The Terror Suspect Who May Go Free



Counter-terror officials believe Abu Doha was al-Qaeda's kingpin in Europe. But following Washington's withdrawal of an extradition request, Doha may be freed and deported by British authorities
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On the face of it, Abu Doha would appear to be the sort of case for which the U.S. offshore detention system was created. The 40-year-old Algerian militant is alleged by counter-terror officials to be a Qaeda-aligned terror kingpin and suspected of involvement in a number of plots around the world, including the "Millennium Bomb" plot aimed at Los Angeles International airport in 2000. Yet, as things stand, Abu Doha looks set to be freed from prison in Britain and deported on immigration violations, after the U.S dropped its bid to extradite him over the LAX plot.

The prospect of his going free troubles security officials on both sides of the Atlantic, and leaves some bewildered by Washington's decision to drop its case against him. British authorities say they don't have sufficient evidence to try Doha, and plan instead to deport him to his native Algeria. What happens then? "Either Doha is left free to do as he pleases, and probably one day vanish to resume his plotting work," says a French counter-terror official. "Or the Algerians cite some pretext for arresting and jailing him, and ensure he's not a threat to anyone."

Doha (a.k.a. "The Doctor," Rachid, Amar Makhlolif, and Didier Ajuelo) was arrested in February 2001 while trying to travel from London to Saudi Arabia on a fake passport. Six months later, the U.S. filed an extradition request after a Federal grand jury indicted Doha as a co-conspirator in the LAX plot, based on evidence and an affidavit signed by would-be bomber Ahmed Ressam that Doha had overseen the attempted attack. "[Doha] actually moved Ressam from Afghanistan back to Canada" to plan and execute the Millennium bombing, explains a senior U.S. intelligence official. But after initially sharing his knowledge of terror networks, Ressam ceased cooperating with prosecutors sometime in 2003 — and even after two years of coaxing and cajoling, claims to have "forgotten" the information he'd earlier provided.

In August, 2005 — shortly after Ressam was sentenced to 22 years in prison — U.S. officials withdrew the Doha indictment, explaining that "Ressam's testimony would have been an essential part in the Government's evidence at trial against Abu Doha."

Even though Ressam refused to testify in court, the fact that he had spilled the beans on Doha and evidence pointing to Doha's role as a Qaeda recruiter raises questions over the U.S. decision to drop the extradition request — particularly if the consequence of doing so is that Doha will go free. With no terror related charges pending, Doha faces an immigration hearing in early 2007 that may end with his deportation from Britain. In Washington, officials at the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, as well at the CIA, refused to comment on Doha's case. (Each referred TIME to the other departments for an answer as to how the U.S. could lose its purchase on such a major alleged terror suspect.) Says one European security official with long involvement in the investigation of Doha's activities, "There is something strange about this case."

U.S. officials are certainly aware of the danger of Doha being turned loose. "There's concern about what he'll do," says the U.S. intelligence official. "After he's released, he'll probably return to his old friends. Anybody who's been engaged in a potential plot against us — and who we believe will return to being engaged with the same group that he was beforehand — would cause some problems."

French and U.S. officials concur on a picture of Doha's activities during the 1990s that included serving as al Qaeda's coordinator for Europe, and recruiting scores, perhaps hundreds, of young Muslims into clandestine network, sending many for training in Afghanistan at a specially designated camp,

Although France, Italy and Germany had evidence tying Doha to specific plots, they refrained from making their own extradition requests once the U.S. had signaled its intention to put Doha on trial. But now that the U.S. case has been dropped, it's too late for the Europeans to step in, because the cases in which they would have charged Doha have already been tried, and can't legally be reopened without new evidence against him.

The French are incredulous at the prospect of Doha going free. "How can you have Abu Zubaydah, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and who knows how many low-level fighters in secret camps and let someone of Abu Doha's stature free by deporting him?" the French counter-terrorism official asks. "It's incomprehensible that someone with his profile will be deported to freedom and allowed to resume his activities."

So incomprehensible, in fact, that some suspect it won't be that simple. In light of Algeria's traditionally ruthless treatment of Islamist militants, Amnesty International warns that Britain may be sending him home to face abuses. "If Abu Doha is deported as planned, he faces grave danger of detention and torture in Algeria," says an Amnesty spokesman in London, who says at least 12 specific cases of alleged secret detention and torture in Algeria have been reported to his group since 2002. In August, a British court ruling struck down challenges to such deportations on human rights grounds, citing Algeria's recently-applied Charter For Peace and Reconciliation — which offers pardons to security force members and surrendered radicals responsible for violent crimes — as a guarantee of fair treatment for deportees. Amnesty mocks that decision and its application in the Doha case, given British officials' own description of Doha as an active security threat rather than the repentant jihadist that Algiers might pardon.

Doha's attorneys are fighting his deportation, but did not respond to multiple requests to comment on the allegations made against their client by counter-terror officials. British Home Office officials would not comment beyond confirming that Doha's deportation case is based on an "immigration violation." Amnesty International fears a darker agenda. "The government claims Abu Doha is a security threat, yet can't convict him of anything here — so they send this dangerous man to what one might presume would be freedom in Algeria," the Amnesty spokesman says. "It's very difficult not to wonder if this is being done with the prior knowledge that Algeria will be interning and perhaps interrogating Abu Doha on behalf of the U.S. or U.K."

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Can This Machine Be Trusted?




The U.S.'s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting.

A woman walked into a polling place in Peoria, Ill. last week and proceeded to use one of the new electronic voting machines set up for early voting. She logged on, went through each contest and seemed to be making her choices. After reviewing each race, the machine checked to see if she was satisfied with her selections and wanted to move on. Each time, she pressed YES, and the machine progressed to the next race. When she was done, a waving American flag appeared on the screen, indicating that her votes had been cast and recorded.

But there was a problem. The woman had not made any choices at all. She had only browsed. Now when she told the election judges she was ready to do it again--but this time actually vote--they told her it was too late. Pressing the last button, they said, is like dropping your ballot in an old-fashioned ballot box. There's no getting it back.

So what?

So this: In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them--90%--will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today. Four years after Congress passed a law requiring every state to vote by a method more reliable than the punch-card system that paralyzed Florida and the nation in 2000, the 2006 election is shaping up into a contest not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between people who believe in technology and those who fear machines cannot be trusted to count votes in a closely divided democracy.

Perhaps the biggest fallacy in this debate is the notion that elections were perfect before Congress decided to hold them on computers. They weren't. "Stuffing the ballot box" is not an expression from the world of fiction. The problem with overvoting punch cards existed for decades before the dateline PALM BEACH COUNTY became a household term. Peoria County clerk JoAnn Thomas says she routinely tossed out several hundred twice-punched ballots every year. That represents roughly 1% of all registered voters in her jurisdiction.

The 2000 election reminded Americans that every vote makes a difference, and scrutiny of polling practices intensified. So just as America has moved to a process of electronic voting and tabulation intended to make voting more accessible, reliable and secure, trust in the system has actually gone down. Says David Orr, clerk of Illinois' Cook County: "We used to have a problem with giving people the wrong ballots. And if we were lucky, we'd catch it before they voted. Now, if the same thing happens with a touch screen, it's a conspiracy."

So far, at least, Murphy's Law has been a bigger problem than fraud. Many jurisdictions, especially those with long or bilingual ballots, have struggled to program their computers perfectly, and there have been scattered reports of glitches. In three Virginia cities, for example, electronic voting machines have inadvertently shortened the name of the Democratic candidate in one of the tightest Senate races in the nation. In Charlottesville, Falls Church and Alexandria, James H. Webb's name will appear on the ballot summary screen page simply as "James H. 'Jim'"--with no last name. Sounds like a crisis--except that the same thing happened in the June primary and Webb still won.

A bigger worry concerns something that is least likely to happen--that someone will somehow meddle with the devices and manipulate vote tallies. It's not impossible. Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten and a couple of graduate students this past summer tested the defenses of a voting machine made by Diebold, a major manufacturer of such devices. Felten's team found three ways to insert into the machine rogue programs that allowed them to redistribute votes that had already been cast. In one instance, the testers had to take the machine apart with a screwdriver--an act likely to draw the attention of poll workers. But in two others, they were able to quickly infect the device with a standard memory-access card in which they had installed a preprogrammed chip. Other computer scientists have also breached electronic voting machines. Congressman Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who has been holding hearings this fall, says manufacturers "have produced machines that are very vulnerable, not very reliable and I suspect fairly easy to hack."

Concerns about fraud are heightened by the fact that with some electronic voting machines, there is no such thing as a real recount. When asked again for the tally, the computer could spit back the same response as the first time. For that reason, at least 27 states have built in a backup that requires electronic voting machines to provide an attached voter-verified paper trail--a running ticker that allows voters to see on paper that their votes are recorded as cast. That way, if there's a question about the electronic tally, the paper records can be counted by hand.

It was just such a paper trail that enabled Marilyn Jo Drake, the auditor in Iowa's Pottawattamie County, to suss out an anomaly in a county-recorder race she was monitoring in June. She noticed that a 20-year incumbent was being beaten 10 to 1 by an unknown newcomer. Sensing a glitch, Drake cross-checked the electronic results against the totals on the paper vote and discovered the veteran was actually well ahead. The problem, it turned out, was the way the candidates' names had been ordered and coded into the access cards that activated the machines, which were made by Omaha's ES & S. Drake says she should have caught the problem in the pre-election test runs. "It was human error both on their end and my end," she notes. Not every county will have an auditor as sharp-eyed as Drake--or an outcome as transparently false as the one she uncovered. "We were just plain lucky," she says.

Rather than waiting for results to be contested, some states are requiring election officials to conduct random samples of electronic results next week and compare them with the paper printouts. Minnesota's secretary of state, Mary Kiffmeyer, plans to audit the tally from two precincts in each of her state's 87 counties to make sure the electronic tabulation matches the paper trail. Audits, says Kiffmeyer, "just build confidence." In Los Angeles County, officials aren't waiting for the election to start running their tests. They will soon conduct random audits of 5% of the devices used in early voting, which began in earnest last week.

County election officials who spoke to TIME reported that most of the fears they field about the new machines come from Democrats, who have not won a national election in three cycles. It may be that a solid Democratic win in 2006 will allay some of their worries. It follows, of course, that if the Republicans lose, they will take up the charge. In fact, that's already happening in some places this year.

In a country of 300 million, it is far preferable for partisans, poll workers, defensive voting-machine manufacturers and voters to adjust to the new technologies, eliminate their weak spots and work to keep human errors to a minimum. In that way, voting by machine may someday be no more mysterious than making a visit to the ATM.

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Today in history - Oct. 30


The Associated Press

Today is Monday, Oct. 30, the 303rd day of 2006. There are 62 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Oct. 30, 1938, the radio play "The War of the Worlds," starring Orson Welles, aired on CBS. (The live drama, which employed fake news reports, panicked some listeners who thought its portrayal of a Martian invasion was real.)

On this date:

In 1735, the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Mass.

In 1944, the Martha Graham ballet "Appalachian Spring," with music by Aaron Copland, premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with Graham in a leading role.

In 1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing.

In 1953, Gen. George C. Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer received the Peace Prize for 1952.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the "Tsar Bomba," with a force estimated at about 50 megatons.

In 1961, the Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.

In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead" a day after President Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.

In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.

In 1985, the launch of the space shuttle Challenger was witnessed by schoolteacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, who died when the spacecraft exploded after liftoff in January 1986.

In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in Quebec in a secession referendum.

Ten years ago: After a four-hour trial, a Chinese court sentenced pro-democracy activist Wang Dan to 11 years in prison for "conspiring to subvert the Chinese government." (Wang was freed in April 1998 and sent into exile in the United States.)

Five years ago: Ford Motor Co. chairman William Clay Ford Jr. took over as chief executive after the ouster of Jacques Nasser. NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey snapped its first picture of Mars, one week after the spacecraft safely arrived in orbit around the Red Planet. Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union. The New York Yankees won Game 3 of the World Series 2-1 cutting the Arizona Diamondbacks' lead to 2-1.

One year ago: The body of Rosa Parks arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where the civil rights pioneer became the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda; President Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths by her casket. Baseball Hall of Fame catcher and manager Al Lopez died in Tampa, Fla., at age 97.

Today's Birthdays: Actor Dick Gautier is 69. Movie director Claude Lelouch is 69. Rock singer Grace Slick is 67. Songwriter Eddie Holland is 67. Actor Ed Lauter is 66. Rhythm-and-blues singer Otis Williams (The Temptations) is 65. Actor Henry Winkler is 61. Rock musician Chris Slade (Asia) is 60. Musician Timothy B. Schmit (The Eagles) is 59. Actor Harry Hamlin is 55. Actor Charles Martin Smith is 53. Country singer T. Graham Brown is 52. Actor Kevin Pollak is 49. Rock singer-musician Gavin Rossdale (Bush) is 39. Comedian Ben Bailey is 36. Actress Nia Long is 36. Country singer Kassidy Osborn (SHeDAISY) is 30. Actor Gael Garcia Bernal is 28. Actor Tequan Richmond ("Everybody Hates Chris") is 14.

Thought for Today: "Cuando amor no es locura, no es amor." (When love is not madness, it is not love.) — Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Spanish dramatist (1600-1681).

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