Seda had fought to stay free pending his appeal because his lawyers have said the appeal will likely to take more than 33 months. In other words, he could complete his entire sentence and then have an appeals court say he didn’t need to serve any of it.
But the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled last month that US District Court Judge Michael Hogan in Oregon did not err when he deemed the 54-year-old Seda a flight risk. Before returning voluntarily to stand trial in 2010, Seda spent 2-1/2 years as a fugitive living in Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, that lack extradition treaties with the United States.
After the ruling, Hogan immediately ordered Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Englewood, Colorado, by Wednesday, February 29.
This is a low security prison that both Forbes and Money magazines have called one of the easiest prisons in which to serve time. Among its inmates is Jeffrey Skilling, the former head of Enron who is serving tome for his role in the firm’s financial scandal. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has asked to serve his sentence for corruption at Englewood when he goes to prison next week.
Since his September 27 sentencing, Seda had been living with his wife in Portland, Oregon, while wearing a GPS tracking device and under supervision by a federal court officer, who, court filings said, did not consider Seda a flight risk.
Defense attorneys had argued that Seda was an excellent candidate to remain free on bail pending his appeals in part because he had a spotless record while on bail.
Federal prosecutors, however, raised Seda’s past fugitive status and noted that he previously had United States and Iranian passports containing conflicting names, pictures and birth dates. They also argued that Seda, who is a naturalized US citizen, could take advantage of his dual US-Iranian citizenship to get a new Iranian passport and flee the country.
A jury in September 2010 convicted for using his Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation charity to help smuggle $150,000 from Oregon to Saudi Arabia in 2000 and signing a fraudulent tax return to cover it up.
Prosecutors had argued Seda’s motive was to fund Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, a rebellious Muslim part of southern Russia. That was a key component of the entire trial. But Judge Hogan ruled the prosecution failed to prove any connection with terrorism.
Seda was never accused of working with the government of the Islamic Republic, which opposes the Chechen rebels and backs Russia in its repression in Chechnya.
The pending appeal is based on several rulings Hogan made during and before Seda’s September 2010 trial.
Those include failure of the government to disclose before the trial that a prosecution witness was married to a paid government informant who has since died, court records show. Records also show the defense team will argue that Seda did not get a fair trial in part because prosecutors linked Seda to radical Muslim holy wars and Osama bin Laden, which invited jury prejudice against him.
Another facet of the appeal involves Hogan’s pretrial ruling that the government’s warrantless wiretapping of Al-Haramain’s attorneys could not be brought up or even discussed in the case. Defense attorneys claim that ruling harmed Seda’s defense and may have unearthed evidence of possible government misconduct leading to the FBI’s 2004 raid on his Ashland home, which was also his Al-Haramain chapter headquarters.
Other issues raised by defense attorneys on appeal include suppression of evidence and an argument that the government overstated the almost $81,000 tax loss that Hogan added to Seda’s sentence as restitution.
