US Court Won`t Hear Appeal In Bush Al Qaeda Plot

The Supreme Court sided with the Justice Department and refused to hear Abu Ali's appeal without any comment.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down on Monday an appeal by an American citizen convicted in 2005 for plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush and conspiring with al Qaeda.

Ahmed Abu Ali, who was born in Texas and lived in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, was arrested in 2003 while studying at a Saudi university and was held in Saudi custody for 20 months before being returned to the United States to face trial.

In Saudi Arabia, he signed confessions and made statements admitting to the plot against Bush and to having ties to an al Qaeda cell. That provided the bulk of the U.S. government's case against him.

Abu Ali's attorneys initially raised a number of issues in appealing his conviction, but a U.S. appeals court last year rejected all of them in ruling he had received a fair trial.

His attorneys claimed he had been tortured into confessing by the Saudi police and that his legal rights had been violated because Saudi security officers testified at his trial via live video hookup. They also challenged classified evidence presented to the jury that he was not allowed to see.

In appealing to the Supreme Court, his attorneys raised only the last issue, which involved two coded communications between Abu Ali and a suspected al Qaeda member in Saudi Arabia.

They said his constitutional right to confront his accusers had been violated when a federal judge allowed prosecutors to present the entire communications to the jury while denying access to Abu Ali and his primary trial attorney.

U.S. Justice Department attorneys opposed the appeal.

They said one of Abu Ali's attorneys had seen copies of the communications and that Abu Ali and his other defense lawyers, who did not have security clearances, got copies with only slight deletions that did not affect the substance of the communications.

The Supreme Court sided with the Justice Department and refused to hear Abu Ali's appeal without any comment.