Local News

The man accused of plotting to kill U.S. military personnel during an attack on a Seattle military processing station pleaded guilty today to conspiring to murder government employees with small-arms fire and grenades during a hearing in U.S. District Court.

Abdul Khalid Abdul-Latif, 35, will face between 17 and 19 years prison when he is sentenced on March 25, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Several other charges were dismissed, including a count of conspiring to use a firearm during a crime of violence – a charge that carries a 30-year mandatory sentence.

The plea came just two weeks before an evidentiary hearing was scheduled to determine the impact on the prosecution of revelations that a confidential informant, whose testimony was key to the case, admitted deleting hundreds of text messages from his phone during the investigation in the summer 0f 2011.

A Seattle police detective and the informant’s handler also deleted material from his phone, despite being told not to by Greenberg and the FBI.

Following a hearing two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge James Robart had left open the possibility that Greenberg and the other federal prosecutor on the case, Michael Dion, might have to testify for the defense, which would have been a significant if not crippling setback for the case.

According to a federal indictment, Abdul-Latif, formerly known as Joseph Anthony Davis, a felon and Muslim convert, was the mastermind of the plot. He and co-defendant, Walli Mujahidh planned to carry out the attack at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) on East Marginal Way South the day after Independence Day 2011, the charges alleged.

Seattle police learned of the conspiracy in May 2011 when the confidential informant said he was approached by Abdul-Latif, whom he knew previously, about obtaining weapons and possibly participating in the raid.

Police and the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force hired the informant to obtain information on the plot — including extensive taped conversations. The men were arrested after Abdul-Latif allegedly paid the informant for rifles and grenades that had been secretly disabled by federal agents.

The role of the informant — who police say has at least five felony convictions himself — was questioned by Abdul-Latif’s public defenders.

According to the FBI, the informant recorded conversations with the men in which Abdul-Latif said he hoped the attacks would inspire other young Muslims to rise up against the West.

Abdul-Latif had posted angry anti-American and anti-Western videos on a YouTube channel and he railed against the wars in Afghanistan and the revolts in the Middle East that were pitting Muslim against Muslim.

According to court documents and law-enforcement sources, he had initially chosen Joint Base Lewis-McChord as a target at least partly because Stryker soldiers there are being court-martialed for allegedly murdering Afghan civilians. The target was changed later to the MEPS.

Mujahidh, also known as Frederick Domingue, has a long history of mental illness. He already has pleaded guilty and is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 25. Prosecutors have promised to ask for a sentence of 27 to 32 years.

Algerian Ahmed Ressam, the would-be ”millennium bomber” who was arrested with bomb-making materials in Port Angeles in December 1999, was sentenced this morning in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 37 years in prison.

The government had sought a sentence of 65 years to life, much longer than the previous two 22-year sentences Ressam had been given. However, U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour said  “this case evokes our greatest fears … But fear is not, nor should it ever be, a guideline for a sentencing judge. It is a foul ingredient …”

The government sought the longer sentence because, federal prosecutors said, Ressam reneged on an agreement to cooperate with investigators. But Coughenour took the government to task, noting Ressam’s  refusal to cooperate was likely a “deranged protest” resulting from his poor treatment by the government.

“I will not sentence a man to 50 lashes and then 50 more for getting blood on the whip,” said Coughenour, who called Ressam’s deterioration in the past 13 years he’s spent behind bars ”stunning.”

(To read Coughenour’s sentencing order, click here.)

Ressam did not speak, but in a written statement submitted earlier he said his agreement to cooperate with the government was made under duress.

“I have no power to stop this injustice but only exonerate myself from it,” the statement read. “You can judge me as you wish, I will not object to any of your sentences.”

It marked the third time Ressam has come before Coughenour for sentencing. On two previous occasions, Coughenour sentenced Ressam to 22 years in prison, but both sentences were overturned.

Ressam was arrested Dec. 14, 1999, in Port Angeles after coming off the ferry from Victoria, B.C. Inspectors found electronic timers, powders and liquids in the trunk of his rental car that turned out to be the makings of a powerful bomb. The investigation that followed showed Ressam had been recruited by a radical Islamic cell in Montreal and had trained in Osama bin Laden-sponsored terrorism camps in Afghanistan. His target was Los Angeles International Airport.

Coughenour presided over Ressam’s trial in the spring of 2001, which the judge moved from Seattle to Los Angeles because of widespread publicity in Western Washington. Ressam later credited the fairness of the proceedings when he decided to cooperate with federal authorities after he was convicted of attempting to plant a powerful suitcase bomb at the Los Angeles airport in 1999.

Ressam became a crucial source of information about al-Qaida in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and as a result federal prosecutors initially suggested a sentence of around 35 years for crimes that could have resulted in life in prison, including a count of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism. Sentencing guidelines suggested a 65-year sentence.

Prosecutors appealed when Coughenour first imposed the 22-year sentence in 2005.

Ressam has been held in solitary confinement and over years of repeated questioning had soured on his cooperation. When the case was sent back to Coughenour for a procedural error in 2008, prosecutors urged the judge to impose the life sentence, saying Ressam had reneged on his deal. Ressam, in the meantime, fired his lawyers and recanted everything he had ever said.

The Department of Justice told the judge that prosecutors in New York had been forced to drop charges against two other terrorism suspects — including the man believed to be al-Qaida’s chief recruiter in Western Europe — whose prosecutions turned on Ressam’s testimony.

Even so, Coughenour imposed the same sentence in July 2005, saying that the information Ressam provided when he was cooperating almost certainly stopped other attacks and saved lives. The government appealed that sentence.

In February 2010,  a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted to reject the sentence — for the second time — by Coughenour, questioning his impartiality and saying that the sentence failed to protect the public from the al-Qaida-trained terrorist.

The Associated Press

A federal judge says investigators followed proper procedures when they obtained a secret warrant against a Seattle terror suspect.

Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif is charged with plotting to attack a military recruiting station last year. His lawyers asked U.S. District Judge James Robart to throw out some of the evidence against him, saying the government should not have been able to obtain any warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because there was no indication he was involved in international terrorism.

Robart refused. After reviewing classified materials submitted by the government, he said in a ruling last week that investigators did have reason to believe they were collecting “foreign intelligence information” and they presented such information to the special court that handles FISA warrants.

Abdul-Latif’s trial is set for next March.

Federal prosecutors allege Abdul-Latif is a felon and “self-radicalized” Muslim who recruited another man from Los Angeles, Walli Mujahidh to attack the military-processing station on East Marginal Way South on July 5, 2011. They were arrested a couple of weeks before that after the informant led them to a warehouse where they were to obtain the weapons to be used in the attack.

An ex-con with possible ties to the alleged Islamist terrorists has pleaded guilty in state court to charges that he tried to run two Marine recruiters off Interstate 5.

Michael Dale McCright, who was known on the Internet as “Mikhail Jihad,” pleaded guilty to charges of felony harrassment and attempted malicious mischief. A plea agreement reached with the King County Prosecutor’s Office spared him a possible life prison term under the state’s “three-strikes” law. McCright has an extensive criminal history, including convictions for first-degree robbery in 2006, assault in 2005.

When the 28-year-old McCright was arrested, investigators said he had a phone that had been used to call  Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif. Abdul-Latif and another man were arrested in an FBI-Seattle police sting in June 2011 after allegedly plotting to kill federal employees and military recruits at the Military Entrance Processing Station on East Marginal Way over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

According to the charges against McCright, two Marine sergeants — one in uniform and the other in civilian clothes — were driving north near Northgate on July 12, 2011,  when a small blue car came up behind them.

Marine Staff Sgt. Ryan Picklesimer described the driver as a “bearded white male wearing a tightfitting, white knit hat.”  The driver slowed, apparently to look at the government plate on Picklesimer’s car, then came alongside and saw the sergeant in his uniform.

“Picklesimer reported, ‘His eyes widened and he appeared to become angry,’ ” and then swerved at the sergeant’s car, forcing Picklesimer to take evasive action to avoid being hit, the charges allege. The sergeant was able to get the car’s license number, and he gave it to police.

McCright, of Lynnwood, admitted last week in King County Superior Court that he had tried to run the car off the road. The crimes carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Prosecutors say they will seek a 54-month sentence when McCright is sentenced n June 22.

Abdul-Latif is being prosecuted in federal court. His trial is set for October.

Walli Mujahidh

One of two men accused of conspiring to attack a military processing station in Seattle in June pleaded guilty to three federal charges this morning in U.S. District Court.

Walli Mujahidh, 32, formerly of Los Angeles, is accused of plotting to kill U.S. military recruits in a machine-gun and grenade attack in hopes of inspiring like-minded radical Muslims in the U.S. to carry out terrorist attacks. Their target, according to federal prosecutors, was the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) on East Marginal Way South.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kill officers of the United States, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and unlawful possession of a firearm. Under a plea agreement, federal prosecutors agreed to seek a sentencing range of 27 to 32 years on all three counts and to not pursue any other charges.

Sentencing is set for April 16.

Defense attorney Michelle Shaw said this morning that Mujahidh is ashamed and remorseful about what he has done.

Mujahidh and Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, 33, a felon and a Muslim convert, were arrested June 22.

They were named in a nine-count indictment July 7 alleging they conspired to murder officers and employees of the U.S. government, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (a grenade) and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Those charges carry potential life sentences, and the firearm charge includes a mandatory-minimum 30-year sentence that must be served consecutively to any other sentences.

Police learned of the plot through a paid informant, who secretly recorded conversations with the men, according to the indictment.

According to the FBI, the informant recorded conversations with the men in which Abdul-Latif said he hoped the attacks would inspire other young Muslims to rise up against the West.

Abdul-Latif had posted angry anti-American and anti-Western videos on a YouTube channel and he railed against the wars in Afghanistan and the revolts in the Middle East that were pitting Muslim against Muslim.

According to court documents and law-enforcement sources, he had initially chosen Joint Base Lewis-McChord as a target at least partly because Stryker soldiers there are being court-martialed for allegedly murdering Afghan civilians. The target was changed later to the MEPS.

Abdul-Latif served time for robbery in Washington. Mujahidh has a history of mental illness.

“This defendant tried to carry out a plot to kill American servicemen and women, and other innocent citizens who happened to be at the federal facility on the day of the planned attack,” U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan said in a news release. “I applaud the FBI, Seattle Police Department and the Joint Terrorism Task Force for their work in disrupting this plot and bringing Walli Mujahidh to justice.”