RSS FeedCould lawyers provide material support to terrorist organizations?
Interesting post at Persuasive Authorities on the implications of Holder v. The Humanitarian Law Project and Al-Haramain v. Bush,
These two cases raise some serious issues for lawyers and law professors who provide legal opinion, advice, representation or education to suspected groups even when it is completely unrelated to terrorist violence.
Also see related post by Prof. Fadel of UofT at Foreign Policy,
At issue is the constitutionality of the United States government’s interpretation of a 1996 law criminalizing, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, the provision of “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations. This provision is the government’s most used law in prosecuting those suspected of terrorism, largely because of the law’s breadth, and because it does not require the government to prove that the defendant intended to further the violent aims of the terrorist group. Especially troubling from the perspective of the foreign policy community is that it also prohibits providing “training,” “personnel,” “expert advice or assistance,” or “service” to such a group, even when such services are completely unrelated to terrorist violence.
