will be intensifying, now that Team Obama has decided formally to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood's mothership in Egypt.

Unfortunately, given this trend — to say nothing of the mindlessness of the Holder Justice Department when it comes to matters of national security — a more probable explanation for its willingness to give Alamoudi a get-out-of-jail-free pass is that the Obama administration is anxious to remove an irritant in relations with its friends in the Muslim Brotherhood and to demonstrate that a new day is dawning in those ties.

The Muslim Brotherhood is outraged that three states have already enacted one version or another of the ALAC bill designed to preclude foreign laws (including, but not limited to, Shariah) from being used in that state's courts if doing so would deny constitutional rights or otherwise conflict with state public policy. It has been introduced in some 20 others states and, to date, has passed in one house or another of four of them.

Such successes have been achieved by Americans all over the country because there simply is no good argument for opposing this affirmation of our civil liberties for all Americans — including American Muslim women and children whose rights are frequently being impinged upon by the application of Shariah. (See ShariahinAmericanCourts.com, a study of 27 cases in 23 states where Shariah was allowed to trump American laws.)

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times, and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio.