Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee
By Leander Kahney for Wired News.
Hawash, a U.S. citizen, was arrested last month by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. For nearly two weeks, he has been held as a so-called “material witness” in solitary confinement in a federal lockup in Sheridan, Oregon. The designation allows authorities to hold him indefinitely without charging him with a crime.
The Department of Justice has required a federal court to seal Hawash’s case. He has only limited access to his family and lawyer.
A friend and former colleague at Intel, Steven McGeady, is championing Hawash’s case. McGeady, a former vice president at the chipmaker who hired Hawash as a programmer in 1992, was a high-profile witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial.
“People say this doesn’t happen in this country,” McGeady said, “but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It’s not what he might have done that matters to me — they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.”
…”I’m completely puzzled,” he said. “He has family in the West Bank, but he’s not political. He worked at Intel Israel for two years, for heck’s sake. His most political act was setting up an ISP on the West Bank, and in my opinion that’s not political. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. Maybe it’s something beyond my comprehension.”
Hawash, 38, was born in the West Bank but became a U.S. citizen in 1988. His wife, two of his children and his stepchild are all American-born.
Hawash co-authored a book on multimedia programming. He was laid off from Intel in 2001, but was later rehired as a contract programmer.
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Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee
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