Anyone ever caught in a sting claims entrapment, and Sebastian Gregerson, aka Abdurrahman Bin Mikaayl is no exception.
The Detroit News: Attorney: FBI entrapped terror suspect
“There would have been no offense but for the government’s involvement and participation in the grenade transaction,” Tholen wrote. “The explosive grenades were effectively dumped on his lap seconds before his arrest. As such the counts in the indictment should be dismissed as a matter of law.....Gregerson told the undercover FBI employee he wanted to buy smoke grenades, fragmentation grenades and an anti-personnel mine that contains C4 explosive and hundreds of steel balls that rapidly shoot outwards upon detonation, court records show.”
Remember kiddies, when someone asks you "Hey, want to commit numerous federal felonies?" The answer, assuming you don't actually want to do so, should be No.
When you jump on board to an illegal proposal and agree to participate, that's not entrapment.
In fact from reading the article, he apparently also received funding for the purchase from an Imam in Maryland for the purchase and was putitgn together a rather neat plot at the time he was caught.
4 comments:
One more off the street (for now)...
"When you jump on board to an illegal proposal and agree to participate, that's not entrapment"
Regardless of the actual case at hand, what you said as quoted above could go either way as far as entrapment is concerned. If an undercover law enforcement officer (aka: the government) approaches me, asking me if I want to earn 10 million dollars for transporting a couple of pounds of marijuana from, let's say NY City to Los Angeles, then I agree to do so - you can bet your bottom dollar it would be found to be entrapment in any federal court of law (at least the last time I was a federal agent). That would be because the temptation of 10 million dollars for committing such an offense is so out of this world and outweighs the likely penalty to be expected should you be caught, as that it might indeed lure anyone, including normally law abiding citizens, into doing so. Now, most cases of entrapment are not that far fetched but that is one way it can happen. So yes, you can "...jump on board to an illegal proposal and agree to participate..." and it could indeed be entrapment. Of course, there could be other times where the government initiates the contact and makes the offer but prior investigation revealed you were already a criminal doing pretty much the same that they were trying to get you to do for them, and that would likely not be entrapment.
There is not enough information in the linked article to determine with certainty if the FBI was the entire driving force behind the suspect agreeing to buy the grenades or if they offered such a deal as to make it virtually impossible to ignore (although that part I think would be harder to prove considering the items exchanged). Thus there is not enough to say if it was entrapment of not. My guess and hope would be that there is a lot more to the case than being divulged.
All the best,
Glenn B
Don't do bad stuff. Then it won't matter who helped you with bad stuff.
I have to say that I have a much harder line on this one. I have watched the show cops at times. They often have the hooker stings, where the lady cop tricks the johns into offering money for sex and they then arrest the johns for attempting to pay for sex. Not mentioning that it to me is a victimless crime, as I am a libertarian, the old saw, but for the fact that the woman had not approached him, he would not have the motivation or the opportunity to engage in the crime, and so was entrapped into the offense. I think it is a way for the system to earn money, but that is just me. They would say that the real hookers work in dangerous places and the cops are trying to keep it safer. But if it weren't illegal, it would come out of the shadows and into safer places, and testing for std's would also be more common place. And no, I have never been to a hooker. I have only had sex with my wife, in my entire life.
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