Ciccolo Adds Attorney With Experience Defending Terror Suspects
Alexander Ciccolo was back before U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson on Tuesday for a procedural hearing in the case of U.S. v Ciccolo.
Northampton defense attorney David Hoose earlier informed the court that Ramzi Kassem, a professor at the City University of New York, has joined as co-counsel for Ciccolo, who was arrested on July 4, 2015, on a federal weapons charge. In August, a superseding indictment was handed down charging Ciccolo with one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of attempting to use of weapons of mass destruction.
Kassem joins the case with experience representing defendants of various nationalities "at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, at so-called 'Black Sites,' and at other detention sites worldwide," according to his biography on the CUNY Law School website.
After a 10-minute hearing in Robertson's court room, Hoose explained that Kassem's involvement in the case was important to his 23-year-old client.
"[Kassem] has a lot of experience in consulting on these cases, these prosecutions," Hoose said. "He has been very active in volunteer work and in civil rights work with the Muslim community, and that's very important to my client, to have someone of that stature on his defense team. That was a big factor."
Hoose said he first contacted Kassem about a month ago, and that the New York attorney has had a chance to meet with Ciccolo. He also later clarified that while Kassem has done volunteer work, he is not volunteering on this case.
Kassem, who joined the CUNY faculty in 2009, directs the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic and "supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, which primarily aims to address the legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices," according to the school's website.
Kassem did not appear in court on Tuesday.
Ciccolo appeared actively engaged with Hoose at the defense table on Tuesday. He arrived just after Robertson took the bench at 2:14 for the hearing, which focused on the discovery process.
Hoose told the judge that he only was able to begin reviewing the discovery material provided by federal prosecutors after Columbus Day because of other trial commitments. Both parties agreed to set a deadline of Jan. 6 for Hoose to deliver the government a letter seeking additional materials.
"You have together proposed an interim conference on Jan. 31," Robertson said. "You should, I would hope, by Jan. 31, be able to say, Mr. [Kevin] O'Regan, whether you will be providing [additional materials] or whether there will be disputes.
"That will be my primary interest on Jan. 31. Do you think you'll be able to make that assessment from Jan. 6 to the 31st?"
O'Regan, assistant U.S. attorney, told the judge he would be able to assess what, if any, of the additional discovery requests the government would want to contest. But he added that he would like the full 30 days allowed to respond to the Jan. 6 letter.
Robertson set the interim status conference for Jan. 31 at 2 p.m. with a potential date of Feb. 6 for a discovery hearing.
Ciccolo is facing up to life in prison on the top count of the indictment, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Hoose on Tuesday declined to speculate how long it might take to resolve the case.
"It's really hard to say," Hoose said. "The defendant faces very substantial penalties, and my view of it is however long it takes to get the case ready for trial is however long it takes. We're 17 months in, but we didn't get a superseding indictment until August, so in that sense, we're only about three or four months into the serious charges.
"We're not trying to delay this for any reason, but there's a lot of work to be done and a lot of information to analyze. It takes time."
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