Terrorism-case judge lets U.S. shield classified data
To protect against government secrets being exposed during the trial of a Helena-West Helena man accused of supporting a terrorist organization in Yemen, a federal judge agreed Thursday to the Justice Department’s request for a designated classified information security officer.
Bilal Al-Rayanni, 28, who is also known as Bilal Kassim Alawdi, is a Yemeni citizen who is facing a jury trial beginning July 6 in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright.
An indictment handed up in August charges him with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization — al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — and a second charge of providing a false name on a passport.
It alleges that Al-Rayanni traveled to Yemen in 2014 and worked for the organization, knowing it had been deemed a foreign terrorist organization, for three months.
He first came to the attention of authorities when he mailed a passport renewal application on May 13 from Helena-West Helena, providing a passport that had been issued in 2008 and identifying himself as Alawdi. He later told authorities who questioned him that his real name is Al-Rayanni, but that his father had illegally purchased a United States visa from a man in Yemen named Kassim-Alawdi and used it to obtain a passport for him in 1992 under Alawdi’s name.
He also told authorities that he learned his real name when he was 10 or 12 years old but has continued to use the Alawdi name to obtain or renew U.S. passports in 2002, 2008 and 2019.
Al-Rayanni was first indicted in July on the passport charge, but the indictment was later superseded to add
the terrorist-support charge. Additional details about the terrorism charge haven’t been released.
In late October, federal prosecutors in Little Rock and with the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington said the case falls under the purview of the federal Classified Information Procedures Act, which mandates certain procedures to protect classified information. The law identifies classified information as any information or material that the government has determined requires protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.
One of the means to protect information under the act is to provide a person, described as a “Classified Information Security Officer” to guide the court and court personnel on how to handle classified information.
The act applies to classified testimony and classified documents, and establishes procedures for district judges and federal magistrate judges to follow in deciding pre-trial discovery and admissibility questions, the motion said. The law also is designed to protect classified information from “unnecessary disclosure at any stage of a criminal trial,” attorneys said.
One section of the law authorizes district courts, “upon a sufficient showing,” to deny or restrict discovery by the defendant of classified documents and information belonging to the government, according to the motion.
“This case involves classified material, and the government anticipates filing pleadings pursuant to [the Classified Information Procedures Act],” according to a court filing. Another filing seeking a protective order says, “The discovery to be provided by the United States in this case includes sensitive information, whose unrestricted dissemination could adversely affect national security, law enforcement interests, and the privacy interests of third parties.”
In a brief hearing Thursday morning, Wright granted the motions, including designating the classified information security officer.
In a document filed in December, defense attorney John Wesley Hall said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacy Williams “advises that the discovery is extensive, and we have to send them a hard drive to download it.”