Mike Hawash pleads guilty to being a terrorist
I am surprised. Mike Hawash plead guilty to one of three counts of supporting terrorism (Criminal Case No. 02-399-07-JO PLEA AGREEMENT, U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, 2003-08-06).
1. Defendant HAWASH will enter a plea of guilty to Count 3 of the superseding indictment. The maximum penalty for Count 3 is ten years in prison, a fine of $250,000.00, a mandatory penalty assessment of $100.00, and a three-year term of supervised release.
2. In payment of the $100.00 mandatory penalty assessment, the defendant HAWASH will present the Court with a cashier's check in the amount of $100.00 (One-Hundred Dollars) made payable to the "Clerk, United States District Court," at or before the time of the entry of his guilty plea.
3. The parties stipulate that the elements of the offense charged in Count 3 are that a) two or more persons agreed to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan, namely, to willfully supply, directly or indirectly, services to the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban or to the Taliban; (2) defendant, knowing the unlawful purpose of the plan, willfully joined in it; and (3) one of the conspirators was a United States person as defined in 31 C.F.R. ? 545.315.
The maximum prison sentence is 10 years. My guess is he's not pleading guilty because the government can tie him up in court for a few years - he really planned to terrorize and murder people.
This series of comments on slashdot are interesting: 3 readers (at my level of comments) refute the claim that "his actions are not those of a terrorist."