April 23, 2012 - Fordham Law

Morning Brief - 4/23/12

TODAY’S TOP STORY
IRAN SAYS IT IS COPYING U.S. DRONE
Iran said Sunday that it is reverse-engineering the U.S. drone that was downed over the country last year and is building a copy. It also said that it has recovered data from the drone, “including information that the aircraft was used to spy on Osama bin Laden weeks before he was killed,” reports the AP. The remarks were made by Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, air force commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who said that the drone “had undergone repairs in California in October 2010 and returned to Afghanistan in November 2010, where American officials have acknowledged it operated,” reports the New York Times. “Had we not accessed the plane’s softwares and hard disks, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve these facts,” Gen. Hajizadeh said. U.S. officials declined to comment, but “independent experts expressed skepticism” about Iran’s claims, reports the NYT. “They noted that the information about the drone’s activities — including its use in the Bin Laden raid — could have been drawn from public reports about the sophisticated aircraft.” (AP, NYT, Guardian)

The United States
SURPRISING PRECEDENT CITED BY NASHIRI DEFENSE AT GUANTANAMO
The Miami Herald reports that “a Pentagon defense attorney invoked a surprising precedent at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last week” in defending Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the accused USS Cole bombing mastermind: The 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision in The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. the City of Hialeah allowing animal sacrifice in Hialeah, Florida. Pentagon defense attorney Michel Paradis argued that the U.S. discriminates against alleged al Qaeda terrorists by subjecting them to a special war court, and that the Supreme Court’s 1993 ruling applies because Haileah ordinances were found to have “violated the nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom.” (Miami Herald)

CIA: A judge has ruled that a former CIA officer, who wrote the book The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones,” must forfeit any future money he makes off the sale of the book because he did not get approval from the CIA before publication. (AP)

Bomb threats: The University of Pittsburgh, in response to a rash of bomb threats, has decided to tweak its response for final exams week: It will no longer automatically evacuate certain buildings when threats are received. (WSJ)

Terror trial: The Daily Beast reports on the upcoming trial of Mohamed Mohamud, who is accused of trying to bomb a tree-lighting ceremony in Portland in 2010 as part of an FBI sting, and examines whether his entrapment defense stands a chance. (Daily Beast)

Conflict Zones
U.S., AFGHANISTAN REACH PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT
After a year of negotiations, the U.S. and Afghanistan completed a draft partnership agreement on Sunday that “pledges American support for Afghanistan for 10 years after the withdrawal of combat troops at the end of 2014,” reports the New York Times. The text of the deal and further details have not yet been released. “The document finalized today provides a strong foundation for the security of Afghanistan, the region and the world and is a document for the development of the region,” said Afghanistan’s national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta. The document now awaits review by the countries’ presidents. (NYT, BBC News, Politico)

Sudan: On Monday, days after South Sudan said it had withdrawn troops from a contested oil-rich region to avoid all-out war, it accused Sudan of attacking its territory with warplanes and ground troops. (NYT)

Yemen: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has reportedly demanded that 15 terror suspects held in Saudi Arabia be released in exchange for a Saudi diplomat kidnapped last week in Aden. (Arab News)

Bahrain: The Formula One grand prix race went ahead on Sunday, though days of protests had threatened to eclipse it. A protester died Friday, when thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets. (WSJ, CSM)

World News
Italy: Italian police say they arrested a man early Monday as part of a crackdown on an Islamic extremist network suspected of supporting international terrorism. (AP)

UK: In Vanity Fair, Bridget Arsenault goes inside the UK’s security plans for the London Olympics. (Vanity Fair)

Arguments, Editorials, and Must Reads
Andrew F. March on Tarek Mehanna’s troubling conviction and sentence: “As a political scientist specializing in Islamic law and war, I frequently read, store, share and translate texts and videos by jihadi groups,” writes March in the New York Times. “As a political philosopher, I debate the ethics of killing. As a citizen, I express views, thoughts and emotions about killing to other citizens. As a human being, I sometimes feel joy (I am ashamed to admit) at the suffering of some humans and anger at the suffering of others. [And at Tarek] Mehanna’s trial, I saw how those same actions can constitute federal crimes. Because Mr. Mehanna’s conviction was based largely on things he said, wrote and translated. Yet that speech was not prosecuted according to the Brandenburg standard of incitement to ‘imminent lawless action’ but according to the much more troubling standard of having the intent to support a foreign terrorist organization.”
Related: Peter Margulies at Lawfare blog on the Mehanna case, David Cole responds

The Economist on computers predicting civil war: “In the war-games rooms and think-tanks of the rich world’s military powers, bright minds are working on the problem of how to model insurrection and irregular warfare,” reports The Economist. “Slowly but surely they are succeeding, and in the process they are helping politicians and armies to a better understanding of the nature of rebellion.”