Tuesday, February 26, 2008

1993 WTC Bomber Whines He Can't Get Supreme Court Hearing

Aw, the poor thing can't get himself a date with the Supremes. Heartbreaking, isn't it?

On the upside, he's rotting away at Supermax.

A shame he hasn't been executed.
Fifteen years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a Palestinian sentenced to more than 100 years in prison in the attack claims that a vengeful U.S. government has blocked him from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj, who remains in extreme isolation in the nation's most secure prison, filed a lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against more than a dozen judges, federal court employees, Bureau of Prisons officials and his former defense lawyer Maranda Fritz.

He said they failed to notify him of appeals court rulings and blocked his access to what he would need for a Supreme Court appeal of his conviction on conspiracy charges in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.

In court documents filed last week, government lawyers said Ajaj has no right to bring the claims against court personnel.

Fritz, the defense lawyer, said in an interview that she worked on the case for seven years, collected evidence from around the globe and has not worked on the case in five or six years.

"I was terribly disappointed when the Supreme Court would not accept the case," she said. "I believe the results were wrong. I argued it in every way that I knew how. I think the issues were substantial and novel enough."

In his lawsuit, Ajaj claimed the U.S. judicial system denied him access to the courts in retaliation against him and Arab and Muslim prisoners for the "9-11-2001 tragedy" and for his complaints about the government's conduct.
Looks like the lawyer Fritz has a thing for Barack Obama. Maybe she can plead her case to The Messiah after he's sworn in.

Of course it will largely be ignored, but today is the 15th anniversary of the attack.

It's a shame Bill Clinton didn't take terrorism so seriously at the time. In fact, he never even visited the site afterward.

Update: Lawhawk and Michelle Malkin look back 15 years.

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