Opinion

The phantom terrorist camp

The sentencing of Hamid Hayat to 24 years in prison has been hailed by federal authorities as a great day in the war on terrorism.

He was, they say, trained and ready to inflict "violent jihad" against Americans.

But there is a missing element in this case that has bothered me ever since Hayat was arrested in June 2005 as part of the celebrated bust of what the FBI then claimed was an active al Qaeda cell in the Central Valley town of Lodi.

The government has never explained what became of that terrorist camp in Pakistan where Hayat supposedly was trained to kill.

If investigators were certain enough of its existence and lethality to send one of its trainees to prison for 24 years, then where was the follow-up announcement of it being obliterated with smart bombs or raided by U.S. special forces with - dare I suggest? - the cooperation of a Pakistani government that is getting $10 billion a year in our tax dollars to help us fight terrorism? Did the terrorists disperse or set up camp elsewhere?

Is the camp operating today?

After all, if that camp posed as much of a threat to Americans as federal authorities claim, then it hardly seems plausible that its danger evaporated with the detention of a 25-year-old cherry-plant worker from Lodi.

I put the question about the fate of the Pakistan camp to FBI headquarters in Washington, which had put out a 21-paragraph press release about last week's sentencing of Hayat on one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of making false statements to the FBI. An FBI spokesman in Washington suggested I contact the FBI office in Sacramento, which investigated the case. The FBI office in Sacramento said I would need to ask the U.S. attorney's office that prosecuted Hayat.

I then called Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Tice-Raskin and asked him what happened to the camp.

There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.

"I'm pausing," he said, finally, to contemplate whether there was "anything in public record at the trial related to that." In a follow-up e-mail, the U.S. attorney's office said it had "no further information that is responsive to your request" about the camp's status.

Hayat's trial did not provide much insight about the camp he allegedly attended. A Department of Defense imagery expert said he was "confident" that satellite images taken in 2001 and 2004 of buildings in the vicinity of Balakot were of a militant training camp. The long-lens view of the camp was curious, considering that Balakot is not in one of those remote tribal regions along the Afghanistan border. It's a 60-mile drive from the capital city of Islamabad.

There were plenty of other unsettling aspects of the trial. The government's case against Hayat rested largely on a confession he made after hours of intense interrogation. There is no doubt that he traveled to Pakistan and that he had a fascination with anti-American jihadists. Prosecutors offered his collection of magazine and newspaper stories - as well as his recorded conversations with an informant who was paid $230,000 of our tax dollars - to support their contention that he was a potential evildoer. Hayat had "a jihadi heart," the prosecution argued in closing statements.

However, the prosecution offered no direct evidence to corroborate Hayat's admission of attending a terrorist training camp. Also, his statements to authorities were rife with bizarre details and contradictions.

Hayat said aspiring terrorists trained at the camp with high-powered rifles and swords. But the rail-thin Hayat said he struggled with the weight and power of firearms and spent most of his time washing vegetables and peeling onions.

Questions persist about the adequacy of his defense and the objectivity of the jury. The jury foreman's post-trial comments to the Atlantic Monthly - admitting the jury's doubts about whether Hayat was a genuine threat, while explaining its unwillingness to take a chance in this age of terrorism - added to perception that the conviction amounted to an act of "preventive detention," a concept that is supposed to be foreign to this free society. The foreman also opined that it's "absolutely" better to risk convicting an innocent man than to exonerate a guilty one when it comes to terrorism.

"What (the prosecution) presented was just preposterous," said Dennis Riordan, a renowned San Francisco appellate attorney who has taken up Hayat's cause.

Put aside the questions about Hayat's trial for the moment. Let's assume that everything the government alleged was true: That there was - or perhaps is - a terrorist camp in the Balakot area preparing jihadists for battle against Americans.

I don't feel the least bit comforted by an FBI press release about the conviction of a guy who was washing vegetables there. I want to know that the camp - and its leaders - are out of business.