SACRAMENTO — Attorneys for a Central Valley father and son arrested in connection with a broad FBI terrorism probe plan to challenge the government case in court today over significantly differing versions of the affidavit used to charge the two men.
The first version of the affidavit released to media organizations Tuesday by the Department of Justice in Washington said potential terrorist targets included hospitals and stores and contained names of key individuals and statements about the international origins of "hundreds" of participants in alleged Al Qaeda terrorist training camps inside Pakistan.
Those details -- among the most alarming in the case -- were widely reported in the press but then deleted in the final version filed with the federal court in Sacramento on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors blamed the problem on confusion inside the bureaucracy as different versions circulated between federal offices.
"An unfortunate oversight due to miscommunication," said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.
But defense attorney Johnny L. Griffin III, who represents the father, 47-year-old Lodi ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, accused the government of "releasing information it knew it could not authenticate."
Attorney Wazhma Mojaddidi, who represents the son, 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, said she plans to bring up the different versions of the affidavit when she represents her client at his arraignment, scheduled for this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski in Sacramento. Both father and son are accused of making false statements to federal officials.
A key deletion from the affidavit filed in court, Mojaddidi said, was a statement that Hamid Hayat had said "potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores."
This part of the affidavit obtained from FBI Special Agent Pedro Tenoch Aguilar was one of the most widely repeated in news accounts around the world, leading some terrorism experts to speculate about significant escalation of Al Qaeda strategies against public targets.
"We question how this got out and why this got out," Mojaddidi said.
Sacramento FBI spokesman John Cauthen said the deletions in the document were made because the original details were "not relevant or not accurate in context" for the purposes of proving a probable cause to arrest Hayat and his father.
