Paintball: The New Threat to National Security

On March 5, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia found three American citizens residing in Falls Church, Virginia guilty of terrorism charges that could send them to prison for fifty years or more.

The men, part of a group of American citizens known as the “Alexandria 11” had never taken up arms against anyone, or even threatened to do so (though one or more of them legally owned a gun or two). They never planned a terrorist attack against the United States abroad, let alone planned an attack on Americans at home.

What they did do was talk about and, if you believe the prosecutor’s case, engage in “paramilitary training’ by playing paintball in support of Lashkar-i-Taiba, an Islamic group that supports Pakistan in its continuing skirmishes with India over the rule of Kashmir. (Lashkar-i-Taiba has been accused by India of mass killings of Sikhs and of partial responsibility for an attack on India's Parliament in December 2001.)

Two of men admitted to working for the organization in 1999 and 2000 and several had been to a Lashkar-i-Taiba training camp in Pakistan before the group was declared a terrorist organization in 2001.

In the summer of 2003, federal prosecutors in Alexandria indicted the men on charges of violating the Neutrality Acts (1937 and 1939), a law that forbid an American citizens or residents from attacking countries (in this case, India) with which the United States is at peace. In announcing the indictment under this rarely used law, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said that the men were preparing for violent jihad. Attorneys and supporters charged that the government was attacking Muslims for their preparation to support a Muslim cause (the majority of Kashmir is Muslim), as their religion requires of them.

The charge of discrimination against Islam and Muslims was made throughout the proceedings. When a federal magistrate let some of the defendants out on bail, the government appealed to Judge Leonie Brinkema (best know as the presiding judge in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui), who ultimately ordered most of the defendants jailed pending the proceedings.

Defense attorneys charged that this decision to jail American citizens who had strong ties to the community and who had not been charged with committing any act of violence was obvious discrimination. They allege that their clients were denied bail because they were Muslims. Brinkema said the charges were “serious,” hence the detention. Yet seriousness of the charge, as such, is not the basis for a bail decision. Rather, the decision to deny or grant bail is posited on the likelihood of the defendant to flee and not appear for trial and to be a danger to the community.

An FBI official justified the preemptive prosecutions. Michael E. Rolince, in charge of Washington FBI field office, conceded that the government had no evidence of specific plots against U.S. targets at home or abroad, but that, given the climate since Sept. 11, 2001, they decided to move on the evidence they did have.

"It is just no longer sound judgment to have people that you believe have engaged in illegal activity and let them conduct an attack before you do something about it," said Rolince in a Washington Post article. “A lot of this is about preemption."

Rolince was echoing what Attorney General Ashcroft has said repeatedly since September 11. The government is not going to wait for terrorism to happen. Its aim is to stop it from occurring. But at what cost?

The Alexandria prosecutors employed a strategy that is consistent across all types of “terrorist” prosecutions since September 11. Whether shutting down Islamic charities, detaining “suspicious” immigrants who have violated no criminal laws but who may have overstayed their visas, or charging people with aiding and abetting terrorism in order to extract pleas to far lesser charges, the government typically begins with a sweeping indictment, an arrest followed by denial of bail, stringent efforts on the part of prosecutors to get defendants (now incarcerated) to plead, and letting it be clearly known that if they insist on not pleading they will likely face more serious charges and get maximum prison time.