Little Rock Shooter's Trial to Stay in State Court
by IPT News • Dec 23, 2010 at 2:44 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2441/little-rock-shooter-trial-to-stay-in-state-court
When a defense attorney stands up in court and calls his own client a terrorist, something else is going on beneath the surface. In a hearing in Little Rock on Tuesday, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad's defense attorney said his client was "turned into a weapon" during his time in Yemen.
Claiborne Ferguson wants his client's trial for killing an Army private and wounding a second outside a Little Rock recruiting center last year switched to federal court. There, he might be able to argue his client is protected by war and humanitarian laws and gain access to FBI files on Muhammad's radical connections.
But state prosecutors seem intent on presenting a nuts and bolts murder case. No federal witnesses will be called, they promised.
Wright rejected the defense arguments. The trial is scheduled to begin in late February. If convicted, Muhammad could face the death penalty. To avoid that sentence, Ferguson argued, information in the FBI's hands is needed.
"What turned my client into what he is today happened somewhere between Nashville and Yemen," Ferguson argued. "Everyone is dancing around the issue that my client is a terrorist."
Muhammad has repeatedly acknowledged being the shooter, including in a letter he wrote from jail to Circuit Judge Herb Wright in January. In it, he said he was affiliated with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and wanted to plead guilty. "This was a jihadi attack on infidel forces," the handwritten note said.
Related Topics: Homegrown Terror, Prosecutions | IPT News
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Reader comments on this item
Infestation of Terrorism and Little Rock
Submitted by A R Thompson, Dec 24, 2010 20:40
Gentleman I really do think,we are a Nation Losers,when we put this group of people through are Judicial system at great expense to you the taxpayer and a further drain on the Countries funding in the name of Justice.
So that you can feel better about it, and convince yourself, that whatever the sentence,it will be Courts of law that decide the Terrorists fate, this leancy needs to be amended, and put in place a much stronger and more positive approach when these Murder's Rise there Ugly heads and slaughter your Citizens.
For they have declare war on you,without consideration in there quick decision to Murder.
Give them the same decisive treatment. For they have got a lot more in store and will start to change tactics, with the new type ingredients in store for you. But of course this is not news to you, just sit there until it hurts you, then you will wake up, after you have suffered.
We realy need a new approach on a Global scale to deal with this problem.