Legal News

Ron Kuby?s Latest Client: Terrorism Suspect Ahmand Wais Afzali

By Ashby Jones

–I want a (bleeping) lawyer, man. I want Bill Kunstler, or Ron Kuby.–The Big Lebowski

Last we checked in with Kuby, the defense lawyer partly known for taking on controversial clients and coveted representation for The Dude, he was representing the teenage Somali pirate who allegedly aided the hostage-taking of American ship captain Richard Phillips.

Kuby’s back at it today. The lawyer, who repped the first World Trade Center bombers and Long Island Railroad Shooter Colin Ferguson, among other notables, appeared in court for a new client, Ahmand Wais Afzali, an imam in Queens, and stated that his client is innocent and being made a scapegoat by federal authorities.

Afzali on Monday appeared in a Brooklyn federal court to be arraigned. He was arrested on Saturday and is being accused of lying to federal agents about communications he had with a terrorism suspect named Najibullah Zazi. Click here for the NYT story; here for the LA Times story.

Zazi and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were expected to appear in court in Denver, Colo. on Monday to respond to charges that they lied to federal agents in connection with a probe of a possible bombing plot.

Investigators last week asked Afzali to “find out where Mr. Zazi is and where he was going to,” Kuby said. Investigators had been tipped off that Zazi had trained in an Al Qaeda terrorist camp. According to Kuby, Afzali then made calls, which he knew were being monitored by agents, to friends of Zazi’s father and Zazi’s father himself. Afzali eventually reached Zazi, who had driven from his home in Colorado and was then in the New York City area.

In the complaint, federal authorities say Afzali, a popular imam in Queens and, reports the NYT, a “source of information for local and federal authorities on the alert for any criminal activity,” appeared to tip off Zazi that the authorities were asking questions about him. Zazi then flew home on Sept. 12, breaking up the investigation.

In its complaint, the government said that during a meeting at the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, he lied about his conversation with Zazi by denying that he told Zazi that authorities were asking about him.

Kuby said he believed government investigators “were angry that their investigation got blown and they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that they themselves blew it.”

“Why in the world–if he knew the conversation was being monitored–why would he lie about the conversation?” Kuby said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 21, 2009 (boomark / email).