The suddenly famous "Air Grenadist" of Rockford, Illinois, Derrick Shareef,
appeared in a federal court in Chicago on Wednesday, December 20, but did not speak as his
attorney waived twice. One: No, the Federales were not required to
present any evidence against him. Two: No, the judge was not required
to deny him bail.
Derrick Shareef was arrested two
weeks ago in Rockford, while attempting to trade a pair of
speakers for a handgun, some ammo and four hand grenades. He supposedly
needed these things because he was allegedly planning to attack a
Rockford shopping center. But the grenades and the ammo were duds, the
"arms dealer" was an FBI agent, and rather than the box of grenades he
thought he was trading for, Derrick Shareef has found trouble of a
different kind. He is in danger of spending the next 40 years in prison.
In
previous reports, I have suggested that the Feds will have to drop at
least one of the two charges filed against Derrick Shareef, the charge
involving "using a weapon of mass destruction". Unfortunately, this
description of the charge, which I read in a news account and took at
face value, is misleading. Rather than reading the newspapers, I've
been reading the law, and finding two big surprises:
1. Derrick Shareef appears to be in much more
trouble than I originally thought, and
2. the American invasion of Iraq appears to have been justified.
CHICAGO
— Through his attorneys, Derrick Shareef, the 22-year-old Rockford
resident charged with plotting to detonate explosives at CherryVale
Mall during the Christmas shopping season, waived a pair of hearings
that had been scheduled for today in federal court.
Prosecutors
had been expected to outline evidence against Shareef, and the
defendant’s attorneys had been expected to seek his release on bond.
Instead, Shareef will remain in custody for the time being.
The
next step in the process is an arraignment at which Shareef will enter
pleas to the charges against him. That’s likely to occur in late
January or early February, according to his attorneys.
The prosecuting attorneys aren't promising anything, except that the arraignment will happen "in the future". Mike Wiser's report has all the relevant details.
CHICAGO
- A Muslim convert accused of plotting to wreak havoc at a Rockford
mall by blowing up garbage cans with grenades remained in custody
Wednesday after a short hearing in federal court.
Ironic,
is it not, how the AP manages to spin in two directions at once?
Playing up the "Muslim convert" angle feeds into The Phony War, and is
therefore to be expected. But the "garbage can" angle is one of the
phoniest-sounding details of a very phony-sounding story. So that was
unexpected, except in an ironic way.
Questions
As
for the hearing itself, several questions present themselves, beginning
with: What is the defense attorney's angle? Why wouldn't he want to see
the evidence against his client? And why wouldn't he want to try to
spring his client on bail?
My best guesses: No judge would ever
set bond in an amount that Derrick Shareef could afford. So waiving the
bond hearing is an easy one. And there are all sorts of reasons
why an attorney would waive the preliminary hearing. Perhaps the
evidence against Derrick Shareef is so strong, his attorney doesn't even
want to see it? Perhaps his attorney was working pro bono and hoping to be elsewhere very soon? Perhaps his attorney is thinking about Lynne Stewart? Perhaps a combination?
Media Coverage
Next
question: How much media coverage will it get and how good will that
coverage be? The easy predictions are "not much" and "not good", but
I've been surprised before, so we'll see ...
At the moment the prediction "not good" may be in some danger. The Rockford Register Star has been mostly pretty good on this topic, and I've been especially impressed with Mike Wiser. We'll see what happens.
But
the prediction "not much" appears right on target. There's been no
coverage outside the immediate area. Aside from an item on the AP wire,
the only original reporting has come from the Rockford TV station and
the Star.
This fits the pattern (from a Terror Scare
point of view). Derrick Shareef's time in the spotlight is past. Mike
Wiser mentioned on TV that he had seen a lot of reporters at the
hearing; apparently they were all on vacation and had nothing better to
do than attend the hearing.
You'll find links to all the media coverage of the hearing (and a bit more) below.
Was It "Overblown"?
Mike
Wiser appears to have asked Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers
whether too much was made of the incident, possibly using the word
"overblown".
Winnebago
County Sheriff Dick Meyers, who said that regardless of Shareef’s
competence in actually executing a plan and regardless of the reasons
behind it, the result would have been the same if he had been
successful.
“It doesn’t make a difference. ... The end result
would have been mass casualties,” Meyers said. “I don’t think it was
overblown at all.”
Kudos to Mike Wiser for asking the question that prompted this very interesting response.
I'd
be even more interested in knowing what Winnebago County Sheriff Dick
Meyers would have said if someone (Mike Wiser, perhaps?) had asked
"Doesn't this look a little bit like entrapment?"
This so-called
plot was supposedly hatched during a conversation between two people:
Derrick Shareef (who we've been told was working alone!) and the FBI
informant known in the affidavit as "CS" (Confidential Source). The
affidavit filed in this case includes transcripts of key sections of the crucial conversation,
and a careful reading of the affidavit reveals that it was CS who
suggested bombing CherryVale Mall, who suggested the date (December 22)
and the reason (to disrupt Christmas), and it was even CS who suggested
using grenades. Then CS set up the meeting between Shareef and the
bogus arms-dealer, and CS drove Shareef to the spot where the
transaction was to take place.
And yet, there seems to be a feeling that, as Wiser puts it:
it’s
possible that even though Shareef didn’t, in the government’s words,
pose an imminent threat, he could have if the person he was dealing
with wasn’t, in fact, a government agent.
I don't
understand this as analysis, althought I do understand it as
propaganda. As analysis it makes no sense to me, because it seems quite clear to me that if left to his
own devices, Shareef would never have thought of bombing a shopping
mall.
He has no idea. He has no money. He has no weapons, no
access to weapons. No real motivating forces, no friends ... and then
all of a sudden there's this guy in his life, and they talk about
jihad!, and it's kind of exciting in a remote sort of way, but then his
new "friend" starts daring him -- in not-so-subtle ways -- to prove his
manhood, and his faith! -- and Derrick Shareef isn't bright enough or
strong enough to resist that kind of pressure, so eventually he starts
talking about hurting somebody. Maybe smoke a judge, that'd be fun. But that's not good enough for CS, so he keeps pressing. Why not kill a bunch of people? Why not ruin a religious holiday?
Most
observers in Rockland and elsewhere, even those critical of FBI for one
reason or another, seem to believe the FBI undercover agents are
"picking off" the radical Muslim youth who would otherwise hook up with
real terrorists and pose real threats. And that may be true. But it may
also be true that the undercover FBI pseudo-jihadis are picking off
lonely young guys with nothing much going for them, who are susceptible
to a bit of peer-pressure and can be led to say and do virtually
anything. In this case if it hadn't been for the FBI, Shareef would
probably have moped around the mosque for a while, then gone home and
listened to some music on his stereo speakers, rather than trading
those speakers for the chance to carry a box of dud grenades from one
car to another and spend the bulk of his life in prison.
Corrections
Previous
reports in this space have been misleading with regard to the charges
in the case. It was originally reported that Derrick Shareef had been
charged with "using a weapon of mass destruction". Based on these reports, I have argued
that [1] a grenade -- or even a box of four -- is not a weapon of mass
destruction, so how could a box of dud grenades be a WMD? and [2] he
didn't "use" said weapon, even if it were a WMD. Therefore, I have stated
flatly, the charges will be dropped.
Unfortunately,
I was wrong about all this and Derrick Shareef is in a lot more trouble
than I originally imagined. According to the applicable laws, a "weapon
of mass destruction" is defined as anything that gives off poison or
pathogens or radioactivity (biological, chemical, and nuclear
respectively, as expected) as well as anything that explodes!
[The emphasis in the following quoted passages is mine.]
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title;
(B)
any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious
bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or
poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life; and
(A) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas—
(i) bomb,
(ii) grenade,
(iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces,
(iv) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce,
(v) mine, or
(vi) device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses;
According
to this law, the US invasion of Iraq was justified, and UN
arms-inspector Hans Blix is an idiot. Clearly Saddam Hussein had at
least one hand grenade; even if Blix couldn't find it, that grenade was a weapon of mass destruction, just the
same as any bomb, any mine, and all but the smallest rockets and
missiles.
In
fact this law appears to classify as weapons of mass
destruction, all weapons which can hurt people from a distance, except
for firearms (here we see the long reach of the 3rd Amdendment and
the even longer reach of the NRA), crossbows and slingshots (and of
course this loophole will be eliminated when the law is revised).
Therefore,
the continued occupation and depleted-uranium-poisoning of Iraq is
fully justified, the whining lefties who never believe anything the
president says can go jump off a cliff, the rape, murder and torture of
innocent Iraqis is legitimate and fully called-for, the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post
may still be liable for treason, and the president's "surge option"
deserves support from across the entire width of the political
spectrum, even though 87.3 percent of all Americans are smart enough to
know it cannot possibly work.
Why? Because Saddam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction, that's why!
Further complications: Derrick Shareef is not charged with using a WMD; he is charged with violating this law:
(a) A person who, without lawful authority, uses, threatens, or attempts or conspires to use, a weapon of mass destruction —-
(1) [...]
(2) against any person or property within the United States, and
(A) [...]
(B) such property is used in interstate or foreign commerce or in an activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce;
(C) [...]
(D) the offense, or the results of the offense, affect interstate or foreign commerce, or, in the case of a threat, attempt, or conspiracy, would have affected interstate or foreign commerce;
So
it does appear likely that Derrick Shareef is going to have to resort
to the first word that came into my head when I heard of his case:
Entrapment
In criminal procedures, a complete defense. The defendant must show
that officers induced the defendant to commit a crime not contemplated
by him, for the purpose of instituting a criminal prosecution against
him. www.utcourts.gov/resources/glossary.htm
Writings 
The suddenly famous "
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