Obama Administration Policy on Guantánamo The Associations policy positions are predicated on respect and support for our constitutional system of separated powers and reflect a commitment to ensuring that our government achieves the proper balance in protecting both the Nations security and our core constitutional values. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the ABA has adopted policies on many of the issues that have come into focus as the justice system and our lawmakers have adopted new strategies to meet changing circumstances and new threats. Likewise, our national security initiatives need to preserve the role of our federal judiciary to resolve disputes between the branches, rule on constitutional questions and protect individual liberties. To effectuate this, the executive and legislative branches need to work together with common purpose while respecting their separate roles and guarding against abuses of power by the other branch. Our system of separated powers and checks and balances provides us with the tools to preserve essential liberties and formulate sound policies. The Constitution must guide us in our efforts to combat terrorism. The stakes are high, making it essential that we conduct ourselves in ways that uphold our constitutional principles and affirm our commitment to the rule of law. We live in a time of great uncertainty, a time when we define ourselves, both here and abroad, by our actions and our policies. While incarcerated, Zazi said in the letter that he had earned a General Educational Developmment diploma, or GED, the general equivalent of a high school diploma.Our Nations war on terror continues to raise difficult legal and political issues for America. But now I battle back with knowledge, I read diverse books on general knowledge and am constantly getting a deeper understanding of Islam, reading many different texts." "And believe I did, for I nearly took my own life and the lives of innocents. My lack of education and the reverence surrounding Awlaki, an Islamic scholar, was enough to cause me to believe." They take historical facts and contort them to their agenda, to motivate people to their will. "Your Honor, the uneducated are perfect targets for the unscrupulous. Zazi goes on to say that "Looking back, I can now see how gullible I was, actually living in an imaginary world." "His twisted and corrupted teachings of the Quran, I accepted, for I did not know better." "Awlaki had won my sympathy and instilled a rage within me," Zazi contended. Zazi said in the letter that he was introduced to "the teachings of Anwar Al-Awlaki on the internet." In a letter to the judge that was unsealed late Thursday, Zazi tells Dearie that he was radicallized by two friends who introduced him to the preaching of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American-turned-extremist-Islamic preacher and senior leader al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, AQAP, who was killed in American drone strikes in the Middle East in 2011.Īl-Awlaki's preaching was featured in numerous al-Qaeda propaganda videos aimed at radicalizing young Muslims around the world. Zazi’s co-conspirator Bryant Neal Vinas, a former altar boy from Queens, and Zarein Ahmedzay, have both been released from prison after cooperating with authorities for years. Zazi is at least the third admitted terrorist from the New York City area to receive little or no additional prison time after cooperating with federal investigators. Zazi’s attorney William Stamper said that he expected that Zazi would be released in “days.” “Although the precise timing of the attacks had not been worked out,” federal prosecutors said Zazi and his accomplices “had agreed on the ultimate goal of detonating the bombs during suicide attacks in the New York City subway system.” It involved explosives made in a Aurora hotel room from beauty products and driven across the George Washington Bridge. It was there that Zazi committed to the subway plot that unfolded in Colorado, where Zazi had been working as a shuttle bus driver at the Denver airport. In the last decade, Zazi has related his experience at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, where he and his friends had gone - thinking that they would join the Taliban.
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