Wanted: Muslim-Friendly Prosecutors

Finally, a federal prosecutor who gets it.

Gordon Kromberg doesn’t waste everyone’s time by prosecuting “terror”. He recognizes that the problem is Islam, and even understands the crucial role played by taqiyya in any legal proceedings involving radical Muslims.

So no one should be surprised that Mr. Kromberg is being targeted by the usual suspects for his bias and Islamophobia. According to The New York Sun:

A Prosecutor Is Called ‘Relentless’

A federal prosecutor who has led a series of investigations into Islamic militants and Muslim groups based in Virginia, Gordon Kromberg, may soon be facing a trial of sorts himself, if defense lawyers get their way.

Attorneys for a former Florida college professor who pleaded guilty two years ago to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian, are asking a federal judge to hold a hearing on whether anti-Muslim bias led to the government’s decision to obtain a new indictment of Al-Arian in June for contempt for refusing to testify before grand juries pursuing the Virginia organizations.

While the motion claims Muslim terrorism suspects are generally treated unfairly by the Justice Department, Al-Arian’s lawyers argue that Mr. Kromberg, 51, has a particularly egregious record of intemperate statements and actions in a series of terrorism-related cases and investigations.

“Defense attorneys have objected for years that Mr. Kromberg, the lead counsel in many of these cases, has been using the Eastern District of Virginia to mete out his own brand of justice for Muslim terrorism subjects, often openly displaying his personal animus,” Al-Arian’s lead counsel, Jonathan Turley, wrote. “This long and controversial record forms the backdrop for the allegation of selective and malicious prosecution in this case.”

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Al-Arian’s lawyers claim that in 2006, when Mr. Kromberg moved to obtain new testimony from the former professor following his guilty plea in Florida, the prosecutor “became agitated” in response to a defense lawyer’s request that the testimony be put off until after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan. They can appear before the grand jury; all they can’t do is eat before sunset,” Mr. Kromberg responded, according to a declaration written by one of Al-Arian’s attorneys, Jack Fernandez. Mr. Fernandez said the prosecutor described the request for a postponement as “all part of the attempted Islamization of the American justice system.” Mr. Fernandez wrote that he viewed the comments as exhibiting “apparent bias against Muslims.”

Mr. Kromberg is speaking with refreshing common sense here. There’s no sign that Muslims ever restrain themselves from raping, pillaging, and killing people — even other Muslims — during Ramadan.

The notion that infidels must refrain from doing any unpleasant things to Muslims during Ramadan is a recent dhimmi invention. It’s encouraged by the Wormtongues of CAIR and ISNA who whisper into the ears of our public officials that the Muslim street will become enraged if we do such-and-such during Ramadan.

What a joke.

Mr. Fernandez also said Mr. Kromberg called the 57-month prison sentence Al-Arian received “a bonanza” for the Palestinian Arab activist. He had faced the potential of life in prison for acting as the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in America, but a trial in 2005 resulted in his acquittal on eight counts and a mistrial on nine others where jurors could not reach a verdict. Al-Arian’s lawyers contend that the dogged pursuit of their client is retribution for the outcome of the Tampa trial, which was widely seen as a failure for the government.

The new motion also asserts that Mr. Kromberg joked about the torture of a Virginia man then being held in Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Abu Ali. The suspect’s lawyer, Salim Ali, said that when he asked Mr. Kromberg about the possibility of returning the young man to America, the prosecutor “smirked and stated that ‘he’s no good for us here, he has no fingernails left.’“

In a court declaration, Mr. Kromberg said that he had no recollection of making the statement and that he was arguing an appeal in another city when the comment was allegedly made.

Al-Arian’s lawyers are also pointing to the arguments Mr. Kromberg made in the trial of a Virginia cancer researcher and Muslim preacher, Ali al-Timimi, who was accused of exhorting others to wage war against America by joining the Taliban. In the case, Mr. Kromberg argued that the religious beliefs of the defendant and other witnesses made it acceptable to lie to kaffirs, or nonbelievers in Islam. “If you are a kaffir, Timimi believes in time of war, he’s supposed to lie to you,” the prosecutor told jurors. Al-Timimi was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison.

“Kromberg argued to the jury that Timimi and the other Muslim witnesses — their testimony should be disregarded just on the basis of their religion,” al-Timimi’s defense lawyer, Edward MacMahon Jr., said. “I think it’s an outrageous thing to argue in the courtroom. Imagine that directed at any other religion.”

Imagine it! Imagine a requirement from the holy scripture of any other religion that believers must lie for the sake of their god. Go ahead, imagine it! It’s easy if you try.

A lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has squared off with Mr. Kromberg in court, Henry FitzGerald, said the prosecutor has acquired a reputation for leaving no stone unturned in cases relating to terrorism or funding for Islamic militant groups.

“Kromberg is absolutely relentless in his pursuit of everything that could be pursued in the way of forfeiture or prosecutions in this area. He’s just indefatigable, relentless, tireless,” Mr. FitzGerald said. “If you say he’s doing the country’s work to fight terrorism, that’s good, he’s a good fighter, but a lot of people say it’s overkill, he doesn’t listen to reasonable arguments. Everything is black until somebody takes him to court to prove it’s white.”

Mr. FitzGerald said Mr. Kromberg, while unusually persistent, does not take quixotic stances. “Kromberg’s not a dumb man. He’s smart. He’s not going to go out and take an utterly groundless case, raise hell with it, and get himself in trouble. He just goes straight ahead, doesn’t look left or right and pushes to the absolute limit,” Mr. FitzGerald said.

[…]

[Former federal terrorism prosecutor Andrew] McCarthy said Mr. Kromberg’s statements about Islam seemed directed not to ordinary followers but to the beliefs of certain radical Islamic extremists. “If he’s got an innate feeling of disapproval and hostility to that, I don’t see the slightest problem with that. I do too, and so do most Americans,” the ex-prosecutor said. “If he’s concerned about the Islamization of our legal process or the idea that we should be recognizing certain tenets of Islamic law as we conduct law enforcement… Gordon is not the only prosecutor ever to have taken that position.”

The idea that no prosecutor may have any negative feelings about Islam is absurd.

Instead of hunting Islamic terrorists, what if he were tracking, say, ex-Nazis? Would anti-Nazi bias exclude him from doing his job? Would he have to recuse himself if he had ever made any disparaging remarks about Adolf Hitler?

Many Muslim activists consider Mr. Kromberg to be a doppelganger of a journalist and author of books warning about the threat posed by Muslim radicals in America, Steven Emerson. The selective prosecution motion asks for a hearing to explore why the prosecutor’s statements “appear to track writings” by Mr. Emerson.

Well, DUH! Do you think maybe the guy reads?

Gordon Kromberg is being singled out because he’s an effective prosecutor of the enemies of the United States:

Some of the ire directed at Mr. Kromberg by the Muslim community stems from his vigorous prosecution of the so-called Paintball Eleven, a group of Muslims accused of training in Virginia to fight with a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar e-Taiba, against Indian forces in Kashmir. Nine of the eleven men were convicted at trial or pled guilty. Two were acquitted.

Mr. Kromberg later called one of the acquitted men, Sabri Benkahla, before grand juries and questioned him about his attendance and activities at jihad training camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Convinced that Benkahla’s answers were false, the prosecutor obtained an indictment of Benkahla for obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI and the grand juries.

Most of us would consider this evidence that Mr. Kromberg is doing his job well, but the Islamic lobby thinks he’s picking on Muslims:

As with Al-Arian, defense lawyers for Benkahla said the perjury charges amounted to an effort by Mr. Kromberg to retry the earlier case in which Benkahla was acquitted.

“When you look at the prosecutions together, there is a pattern that really doesn’t make Mr. Kromberg look very good,” a Muslim scholar from Maryland who has been subpoenaed in the IIIT probe, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, said. “It reminds me of the Red Scare. Communism was a serious problem for America, but some people seemed to think almost every liberal was a Communist. Mr. Kromberg and a handful of other people in the government seem to have the same approach when it comes to outspoken Muslims.”

The Islamists have learned from their brethren on the Left to tar anyone who opposes them with the McCarthy label. Racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, McCarthyism, Nazism, and bigotry are the preferred labels for anyone who dares to accuse Muslims of illegal behavior.

Read the whole NYS article for more information about Gordon Kromberg. One can’t help but wonder how long he will last in today’s official climate, which denies any connection between “Islam” or “jihad” and “terror”.


Hat tip: Robert Bové.