The Denver Post found itself in recent months under a barrage of assault from Registan for its coverage of the case of terrorist suspect Jamshid Muhtorov -- and Joshua Foust also falsely assaulted me as a "liar, lunatic, and fabulist" (!) which I refuted here in implying that the prosecutor quoted my blog (!) in this case.
And inevitably, such pressure does take a toll, even though the journalists are trying to do a good job and have been doing a good job with this complicated story, despite the snark from Registan, underscored by that perceived Beltway "sophistication" and superiority over flyover states and their courthouses.
In today's piece about a formality in which Muhtorov pled not-guilty, Felisa Carona, the Post writer who has been covering the story, takes up less of the description of the prosecutor's findings from the FBI investigation, and his theory of the case, and focuses more on the defense's narrative. That's fine, if she doesn't just then settle into that narrative for the rest of her coverage of the case. Hopefully, there will be the totality of all the events covered and all the pieces to look at as a whole.
But already I see signs of some slippage of objectivity -- I'm a big believer in the "view from nowhere," as Jay Rosen contemptuously calls it, which I describe as merely "compiling all the perspectives in the story" in letting the reader judge for himself.
The first point is in the question of Muhtorov as a "human rights activist". Says Cardona:
Muhtorov has a documented record as a human rights activist in the country. He fled Uzbekistan and so did members of his family because they claimed they were oppressed by the government. His sister remains jailed there on an alleged false murder charge, according to Human Rights Watch and government documents.
Well, technically this is true, but he's a former human rights activist, because while once in Ezgulik, a prominent registered human rights organization in Uzbekistan (the name means "Charity"), he was fired for not turning in financial reports and wishing to join another, more radical political group of farmers who wanted to overthrow the regime. Then he fled the country. After he fled Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan, he was not known to be in any human rights groups or indeed any emigre or international groups of any kind, until this charge about his relationship to the Islamic Jihad Union.
Making a distinction between human rights groups specifically devoted to monitoring, publicizing and protesting human rights as defined by universal international law; and political groups like those wishing to overthrow the regime, much less terrorist groups -- that's important. Someone might think casually that if Muhtorov was once a human rights activist, then he remains one. But it's important to note that he is not considered one any more by human rights organizations.
I'm not for demanding that someone must be a card-carrying member of a group approved by the state or the international justice jet-set in order to be qualified as a human rights activist -- but I do think it's important to point out that he is really not considered one any more, and that after he left the country, he wasn't known for any activism at all (and that's also not required, especially for emigres struggling with adaptation, but just something to note).
As for this claim in the Post -- "his sister remains jailed there on a false murder charge, according to Human Rights Watch and government documents" -- that's compressed and in fact leading one to a false conclusion. Human Rights Watch didn't make any finding about any validity of any murder charge. They merely reported that he himself believed this to be the case (as far as I know -- I don't see any HRW document or report claiming the case was false).
We also have the account of Tolib Yakubov published by uznews.net that says he believes the story to be false, that the sister was in fact a member of a gang that used her as a lure to taxi drivers who were then robbed and killed, and that while she may have been mistreated or even tortured and didn't get a fair trial, basically, she's guilty.
Many impugn Tolib's stories because he is not liked, being very persistent and very dramatic in taking up human rights. But it is an alternative to the narrative that bears consideration as much as anything else -- yes, the Karimov government sets up people falsely all the time, but sometimes a murder accomplice really is a murder accomplice. I've never seen any human rights group in Uzbekistan claim that the sister is innocent of the charges. And that's in a country where several do in fact still take up cases of such false charges and try to press the government.
As for the "government documents," that's just a very compressed form of saying "The State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" that again, mention Muhtorov's beatings and his claims about his sister, putting as the source the local human rights groups and/or HRW, but not making their own findings to validate the information (a frequent device one finds in the Country Reports, BTW).
"Critics" is likely a reference to Joshua Foust and other commenters at Registan, who also migrated over to the anonymous comments section at the Denver Post.
Originally, Foust and others seemed to wave away the charges of the IJU on the grounds that it didn't exist. After some drubbing by another blogger, Foust seemed to concede the IJU existed, but then the narrative began to be implied somehow: that an Uzbek emigre might join the group not because he was actually hoping to bomb NATO soldiers, but merely because he wanted to get back at Karimov (as if violence is ok if it's in a "good cause" -- a premise I reject.)
That was why Foust could take up the bashing of the Denver Post in the first place -- he felt, after the angry commenter (with the anonymous handle of "correct" ) said that the headline was misleading and should be changed, that it was changed -- and that the difference between the prosecutor saying Muhtorov admitted he knew what the IJU was and that it fought NATO, and admitting that he knew what the IJU was and he himself wanted to fight NATO was really crucial.
I believe that it's a distinction without a difference. Regardless of what Muhtorov thought he was doing, if he plans to support a group on the US foreign terrorist organization's list, and he is found at trial to be materially supporting said group, that's support, regardless of whether he thought he was targeting Karimov or NATO. It's also wrong, morally and legally, because it's helping an extremist group to commit violence.
Foust's very firm conviction that this *does* make a difference, which he is hammering the Post about, suggests he may have other sources from somewhere about this case, possibly leaked to him. He was a former defense contractor and has extensive contacts in the government and think-tank world in Washington and "followers" on Twitters. Or perhaps his conviction is merely a function of his usual arrogant skepticism about any terrorism case.
The defense may hope to play up two aspects of this case: a) that Muhtorov had a history as a human rights activist and b) that he only cared about attacking the Karimov regime, not NATO. (As the Post has repeatedly said in all its reports, Muhtorov is not charged with attempting to set up any terrorist acts on American soil.)
Should his determination to fight only Karimov and indifference about NATO matter in his defense? As I said, in terms of the law, I don't see how it could. In terms of a moral wrapping to the case, I also don't see that it should because any effort to use violence and support violence to change a government, even a hated one, is wrong -- and it's why the human rights movement has always taken pains to be non-violent in its approach.
While the lawyer is going to look narrowly at what will support his client's case, hyping the human rights activism will do a terrible disservice to the human rights movement as it will conflate it with extremism and terrorism. Foust doesn't care about that -- anything that discredits the human rights movement would fit well with his chronic assault on the movement.
And the defense may focus on Muhtorov's legitimate beefs with the regime (whether or not they are valid is impossible to find out) over his sister and the state's persecution of him first as a businessman, then as an activist disseminating Human Rights Watch pamphlets.
But ultimately, there is this to remember from the Post:
In an affidavit, the FBI says they tapped Muhtorov's phone calls and recorded him talking about final goodbyes to his family and about his allegiance to global jihad.
Meanwhile, neither Muhtorov himself has said anything more than "not guilty" (probably on the advice of his lawyers) and the lawyer himself hasn't said anything more, either. Bakhtiyor Jumayev, who was charged with donating $300 to Muhtorov toward the IJU cause, was arrested but hasn't appeared in court yet.
