Pete Seda, 53, originally named Pirouz Sedaghaty, will learn next month whether he will spend up to eight years in prison.
The judge last Wednesday brushed aside all attempts to toss out the convictions for money laundering and tax evasion in a scheme prosecutors said was to fund terrorism.
While Seda was never branded a terrorist in the charges, he stood accused of aiding an Islamic terrorist organization, the Chechen rebels. There was no hint that he was ever an agent of the Iranian government, especially since the Islamic Republic does not aid the Chechen rebels. In fact, it supports the Russian government in its effort of more than a decade to expunge the Islamic opposition in Chechnya.
In a 22-page ruling, US District Court Judge Michael Hogan denied every one of Seda’s defense team’s motions seeking acquittal or a new trial related to Seda’s financial activities at the defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation chapter he ran in Ashland, Oregon.
“The evidence supported the government’s theory in this case that [Seda] and others conspired to conceal a transaction destined for the Chechen mujahideen and the jury rationally concluded as much,” Hogan wrote.
Hogan set a September 27 sentencing hearing while Seda’s lawyers vowed an appeal.
Seda has remained free while the post-conviction legal fight played out in court. He faces up to eight years in federal prison for his conviction if Hogan accepts federal prosecutors’ assertions that his sentence should be enhanced because the crimes aided terrorists.
If not, he could walk away a free man; he will receive credit for his nearly seven months served in jail before and after the trial and that could exceed any sentence not expanded by the terrorism link.
Seda was convicted on the federal felony charges for helping smuggle $150,000 through his Al-Haramain chapter to Muslims fighting the Russian Army in Chechnya in 2000, then lying on the foundation’s tax returns to conceal the crime.
Seda’s convictions were for purely financial crimes, but the Mail Tribune of Southern Oregon said much of the September 2010 trial and subsequent motions swirled over Seda’s alleged ties to Islamic extremism and even attempts to link him to associates of Osama bin Laden.
Tom Nelson, a Portland-area attorney who has watched the case, told the Mail Tribune the trial was laced with “Islamophobia” and attempts by prosecutors to paint Seda as “a flaming, red-eyed terrorist ready to throw a bomb at anything.”
Defense attorneys were hoping Judge Hogan would accept their argument for tossing out the convictions over alleged “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” regarding witness Barbara Cabral and her late former husband, Richard Cabral. The husband had been paid $14,500 while providing information to the FBI about Seda and other Muslims in the area after the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents.
Three months after Seda’s conviction, FBI Special Agent David Carroll asked US Attorney Dwight Holton to approve a $7,500 payment for Barbara Cabral. She testified at Seda’s trial that she and her husband worshipped at Seda’s prayer house in Ashland and that Seda wanted to give funds to the Chechen mujahideen.
Holton refused the payment to Barbara Cabral in December and also ordered information about the payments divulged to defense attorneys, but that was well after Seda’s conviction and in violation of evidence rules.
Defense lawyers argue Seda’s case should be thrown out because the payments would have bolstered their cross-examination of Cabral had the information been revealed to the jury during Seda’s trial.
Judge Hogan rejected the motion to dismiss the case, ruling that the failure to disclose those financial relationships was inadvertent. Hogan also noted that Seda’s 2 1/2-year status as an international fugitive, when he fled to Iran but then returned voluntarily, was partially responsible for drawing out an already lengthy and complicated case.
Judge Hogan, however, noted that prosecutors “made great significance of the terrorist aspect of the case,” largely to show a motive for Seda’s tax fraud. Also, Hogan noted that Barbara Cabral’s testimony, which accounted for 28 pages of the trial’s nearly 1,800-page transcript, was the only direct evidence of Seda’s desire to aid terrorists, but Hogan ruled it had no bearing on the trial or the jury’s verdict because it doesn’t relate directly to the crimes for which Seda was convicted.
It could, however, play a role in whether Hogan sentences Seda as a supporter of terrorism or a run-of-the-mill tax dodger and money-launderer.
Nelson, who attended the trial, said he believed the Cabral saga alone polluted Seda’s trial so that he deserved at least a new trial based upon it. “She wasn’t up for a long time, but it was a pretty powerful 28 pages,” Nelson said. “That flavored the whole case.”
