Anti-Terrorism Measures

• Author: International Law Group

U.S. law prohibits the giving of financial support to officially designated terrorist organizations. See 28 U.S.C. Section 2339B(a)(1). According to a federal indictment, Roya Rahmani and others conspired to provide material support to the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization which the Secretary of State has certified as terroristic under 8 U.S.C. Section 1189. Iranian Marxists had founded MEK in the 1960s as a group seeking to overthrow the government. In 1979, it took part in taking American embassy personnel hostage in Iran. Later on, MEK members fled Iran. They ended up settling in Iraq near the Iranian border, whence they carried out terrorist attacks.

Within the U. S., the defendants asked for charitable contributions at the Los Angeles International Airport for the so-called "Committee for Human Rights." They then forwarded the collected money to the MEK. MEK provided other funding as well, totaling several hundred thousand dollars. The defendants knew that the U. S had designated MEK as a "terrorist" outfit, having attended a conference call with an MEK leader who had revealed that fact.

The district court dismissed the indictment because it considered the terrorist designation statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1189, unconstitutional. The district court reasoned that the restriction of judicial review only to the D.C. Circuit invalidated the statute. On the government's appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reverses.

Section 1189 sets forth a scheme for designating foreign terrorist organizations. The Secretary of State has to make specific findings that the organization takes part in terrorist activity and thereby threatens U.S. security. The designated organization may seek judicial review of the Secretary's determination in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The present Court reject appellants' attack on Section 1189. "Many administrative determinations are reviewable only by petition to the correct circuit court, bypassing the district court, and that procedure has generally been accepted. The congressional restriction does not interfere with the opportunity for judicial review, as the MEK's extensive litigation history shows. And this scheme avoids the awkwardness of criminalizing material support for a designated organization in some circuits but not others, as varying decisions in the different regional circuits might." [Slip op. 6-7].

The next question is whether the U. S. may...