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Affidavit Changed in Lodi Terror Case

The most sensationalized details in the charges against the Lodi, CA terror defendants have been deleted from the final Affidavit filed with the court.

The first version of the affidavit released to media organizations Tuesday by the Department of Justice in Washington said potential terrorist targets included hospitals and stores and contained names of key individuals and statements about the international origins of "hundreds" of participants in alleged Al Qaeda terrorist training camps inside Pakistan.

Those details — among the most alarming in the case — were widely reported in the press but then deleted in the final version filed with the federal court in Sacramento on Tuesday.

The F.B.I. says it's just a matter of miscommunication. The defense says otherwise:

Defense attorney Johnny L. Griffin III, who represents the father, 47-year-old Lodi ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, accused the government of "releasing information it knew it could not authenticate."

More at the Christian Science Monitor.

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    Re: Affidavit Changed in Lodi Terror Case (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:55 PM EST
    More broad farce from the Feds, who continue to press marginal cases by use of the infamous PATRIOT Act, again speciously cited by Boosh yesterday as "protecting America" by the arrest/conviction of over "400 terrorists"...now, the overwhelming bulk of these arrests and convictions have been for demonstrably non-terrorist actions, mostly immigration violations and petty crimes. The Hayats may go down for failure to declare more than $10K in currency when entering or leaving the US, or some unspecified immigration requirement transgression. Of course, there is this most compelling bit of intel, where the younger Hayat's grandfather is alleged to be a "close friend of Maulana Fazlur Rehman", said by "authorities in Pakistan" to have the same name as a "leader of an outlawed extremist group". Fabulous, off to Gitmo with these two!