The terrorism suspect's responses to FBI questions on the day of his arrest fall under the Miranda standard, a judge said.
By Bob Von Sternberg
May 31, 2007
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim ruled that statements Warsame made during the second day of interviews with FBI agents on Dec. 9, 2003, cannot be used against him. But the judge refused to overturn Warsame's arrest later that day.
"I think it's very significant that the judge agreed that his statements that day should be excluded," said Warsame's attorney, David Thomas, of Chicago. "That's when they took his statements of the day before and really bored in on him."
During roughly three hours of questioning that morning, Warsame gave FBI agents "a detailed account of his knowledge of 'some overseas associates,' " according to Tunheim's ruling.
Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent, is charged with lying to federal agents about traveling to Afghanistan and sending $2,000 to an associate he met at a training camp there.
Authorities contend he once dined next to Osama bin Laden and fought on the front lines for the Taliban. A lawful permanent resident of the United States, he has been held since his arrest at the state's prison in Oak Park Heights.
The FBI began investigating Warsame after being told by another government agency that he had been in contact with Al-Qaida.
Agents looked at his e-mail, searched his apartment and tapped his phone. When they decided to approach him the morning of Dec. 8, 2003, three agents waited until he was alone in his family's Minneapolis apartment.
After Warsame invited them in, he told them about his experiences in Saudi Arabia and Somalia and said he hadn't traveled to any other countries, When agents pressed him, he said he had been to Pakistan "and other countries," the ruling said.
Agents drove Warsame to Camp Ripley near Little Falls, Minn., where they continued to question him in a house normally used to house officers.
Agents next door were secretly watching the conversation on closed-circuit television. They did not record it, a point criticized both by Thomas during a 2005 hearing and by Tunheim in his ruling.
"Unfortunately," he wrote, "the court will never know the precise language used by Warsame to communicate his desire to return home or the precise language used by the agents to convince Warsame to continue the interviews. ... The time has long since passed for the FBI to start recording interviews of this type. Failure to do so can make it very difficult for courts to make important decisions involving basic constitutional rights."
Basing his ruling on the Miranda standard, Tunheim found that Warsame was technically not in the agents' custody on Dec. 8, but that he was the following day and suppressed the statements he made on Dec. 9.
Thomas said his client has roughly a dozen other motions pending in the case.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office said prosecutors will review the decision and consult with Justice Department officials. A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on the ruling.
Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184 • [email protected]
Source: Star Tribune, May 31, 2007