STATEMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT
REGARDING U.S. V. AWADALLAH:

“The Justice Department is pleased the Second Circuit reinstated the indictment against Osama Awadallah and upheld the use of evidence obtained by the FBI in its investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The court’s decision recognizes the important principle that witnesses whose testimony is material to criminal proceedings, including grand juries, may be detained when that detention is reasonable and necessary. As the court said: ‘Under these circumstances, Awadallah’s detention as a material witness was a scrupulous and constitutional use of the federal material witness statute.’

The court also noted, ‘[I]n the wake of a mass atrocity and in the midst of an investigation that galvanized the nation, Awadallah did not step forward to share information he had about one or more of the hijackers, whose names and faces had been widely publicized across the nation.... The question is whether his failure to come forward, in combination with the other facts listed above, establishes probable cause to believe that he had information material to the grand jury and that it might become impracticable to secure his presence by subpoena. In the circumstances presented in this case -- in which the totality of the circumstances known to the court included the terrorist attacks known to everyone else on the planet, and the implicit threat of further attacks -- we hold that it does.’”

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