Inventing-Terrorists-study

things: it ramps up fear on the part of the public, 34 and it often resultsin life sentences for these vulnerable young men.• Conspiracy chargesIn preemptive prosecutions, conspiracy charges are often broughtalong with other charges because a conspiracy allows more use ofhearsay evidence and has other evidentiary advantages. Allassociates are considered equally culpable, even if they do not knowof the existence of a plan; thus such charges are also a good way fortargets to be found guilty by association: they are part of theconspiracy whether or not they know anything about a particularcrime. As described above, many conspiracy charges are simplyviolations of a defendant’s right of free association. Merely becausea defendant is a friend of someone who has violated material supportlaws is not a basis to charge the defendant with conspiracy, but suchgovernmental overreach is routine in preemptive prosecution.Conspiracy charges in preemptive prosecution cases tend tofocus on ideology as a proxy for the “agreement to commit a crime,”which is required by conspiracy law. But because two individualsshare a Salafist or a Communist philosophy does not mean that theyhave agreed to do something illegal. Once there is a conspiracy,however, then “foreseeable” acts of co-conspirators can be chargedagainst any member of that conspiracy. And once it is accepted thatthere is a conspiracy, it doesn’t take much evidence to show that aparticular person is a member of it. For example, in the ZiyadYaghi/Raleigh 7 case, the government claimed that some youngmen, including Yaghi and Omar Hasan, knew an older man, DanielBoyd, and his sons, who advocated protecting Muslim communities27