COURT UPHOLDS KEY PROVISIONS OF ANTI-TERRORISM LAW

A Federal district court in Los Angeles recently upheld key provisions of the 1996 anti-terrorism law banning fund-raising and material support such as weapons, lodging, safe houses, false documentation and communications equipment in America for designated foreign terrorist organizations. American supporters of two of these organizations, the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil, had sued the government, challenging the constitutionality of both the designation procedure and the First Amendment speech and association limitations on providing "material support" for these foreign groups.

The court did strike language which makes it a crime to provide "personnel" or "training" to designated terrorist organizations, but it held that the ban on "material support" does not exceed what is "essential" to further the government's "compelling national security." Most importantly, the court approved the law's broad ban on fund-raising for terrorist groups.

• A Federal jury convicted five Montana Freemen -- Steven Hance, 48, John Hance, 21, James Hance, 25, Jon Barry Nelson, 42, and Elwin Ward, 57 -- of criminal charges resulting from the 81-day standoff between the anti-government militants and the FBI in 1996. A dozen other Freemen were tried in a 40-count Federal indictment, including conspiracy, bank fraud, firearms violations and threatening Federal officials. Before the trial, Dana Dudley Landers, 48, and Emmett Clark, 69, pleaded guilty to several of the charges. (The Washington Post, 4/1/98, AP, 5/28/98)
  
  
• World Trade Center rental van driver Eyad Ismoil, 26, was sentenced to 240 years in prison. (The New York Times, 4/4/98)
  
  
• Republic of Texas leader Richard McLaren was convicted on 26 counts of Federal fraud and conspiracy in connection with the writing of millions of dollars in worthless checks. Seven of McLaren's followers, including his wife, were also convicted of fraud. (The New York Times, 4/15/98)
  
  
• Ex-Ku Klux Klan leader Dennis M. McGiffen, 35, pleaded guilty to Federal firearms charges after the F.B.I. testified that McGiffen organized a group called the New Order to use machine guns and bombs in bank robberies to raise cash to finance a white supremacist reign of terror that was to include blowing up courthouses, poisoning city water supplies and bombing the offices of civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4/28/98)
  
  
• The State Department released its annual report on international terrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism 1997, calling Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism." In 1997, 221 people, including seven Americans, died in 304 acts of international terrorism. (AP, 4/30/98)
  
  
• A Federal judge sentenced confessed Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski to four life sentences plus 30 years in prison. (The New York Times, 5/5/98)
  
  
• One self-proclaimed member of the white supremacist group National Alliance, Brian Donald Pickett, 38, and his accomplices, Christopher Brent Norris, 25, and Deena Wanzie, 46, were charged with manufacturing pipe bombs that were to be planted on major highways near Orlando. (The New York Times, 5/10/98)
  
  
• Federal officials arrested Khalid Ibrahim, 43, of Virginia on charges of providing a false immigration affidavit on behalf of convicted World Trade Center bomber Mohammed Salameh. (The Washington Post, 5/12/98)
  
  
• A judge sentenced Abdul Hakim Murad, 30, to life imprisonment without parole for the December 1994 bombing of a Philippine jet which killed a Japanese passenger and for plotting to bomb 11 U.S. airliners in January 1995. (Reuters, 5/15/98)
  
  
• The Senate and House passed the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, imposing penalties on foreign companies that provide missile technology or expertise to Iran. President Clinton later vetoed the measure. (The New York Times, 5/23/98, AP, 6/10/98)
  
  
• Oklahoma City bombing government witness Michael Fortier, 29, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for concealing the April 1995 bombing plot, withholding evidence and lying to the FBI. (AP, 5/28/98)
  
  
• As part of a plea bargain, North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan member Kenneth Carter, 47, pleaded guilty to Federal charges he conspired to possess machine guns, threatened to assault and murder Federal employees and to damage and destroy Federal buildings. (The Detroit News, 6/3/98)
  
  
• Federal authorities apprehended Palestinian terrorist Mohammed Rashid and brought him to the U.S. to face charges for the 1982 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner that killed a Japanese youth. (The New York Times, 6/4/98)
  
  
• A Federal judge sentenced Terry Nichols to life imprisonment for conspiring to bomb the Oklahoma City Federal building in April 1995. (The New York Times, 6/5/98)
  
  
• In an effort to stop the flow of money from U.S. financial institutions to Hamas, Federal agents seized $1.4 million in property and bank assets belonging to Mohammed Salah, suspected by FBI investigators to be a high-level Hamas military operative and who had recently served five years in an Israeli prison after pleading guilty to illegally channeling money to Hamas. (The Chicago Tribune, 6/10/98)
  
  
• Immigration officials are seeking to deport Gazan Hany Mahmoud Kiareldeen, 30, accused of visa violations and suspected by the FBI of plotting to kill Attorney General Janet Reno and of knowing of the World Trade Center bombing plot. (AP, 6/26/98)