Case 2 Watch Lyglenson Lemorin Alledged Terrorist

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Source: miamiherald.com

Florida defendants face `double jeopardy' in immigration court
Two legal U.S. residents were acquitted of terrorism-related charges in federal court, yet both were charged again for the same offenses in immigration court.

One went free, but the other faces deportation to Haiti.

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BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver at MiamiHerald.com

A Tampa engineering student acquitted of terrorism-related charges walked out of an immigration court a free man earlier this month, after a judge rejected the U.S. government's bid to deport him to his native Egypt on identical charges.

Yet the same immigration judge sided with Department of Homeland Security lawyers last year when he ordered the removal of a Miami man to his native Haiti after he had been acquitted of terror-conspiracy charges.

Why did the immigration judge, Kenneth Hurewitz, grant the release of Youssef Megahed yet order the deportation of Lyglenson Lemorin?

The lawyer who represented both men says it's because the evidence was stronger in the Lemorin case, though he disputes it was enough to deport him.

``The government's lawyers misunderstood that every case is different and you must plead what you're going to prove,'' Charles Kuck, an Atlanta attorney, said of the Megahed case. ``They failed to do that.''

Kuck said he believes Lemorin -- one of the so-called Liberty City Seven defendants -- has a good shot at his appeal, which will be considered this fall. Lemorin, 34, remains in custody.

Both Megahed and Lemorin are legal U.S. residents with no criminal histories who have lived in this country for years.

Both also experienced a rare kind of ``double jeopardy'' -- being charged a second time in immigration court following acquittals in federal court.

Megahed, a 23-year-old former student at the University of South Florida, was arrested on a 2007 road trip in South Carolina along with a fellow classmate, Ahmed Mohamed.

Both were charged with transporting explosives after police found model rocket propellants in the car's trunk.

Mohamed was also charged with providing ``material support'' for terrorism, because he created a You Tube video that showed how to convert a remote control toy vehicle into a bomb. He pleaded guilty to that charge last spring.

In early April, Megahed was acquitted in Tampa federal court on the explosives charges after his defense attorney argued that the materials found in the trunk -- PVC pipe and chemicals -- were homemade fireworks.

But a few days later, Megahed, while leaving a Wal-Mart store with his father, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

He was charged again with the same terrorism-related explosives offense, only this time in immigration court, which is part of the Justice Department and has a lower standard of proof.

Megahed, who has lived in the United States since he was 11, faced deportation.

His family, the Muslim community and others -- including four jurors in his criminal case -- expressed outrage.

``It strikes us as fundamentally wrong that the government has put Mr. Megahed back in jail for suspicion of the same activities that he was acquitted of in the criminal case,'' the jurors said in a statement.

But the government's case was so lacking in evidence that Hurewitz, the immigration judge, ruled for Megahed without requiring his attorney to put on a defense.

Megahed was released Aug. 21 after the immigration trial in Miami.

Homeland Security lawyers plan to appeal.

Lemorin's criminal case, in Miami federal court, had the same outcome as Megahed's: acquittal.

In December 2007, Lemorin was found not guilty of conspiring with the Liberty City group to aid al Qaeda in a plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and Miami's FBI building.

The federal jury deadlocked on the other six defendants in the FBI sting operation.

Lemorin was viewed by jurors as a marginal defendant, because he had moved with his family to Atlanta to get away from the group and its leader a couple of months before their arrests in June 2006.

But days after his acquittal, ICE agents whisked Lemorin away in a van to an immigration detention center in Georgia.

``It seemed like it was something that would happen behind the Iron Curtain or some other country,'' said Jeffrey Agron, the jury foreman, who thought it was ``unfair'' that Lemorin was charged again in immigration court.

But the immigration judge viewed Lemorin's case in a harsher light, mainly because he found evidence that Lemorin worked with his co-defendants to provide ``material support'' for al Qaeda.

The material support Hurewitz cited: Lemorin's work for group leader Narseal Batiste's stucco business.

His ruling conceded Lemorin didn't participate with the group in planning for the attacks -- including taking surveillance photos and videos of target sites in Miami-Dade.

But Hurewitz said Lemorin's knowledge of the surveillance -- along with his pledging an ``oath'' to al Qaeda administered by an FBI informant -- was sufficient to classify him as a terrorist supporter.

Lemorin testified he didn't understand the oath and believed the group's leader, Batiste, was, in the judge's words, ``talking crap'' about the planned attacks to con money out of the FBI informant, who posed as an al Qaeda representative.

Lemorin is being detained at the Hernando County Jail.

He is awaiting word on his appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Virginia.

The Dark Knight, August 31 2009, 1:51 PM

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