A Chechen native who had been jailed for more than nine months as a terrorism suspect has pleaded guilty in Detroit to possessing $12 million worth of counterfeit cashier’s checks. But the plea agreement reached Monday for Omar Shishani, 48, of Dearborn, Mich., contains none of the government’s original allegations that he had links to the al Qaeda terrorist network. “He is not a terrorist,” said Shishani’s attorney, Corbett O’Meara. “It is symptomatic of our nation’s hysteria that he was ever branded a terrorist. This was garden-variety financial fraud.” Shishani was arrested July 17 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after arriving on a flight from Indonesia and was charged with bringing fake checks into the country. The implication by prosecutors in court papers that Shishani was associated with terrorists led U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds to deny him bail last summer. Full Story
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