Inventing-Terrorists-study

the government indicted him for material support and for lying to theFBI and kept him in solitary confinement for five and a half yearspre-trial in order to break him, claiming that he was so dangerousthat only by keeping him in solitary confinement could security beguaranteed. Finally Warsame was so worn down by the solitaryconfinement that he agreed to plead guilty in order to get out. He wassentenced to a few more months in jail and was released. Once hepleaded guilty, apparently he was no longer dangerous. Thissituation is typical of many preemptive prosecution cases, wherebythe defendant is forced to plead guilty because it is not possible toget a prompt and fair trial, and the lengthy pre-trial solitaryconfinement is equivalent to torture. 403. Tactical Patterns of Elements of Preemptive ProsecutionsA second category of cases is described in this study as those thathave “elements of preemptive prosecution.” Preemptive prosecution beginswith the government’s decision to bring pretext changes to incarcerate atarget for ideological reasons. In the “elements” category, the individualhas already started to engage in criminal conduct on his or her own, but thegovernment tries to inflate the seriousness of the crimes and the length ofthe sentence by adding terrorist elements. For example, a group maybecome involved in smuggling cigarettes on its own, but the governmentmay try through agents provocateur to direct the money to a designatedterrorist organization, or suggest purchase of weapons, or perform otheractions toward the target to increase the number of crimes and the length ofsentence. The government may also use the defendants’ supposedideologies to justify an increased sentence, or list the cases as “terrorism”cases in its statistics.30