6/26/20 Jonathan Hafetz on the Plight of Adham Amin Hassoun - a podcast by Scott Horton

Scott talks to Jonathan Hafetz about the troubling case of Adham Amin Hassoun, a man who was convicted in 2008 of providing material support to terrorist organizations. Hassoun was a legal resident of the United States, but is not a citizen, so upon completion of his prison sentence in 2017, the government sought to deport him. But Hassoun, born in Lebanon to refugee parents, doesn’t hold citizenship in any country, and the U.S. couldn’t find a country to send him to. Instead, they invoked an obscure section of the Patriot Act that supposedly allows them to detain Hassoun indefinitely. Hafetz and the ACLU are challenging them on this claim, fighting for the freedom of a man who by all accounts has served his time and now deserves his liberty.



Discussed on the show:



“Government Case Collapses Against Adham Amin Hassoun, First Man Jailed Indefinitely Under Patriot Act” (The Daily Beast)

“Zadvydas v. Davis” (Oyez)



Jonathan Hafetz is a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Center for Democracy. He teaches at Seton Hall Law School and has published many books. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanHafetz.



This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.



Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YttSXnjTRgI









The following is an automatically generated transcript.



Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, y'all welcome it's Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow.

All right, so introducing Jonathan. Hey Fitz, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, welcome back to the show. How you doing?



Jonathan Hafetz 0:47

Very well in yourself.



Scott Horton 0:49

I'm doing great. appreciate you joining us here. And you know, I read this incredibly interesting story. I'm not sure if I ever heard about this specific case or not. Hum. mean, how soon and I hate to quote The Daily Beast, but I do somewhat respect Spencer Ackerman, so Okay. It's a Spencer Ackerman article at The Daily Beast. And it says here that you guys have been representing this guy, and that he has been held since when and for what again?



Jonathan Hafetz 1:23

It's a good question. He's been held. Well, he was he was convicted in the 2000s for what's called material support for terrorism. But as the judge in his case found he actually had nothing to do with a group like Al Qaeda and was not directed to us essentially, he was caught up in some kind of broader operation and he was, he was convicted of basically giving money to or supporting charities in places like Chechnya. That We're intended to uh, you know, it's just people there during conflict in Bosnia and Chechnya, nothing directed the United States and he was caught up in the overreaction and the sweeping kind of abuse of authority after 911. And he was anyway but anyway, that he was convicted and he was sentenced to a term imprisonment, the government sought to sentence him to a longer term, much longer term. But the the judge refused, said he was not a threat to national the US national security. And so the case was done. And then he was released from his prison term ended. And he's a loser, longtime resident United States. He's not at his family here,

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