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You don't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights under the FBI!!!
Interview Was ‘Clean,’ F.B.I. Agent Testifies By BENJAMIN WEISER Published: December 23, 2011 In December 2009, Maged Sidaros, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, flew to Nigeria to question an Eritrean man being held on suspicion of supporting terrorism. The agent initially believed he would be part of a so-called dirty team of interviewers, who would question the suspect for intelligence purposes without advising him of his Miranda rights to remain silent or have a lawyer. But upon his arrival, Agent Sidaros learned that other American officials had conducted a “dirty” interview; he would be part of a “clean” team, which would read the man his rights and conduct a traditional law enforcement interrogation. So, the agent testified this week in Federal District Court in Manhattan, he took steps to ensure that the “clean” interrogations were independent of the intelligence interview. He said he had asked that his interviews be held at a different location; that no one involved in the earlier session participate; and that his first interrogation be “scheduled as far apart as possible” from the earlier one. “I wanted to make sure that there was a clear distinction between the previous interview and mine, since I was going to read him his Miranda rights,” Agent Sidaros said. He said that he told another F.B.I. agent who had attended the un-Mirandized interrogation that he, Agent Sidaros, should not “be permitted to know any of the contents of what was discussed.” His testimony this week came in a hearing requested by lawyers for the Eritrean man, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed. The lawyers, Sean M. Maher and Sabrina Shroff, contend that all statements Mr. Ahmed made after being taken into custody in November 2009, including those after he was said to have waived his Miranda rights in the “clean” sessions, were not voluntary and should be ruled inadmissible. Mr. Ahmed, 37, was brought to Manhattan to face charges that include providing material support to Al Shabab, a terrorist group based in Somalia. The case highlights the Obama administration’s position that it can delay advising a terrorism suspect of his rights and seek critical information about terrorists, without sacrificing the ability to pursue a criminal prosecution. Agent Sidaros testified that such intelligence interviews were now “commonplace.” “It is typical procedure,” he said, “in cases where a suspect or a subject is arrested in a foreign country that an intelligence interview is conducted to determine whether” there is any information about terrorist threats. A key issue in the case will be the separation American officials say they tried to keep between the un-Mirandized interview, which occurred on Dec. 31, 2009, and the Mirandized sessions, which began on Jan. 5, 2010. Prosecutors have said that Agent Sidaros reviewed a summary of earlier interrogations by Nigerian officials, but they said he was told only a few details about the Dec. 31 intelligence interrogation — that it had occurred, was conducted in English and had lasted about three hours. A prosecutor, Jocelyn E. Strauber, told Judge P. Kevin Castel that Agent Sidaros, before he conducted the first Mirandized interview on Jan. 5, had met a number of times with officials who had participated in the Dec. 31 un-Mirandized interview. But the agent “deliberately avoided asking any questions or gaining any information” about the intelligence session’s content, she said. At one point, the judge questioned how the agent could have cordoned himself off from such information. “It becomes highly relevant how many times he met, and for how long, with these U.S. officials, doesn’t it?” the judge asked. “Because it becomes implausible if he had a series of four or five meetings with them, and they discussed nothing other than what was in a printed piece of paper that the Nigerians had prepared, and nothing else.” The hearing will resume next month, after which the judge is expected to rule on whether Mr. Ahmed’s statements to the authorities should be admitted. |