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From the Los Angeles Times

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Baltimore man charged in bomb case appeared to drift into Islamic extremism

A former co-worker says Antonio Martinez was a newly baptized Christian before announcing his conversion to Islam. 'Within a few weeks, he has a floor mat down in the back room praying to Mecca,' she says.

by Scott Calvert, Baltimore Sun

December 9, 2010

Reporting from Baltimore

Not so long ago, the young man accused of plotting to blow up a military recruiting station in Maryland had a mundane job selling children's clothes at a mall.

When he was hired as a sales associate about a year ago, Antonio Martinez was polite, hardworking and a newly baptized Christian, a former co-worker said. He seemed like a typical young adult working a typical retail job.

Then one day he surprised co-workers by declaring that he had converted to Islam.

"Within a few weeks, he has a floor mat down in the back room praying to Mecca, telling us he's going to a mosque and converting to Islam," the former colleague said. She insisted on anonymity because she was not authorized by her employer to speak publicly about the matter and because she feared for her family's safety.

The sudden change of faith is among the many mysteries surrounding Martinez, 21, who is also known as Muhammad Hussain. He was charged Wednesday with attempting to detonate what he thought was a vehicle bomb at a military recruiting center in Catonsville, near Baltimore.

For reasons that remain unclear, federal authorities say Martinez not only recently embraced Islam but grabbed hold of a radical interpretation of the religion — one that exalts violence against adherents of other faiths as a righteous path to glory.

The FBI said it secretly recorded Martinez talking about killing U.S. service members. "Every soldier that we see in uniform will be killed on the spot, Insha'Allah," or God willing, he said, according to court records.

Martinez resisted his mother's entreaties for him to "be like everybody else," according to another conversation recorded by the FBI. And on the Internet, where Martinez purportedly advocated extremism, a Facebook friend identified as his brother-in-law tried without apparent success to temper his vitriol.

Martinez described himself this way on the social networking site: "IM just a yung brotha from the wrong side of the tracks who embraced Islam." Liberally mixing slang spelling with Muslim terms, he said "we gotta rise up" and "continue the establishment of Islam on the earth."

Few details have emerged about Martinez's background. He attended Prince George's County public schools, and the 2005 Laurel High School yearbook lists him as a member of that year's freshman class.

Though he said in court Wednesday that he worked in construction, he claimed in recorded conversations not to take regular jobs because the tax revenue "goes to the military to fight our mujahedeen brothers," court records show.

According to state records, Martinez has a criminal record.

In February 2008, Martinez was charged with stealing from a Safeway. He pleaded guilty in March 2008. According to charging documents, Martinez conspired with someone named "Ace" to steal $160.

Martinez was given a 90-day suspended sentence, six months' probation and was ordered to pay restitution. According to the state Division of Parole and Probation, Martinez did not pay back any of the $160.

Soon after, Martinez was charged in Prince George's County with car theft, but the charges were dropped when the victim did not appear in court.

At some point, his mother became concerned with his increasingly fervent religious path.

"She wants me to be like everybody else, being in school, working," he said this month, according to court records. "For me, it's different. I have this zeal for deen" — a word that can mean "religion" or "way of life" — "and she doesn't understand that."

On Thursday, a woman who identified herself as Martinez's mother said she tried to persuade her son not to convert to Islam. The woman, who would not give her name, said she's a "devout American," according to the Associated Press, and is upset and embarrassed by her son's actions.

By contrast, Martinez said his wife — whom he married last summer, according to a message she posted on Facebook — understood his desire to "fight jihad," a phrase sometimes interpreted as "holy war." "She said she doesn't want to stop me," he said, according to court records.

Martinez's public Facebook page provides a window into his views, which appear to have been formed by the time of his first post in August: "When are these crusaders gonna realize they cant win?"

Sometimes his posts were unremarkable. On Sept. 14: "thanks 4 da happy bdays everybody."

More common were postings of videos that glorified jihad and statements that praised, among others, Anwar Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric linked to last year's shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas, that killed 13.

Last week, in a recorded conversation that is detailed in court documents, Martinez sounded content with his choices. "Glad I am not like everyone else my age, 21 — going out, having fun, be in college, all that stuff. That's not me.... That not what Allah has in mind for me."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-maryland-bomb-plot-20101210,0,6547915,print.story

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Authorities set fire to a home rented by bomb-making suspect George Jakubec. They determined that burning the house was the safest way to get rid of large quantities of explosives inside.

Burning of home filled with explosives goes as planned Authorities on Thursday completed a controlled burn of an Escondido-area home that contained large quantities of bomb-making material. The home's occupant has been charged with bank robbery and bomb-making. by Tony Perry Los Angeles Times December 10, 2010 Within an hour, most of the flames were gone, and the wood-frame house in a quiet Escondido-area neighborhood was a pile of smoldering ashes. There was no damage to surrounding residences and much of the thick, black column of smoke towering overhead had dissipated. San Diego County officials were satisfied. Everything had gone as planned.

"This is textbook on how to do it," said Sheriff Bill Gore, who gave the order about 10:50 a.m. to start the fire.

A special task force of fire personnel, bomb experts and law enforcement officers supervised the controlled burn of the one-story house in the 1900 block of Via Scott, where a large quantity of explosive materials was recently found. Bomb experts had declared that it would be too dangerous to attempt to remove the materials.

After consulting with dozens of public safety agencies, Gore concluded that it would be best to burn down the house, incinerating its contents.

George Jakubec, who rented the home for more than three years, remains in federal jail in downtown San Diego, charged with bomb-making and bank robbery. Questions remain about his alleged motives in stockpiling the explosive materials, building homemade grenades and keeping blasting caps, ammunition and jars of acid.

Jakubec, 54, a Serbian emigre and software consultant, was arrested Nov. 18 after a gardener was injured in a backyard explosion.

During questioning, Jakubec admitted to authorities that he kept explosive materials. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and remains in federal custody.

Among the items found inside the home were quantities of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). The latter was a material used by so-called shoe-bomber Richard Reid and is considered the weapon of choice of Al Qaeda bombers.

PETN is one of the main ingredients that the Transportation Security Administration is looking for with its new full-body screening and pat-down procedures for airline passengers.

Authorities determined that burning the home was the best way to protect the neighborhood.

In the end, the experts were right, officials said.

"Everything they said would happen, happened," said Todd Newman, chief of the San Marcos Fire Department. The San Marcos and Escondido fire departments stood by in case the fire spread.

Nearby Interstate 15 was closed in both directions for about 2 ½ hours. Neighbors who had been asked to evacuate were told Thursday afternoon that they could return.

Lisa Volter, a nearby resident who did not have to leave the area, said she remains shaken by the discovery at the house on the dead-end street.

"We're kind of surprised that so much stuff was found so close to our home in the little town of Escondido," she said.

There were no large explosions during the fire, but cracks and pops could be heard, possibly from hand grenades and ammunition inside the home.

Flames soared four stories in the air, and heavy smoke reached about 2,000 feet before drifting slowly east, pushed by a slight sea breeze. But the smoke was considered no more hazardous than that of a "normal" house fire.

"This, so far, is perfect," said Robert Kard, director of the Air Pollution Control District of San Diego County.

To help the fire reach temperatures of 1,800 degrees or more, holes were bored into the roof of the house to provide the fire with the oxygen needed to burn quickly. A house fire is usually about 1,200 degrees, fire officials said.

A 16-foot wall was built between the home and its closest neighbor. A fire-retardant gel was spread on the wall. Vegetation was cut back to keep the fire from spreading.

In the end, the role of meteorologists was key. A plan for the fire to be set Wednesday was delayed because of concern about overcast skies and insufficient wind, which would mean that smoke would linger.

Bomb experts will examine the site in the next few days.

Even though officials had for days warned of the potential danger, the fire attracted onlookers curious about the flames and smoke.

"It's a free show," said Cole Fugate, 19, of San Marcos. "It's rare that you get to see a house burning and nobody trying to put it out."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bombers-house-20101210,0,796971,print.story

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From the New York Times

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After Operation, Rio's Forces Greeted by Wariness

by ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — Flanked by officers holding assault rifles, José Mariano Beltrame, Rio's security chief, strolled through the streets of Complexo do Alemão, just days after the police and military had stormed the notoriously dangerous slum and retaken it by force.

It was a historic walk, the first time he had set foot in the slum in years, underscoring this city's newfound willingness to wrest away areas of the city that have been violent refuges for drug gangs for more than three decades.

Residents watched stone-faced as Mr. Beltrame passed. No one applauded or rushed to shake the hand of the man who had orchestrated the program to “pacify” Rio's slums ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. Instead, a 54-year-old mother confronted him for several minutes, telling him that a Military Police officer had entered her home, pinned her against her kitchen sink and demanded her son's money.

“My son is an honest person, and this is his salary,” she said in an interview. The officer “wanted to take my camera, but I did not let him take my money or my camera. So he took my bananas and ate them as he left.”

One week after the Alemão operation, the culmination of a weeklong street battle against drug gangs that claimed dozens of lives across Rio, residents here were viewing the security presence through cautious eyes.

Gone was the initial euphoria when the police entered the community of 120,000 people on Nov. 28, prompting small children to frolic in a former drug trafficker's rooftop swimming pool. By week's end, residents had accused the police of dozens of abuses, including robberies and violent entries into their homes as officers scoured the slum for guns, drugs and money.

After a week of searching here and in another slum, the police said they had recovered about 34 tons of marijuana; 692 pounds of cocaine; well over 400 pistols, rifles, machine guns and grenades; but comparatively little cash: about $68,000. All of the money, moreover, was recovered by the army and the federal police — Rio's own forces turned in none — raising broad suspicions of police corruption.

“They have been showing you drugs and arms, but where is the money?” asked Rafael Correia, 22, who works at a furniture store in Alemão. “We had tons of money here. Complexo do Alemão was a money mine. So did the criminals leave here with all that money? Or where is it now?”

Even military officials have expressed concern that their soldiers would be “contaminated” by the “culture of corruption” inside Alemão, a high-ranking military officer acknowledged. And despite the community being surrounded by about 2,600 personnel from the police and the military, most of the traffickers somehow escaped, fueling an investigation into whether officers helped some of them.

The aftermath of the operation to retake Alemão, a complex of several slums that Mr. Beltrame has called “the heart of evil,” has reinforced concerns among analysts and police experts that Gov. Sergio Cabral's “police pacification” program may be achieving only part of what is needed to bring lasting peace. While the vast majority of Rio's residents here support the program, which involves taking over the slums and then installing a community police force, little is being done to reform Rio's notoriously corrupt police officers.

“We are trying to solve the problem of the drug dealers by using the same police that originated the problem in the first place,” said José Padilha, who has made three films exploring police abuses in Rio. “We should acknowledge that this is only half a program. The other half is you have to change the police.”

The incursion into Alemão had not been planned to begin for at least several more months. But after drug gangs attacked city buses and cars last month, terrorizing Rio residents, state officials felt the moment was ripe.

Assisted by 17 armored personnel vehicles from the military, security forces took Alemão with surprising ease. No one died in the two-hour operation, the police said, erasing fears of a bloodbath that would further stain Rio's reputation as one of the most violent cities in the world.

“It turned out far better than I had hoped,” said José Junior, executive coordinator of AfroReggae, a group that works to build youth self-esteem in the slums. He said he tried to persuade gang leaders to surrender before the forces moved in. “The most optimistic outcome was a bloodbath, the most pessimistic was a genocide,” he said.

Today, it is difficult to walk 50 feet without passing police officers. They roam the uneven streets with rifles and body armor, interrogating residents and conducting house-to-house searches. Soldiers wearing red berets guard important entry points, sweating in Rio's summer heat.

Military Police officers used to walk through Alemão carrying backpacks until police officials, responding to residents' claims of stealing, instituted a rule last week banning them for all but Elite Squad members.

When under the thumb of drug dealers, residents said they lacked basic services like a post office or fixed telephone lines. Government officials rushed in last week to fill the void, setting up tables to note residents' health care needs and to find them jobs. Satellite television companies, previously fearful of the “high-risk” community, set up tables along the main avenue.

But the questions around the operation have not faded. Despite the slum's having been surrounded, more than 400 drug traffickers escaped, either crawling through sewer tunnels or disguised as religious figures who walked through unguarded exits, the police and residents said.

The police said they were investigating claims by residents that officers may have driven out top gang leaders in squad cars, perhaps before the military moved into position two days before the raid.

“I am very interested in getting to the bottom of this because I have not been home and with my family for days and have given my blood and sweat to this operation,” said Capt. Ivan Blaz, a spokesman for the Military Police's Elite Squad. “The good cops are among the most interested in getting to the bottom of this information.”

In the wake of the operation, residents have provided invaluable assistance to the police in discovering drug and gun stashes, calling in some 4,000 tips, the police said. A police cruiser also roamed the streets with a megaphone directing residents to file complaints of any police abuses. “We are on your side,” a woman's voice said. “Let's work together.”

After working his way through the slum, Mr. Beltrame explained that complaints “must be carefully checked, and the police must remain in here and exchange information with the community so that we can restore freedom and guarantee the territory for these people.”

But skepticism remains. “With police or traffickers it is all the same to me today,” said Cosmo Antonio da Silva, 26, who owns a hair salon on the main avenue. “Maybe in the future things will get better, but right now I don't have any hope left.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/americas/10brazil.html?_r=1&ref=world

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Dutch Panel Found 2,000 Church Abuse Claims

BRUSSELS — The Roman Catholic Church, battered by sexual abuse scandals from the United States to Belgium, is facing a new set of damaging allegations in the Netherlands. Figures released Thursday by an investigative commission showed that almost 2,000 people had made complaints of sexual or physical abuse against the church, in a country with only four million Catholics.

“The Roman Catholic Church has not faced a crisis like this since the French Revolution,” Peter Nissen, a professor of the history of religion at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said of the growing abuse scandal.

With one legal case starting this week, and accusations against two former bishops, the reaction of the church appears to have fueled the crisis. Nearly all of the cases are decades old, with probably no more than 10 from the past 20 years.

Asked in March on television about the hundreds of complaints already surfacing, one of the church's most senior figures, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, shocked the nation by replying not in Dutch but in German. “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” — We knew nothing — he said, using a phrase associated with Nazi excuses after World War II.

“A lot of people perceived it as an affirmation of the culture of covering up cases,” said Professor Nissen, adding that it meant to many, “ ‘We should have known' or ‘We knew but we didn't want to know.' ”

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that he had no comment and that the matter was in the hands of Dutch bishops.

Next month Cardinal Simonis, the retired bishop of Utrecht, will testify in Middelburg as a witness in a court hearing already under way involving sexual abuse.

In an interim report, issued Thursday, a commission headed by Wim Deetman, a Protestant and former education minister, said it had received roughly 1,975 reports of sexual or physical abuse, some directly but others through a body set up for victims, called Hulp en Recht, or Help and Justice.

One central accusation in the Netherlands is that, as in other countries, known abusers were simply transferred to new parishes.

In recent weeks it has emerged that a Roman Catholic order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, paid about $22,000 to settle an abuse claim against one bishop, Jan ter Schure, who died in 2003. The abuse is said to have taken place in Ugchelen between 1948 and 1953. The order declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Hulp en Recht is examining claims against a former bishop, Jo Gijsen, now 78, who has been accused of having an abusive relationship with a student at the Rolduc seminary between 1959 and 1961. He has denied accusations against him.

Central to the growing public debate over the church's culpability is the extent to which sexual abuse was tolerated and covered up.

The hearing at which Cardinal Simonis will testify next month involves a priest convicted of abusing three youngsters in Terneuzen. The priest had been arrested, though not prosecuted, on similar grounds in the late 1970s as director of a Catholic youth center near The Hague, part of the diocese where Cardinal Simonis was then bishop.

The accuser's lawyer, Martin De Witte, who represents about 120 other people claiming abuse, said his client wanted an apology and damages. “We say the Catholic Church didn't take the measures to protect children from this man,” he said. “They gave him another chance, and another, and another.”

Pieter Kohnen, spokesman for the church in the Netherlands, said that, under its rules, the diocesan bishop did not have responsibility for institutions run by Catholic orders.

Mr. Kohnen argued that cases now coming to light took place mostly before 1970 and among the religious orders that controlled many boarding schools and boys' clubs.

He said: “Of the 1,799 cases notified to Hulp en Recht since March of this year, less than 10 took place between 1990-2010. Of the 1,799 cases, 265 relate to clergy in one of the seven dioceses and around 1,500 are related to members of religious orders and congregations.”

Mr. Kohnen rejected the accusation that perpetrators were simply moved around the country. “The general allegation is extremely general and not in conformity with the facts,” he said. “People were replaced, but not without therapy or proper help — what was felt necessary in the circumstances.”

According to Professor Nissen, the church's argument that it has little authority over religious orders is correct, but he thinks this is a narrow position to take. “They take a legal, canonical, approach, but you could take a pastoral approach and say that bishops are leaders of the Catholic community, and that religious orders, while having autonomy, are part of this community,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10dutch.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Mexican City Is Blockaded by Gunmen

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen blockaded President Felipe Calderón's hometown on Thursday, forcing drivers from their cars, trucks and buses, then setting the vehicles ablaze in the middle of major intersections.

Jonathan Arredondo, a spokesman for the attorney general's office in Michoacán State, where the blockade occurred, said the brazen effort stopped traffic around 11 a.m. at all five entrances to Mr. Calderón's hometown, the colonial city of Morelia, ending only after the fires died down.

It appeared to be a show of force by La Familia, a drug gang. Several of its leaders have been arrested in recent months, but the criminal outfit — notorious for beheadings, methamphetamine production and brash attacks on government forces — continues to fight for control of the area west of Mexico City that it has dominated for years.

Only a day earlier, in a nearby city in Michoacán, a series of shootouts between federal police officers and suspected La Familia gunmen left three people dead — an 8-month-old, a 16-year-old girl and a federal officer. In a statement, the federal police said that in at least one case on Wednesday, gunmen ambushed officers from both sides of a road, using automatic rifles known as “goat horns.”

It was unclear whether the blockade was connected to the earlier violence, or was perhaps meant to rebut recent claims by a detained La Familia leader that the cartel was in decline. On Thursday, the police said that no arrests had been made so far, and that the blockade had left one man injured, with a gunshot wound in the leg.

Mr. Arredondo said the injured man was a 75-year-old diabetic. “The criminals were frustrated because he was walking slowly,” Mr. Arredondo said. “So they shot him.”

Morelia has been struck by violence before. In 2008, a grenade attack tore through a crowded Independence Day celebration, killing eight people and wounding more than 100 others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/americas/10mexico.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Unlicensed Drivers Who Risk More Than a Fine

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — It was just another suburban fender-bender. A car zoomed into an intersection and braked too late to stop at a red light. The Georgia woman driving it, an American citizen, left with a wrecked auto, a sore neck and a traffic fine.

But for Felipa Leonor Valencia, the Mexican woman who was driving the Jeep that was hit that day in March, the damage went far beyond a battered bumper. The crash led Ms. Valencia, an illegal immigrant who did not have a valid driver's license, to 12 days in detention and the start of deportation proceedings — after 17 years of living in Georgia.

Like Ms. Valencia, an estimated 4.5 million illegal immigrants nationwide are driving regularly, most without licenses, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Only three states — New Mexico, Utah and Washington — currently issue licenses without proof of legal residence in the United States.

Many states have adopted tough new laws to prevent illegal immigrants from driving, while expanding immigration enforcement by the state and local police. As a result, at least 30,000 illegal immigrants who were stopped for common traffic violations in the last three years have ended up in deportation, Department of Homeland Security figures show. The numbers are rapidly increasing, aggravating tensions in the national debate over immigration.

The tensions seem likely to persist. The Senate may take up a bill next week that would give legal status to some illegal immigrant students. Its fate is uncertain, and prospects appear dim for a controversial overhaul, supported by President Obama, that would give legal status to 11 million illegal immigrants. In the absence of federal action, states are stepping in, trying their own solutions.

In Georgia, voters have been worried about unlicensed illegal immigrants whose driving skills are untested and who often lack insurance, including some who caused well-publicized accidents. Lawmakers have tightened requirements to keep illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses and license plates, and have increased penalties for driving without them.

“There are certain things you can't do in the state of Georgia if you are an illegal immigrant,” said State Senator Chip Rogers, a Republican who was a prime mover behind some of the traffic measures. “One of them is, you can't drive.”

Many Georgia counties have begun to cooperate formally with the Department of Homeland Security, so that illegal immigrants detained by the local police are turned over more consistently to federal immigration authorities.

Still, according to The Times's analysis, 200,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia are driving to work daily. For them, the new laws mean that any police stop, whether for a violation that caused an accident, or for a broken taillight or another driver's mistake, can lead to deportation. Since 2006, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Latin America, have been deported from Georgia after traffic violations, often shaking up long-settled families.

The stepped-up enforcement has been applauded by many citizens. It has also antagonized the fast-growing Hispanic communities in and near Atlanta, where residents say the police are singling them out for traffic stops.

Illegal immigrants say they continue to risk driving without a license in order to keep their jobs.

“We have to work to support our kids, so we have to drive,” Ms. Valencia said in Spanish, after she was released on a $7,500 bond in late October from an immigration detention center in Alabama to begin her legal fight against deportation. “If we drive, we get stopped by the police. The first thing they ask is, ‘Can I see your license?' ‘Don't have one? Go to jail.' And from jail to deportation.”

A Sheriff Cracks Down

Not a few unlicensed Hispanic drivers are traveling the chronically congested roads here in Gwinnett County, a commuter destination northeast of Atlanta. Years of growth resulted in spreading subdivisions and state highways that converge at vast intersections. Public bus routes are few. To get around the county, you have to go by car.

After several high-profile crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the sheriff, Butch Conway, a blunt-spoken lawman who rides motorcycles and breeds horses in his spare time, made it his goal to reduce their population in his jail and his county.

“Just the fact that these people committed serious crimes when they should not have been in the country to begin with,” Sheriff Conway said, “I think that was an insult to the people of Gwinnett.”

He enrolled the detention center here in Lawrenceville, the county seat, in a program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE. Under the program, known as 287 (g), 18 of his deputies were trained to question suspects about their immigration status when they arrive at the jail. The deputies place holds, known as detainers, on immigrants they determine to be here illegally, so when the inmates are released from the jail they can be turned over directly to ICE.

The agreement with ICE specifies that Sheriff Conway is to focus on removing “criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety or a danger to the community.” The sheriff says that should include those stopped for driving without a license.

“I find it offensive that they just thumb their nose at our laws and operate vehicles they are not licensed to operate,” he said, “on top of the fact that they are here illegally.”

String of Violations

When some Gwinnett County residents explain why they support a crackdown on illegal immigrants, one case they cite is that of Celso Campos Duartes. Mr. Campos, a Mexican, accumulated at least five moving violations in five years, including a hit-and-run accident, before he was turned over to ICE for deportation last month through the county jail 287(g) program.

One afternoon in October 2005, Mr. Campos was driving his Ford compact down a county road just as Aubrey Sosebee, an 82-year-old retiree, reached the black mailbox at the end of his driveway.

“The house sits way off the road, and that was his exercise every day, to walk up to get the mail and then walk back,” said Rusty Sosebee, 59, one of Mr. Sosebee's sons.

Mr. Campos struck Mr. Sosebee, knocking him to the pavement. Witnesses told the police that Mr. Campos tried to turn his vehicle and leave but several drivers blocked his path. Mr. Campos sprinted into nearby woods, where police search dogs found him hours later.

Three of Mr. Sosebee's children, who gathered recently to recount the accident, could not recall the events without breaking down.

“He knows all of the illegal actions that he has taken,” Rhonda Neely, 49, Mr. Sosebee's daughter, said of Mr. Campos. “He's more concerned with getting away and not getting caught than with my dad's life, laying there on the road, the person he just ran over.”

Mr. Campos, though sober, was driving without a license and with plates from another vehicle. Although insurance is mandatory in Georgia, he had none. Mr. Sosebee received no compensation from Mr. Campos for his medical care.

Mr. Sosebee never recovered from the head injury he suffered in the fall, his son Rusty said. He remained disoriented, his son said, and four months later he died.

Convicted of leaving the scene of an accident, Mr. Campos served 26 months in the county jail. But at the end of his sentence, he walked away. He was arrested two more times for traffic offenses.

After the Sosebees learned in May, to their disbelief, that Mr. Campos was still in the country, they contacted the news media. The furor ensured that ICE would not let Mr. Campos slip away again.

In an interview in October in the Gwinnett County Detention Center, Mr. Campos, now 37, was impassive and unapologetic. “I ran to protect my life,” he said, speaking in Spanish at a jailhouse visiting booth. “The accident had already happened, there was nothing I could do to avoid it.”

But Mr. Campos did not dispute his eventual deportation. The residents of Georgia “have every right to object to people who drive without a license.”

Making Their Arguments

While traffic deaths involving illegal immigrants like Mr. Campos have galvanized public opinion, it is not clear that they are increasing, even as the illegal immigrant population has surged during the last decade.

There has been no surge in the percentage of Hispanic drivers killed in accidents in recent years, federal highway safety data show. What the data do show is that Hispanics who are involved in fatal crashes are far less likely than other drivers to have a valid license.

About 80 percent of illegal immigrants are Hispanic, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.

Looming over cases like Mr. Campos's is the question of whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to have driver's licenses in the first place.

Highway safety and auto insurance experts argue that licensing requires drivers to pass tests and creates an official record of their performance on the road. Licensed drivers can also be made to buy insurance.

“When you are licensed, you have proven you have some ability to drive and know the basic safety rules,” said David Snyder, vice president of the American Insurance Association.

Opponents focus on a different set of issues, arguing that a license is an identity document that allows unauthorized immigrants to move about the country freely and to gain public benefits.

“Giving someone here illegally a driver's license is much more than giving them the privilege of driving,” said D. A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, a group created in the name of a Georgia teenager who was killed in 2000 by an illegal immigrant driver. “It is giving them the keys to the kingdom.”

Mr. King's side is winning. Since 2006, six states that once allowed illegal immigrants to obtain licenses have changed their laws, leaving only three. Susana Martinez, the Republican governor-elect of New Mexico, has pledged to revise license laws there to deny licenses to illegal immigrants.

Georgia has never given licenses to immigrants who are here illegally. In 2008, state legislators increased the penalties for driving without a license, starting with 48 hours of mandatory jail time for a first offense and fines amounting to $700.

Now, many more unlicensed immigrants are going to jail — and from there are being detained by immigration authorities. Some are offenders like Mr. Campos. Many others are average drivers like Ms. Valencia.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

“I would like to be able to get a license, but I am unable to do so,” Ms. Valencia told a state judge, speaking through an interpreter in Spanish, when she appeared on Oct. 6 in a Lawrenceville courtroom for the no-license citation she received at the accident scene.

On March 11, the day the speeding Chevy hit Ms. Valencia's vehicle, she was barely a mile from the home she owns in a Gwinnett County development. She was on her way to pick up her daughter, Crystal, 16, at high school to take her to a doctor's appointment.

Ms. Valencia's 2000 Jeep Cherokee was legally registered, inspected and insured. She had a driver's license she had obtained in North Carolina in 2003, when that state still granted them without proof of United States residency. It expired in 2008.

After coming to Georgia from an ox-and-plow farming village in Mexico, Ms. Valencia had a 12-year career at a fast-food restaurant in a suburban mall, rising from hamburger flipper to cashier to assistant manager. Among her most carefully preserved possessions are two diplomas for the company's management training courses.

Ms. Valencia, a single mother, has raised Crystal, an American citizen born in Atlanta, and an American niece, now 7, whose mother died in childbirth.

With the help of a lawyer, Ms. Valencia navigated the court hearing and was ready to pay her fine and go home. But at the last minute, the judge ordered her to be fingerprinted at the Gwinnett County Detention Center.

“Oh, no, my God, that's it,” she thought. “I'm going to jail.”

When she arrived to give her fingerprints, a 287(g) deputy asked for her immigration papers. When she had none to offer, she was sent to immigration detention in Gadsden, Ala.

Crystal was distraught, frantically texting her mother and scouring the county court Web site for information.

“She is the only person that's been there for me,” Crystal said, dazed, at a relative's house one night while her mother was in the county jail. “She shows me what decisions to make, like keep going to school, do good in school, don't drop out.”

Crystal has been preparing to go to college to study medicine, and she could not conceive of moving to Mexico. “To begin with,” she said, “I really don't know that much Spanish.”

The Repercussions

“I think there's some sad stories out there, no doubt,” Sheriff Conway said. “But my job is not taking action on sad stories.”

To date, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed agreements for 287(g) programs with 72 communities across the country. It is also rolling out a more ambitious program called Secure Communities, giving local police nationwide access to the Department of Homeland Security's database of fingerprints. Immigrants are checked for their legal status when they are booked.

Senior ICE officials have established priorities for these programs, with the highest being deportation of criminals convicted of major drug offenses and violent acts. Traffic violations are not among the top priorities.

Sheriff Conway takes a different position: “If they're here illegally in the United States, they should be deported regardless of the charge.”

The results of the Gwinnett County 287(g) program reflect the sheriff's view. During its first year, which ended Nov. 16, immigration detainers were placed on 3,034 inmates, 93 percent of them Latino. Of a total of 6,662 charges those inmates faced, 21 percent were for ICE's high-priority crimes, like aggravated assault and child molestation. But 45 percent were for traffic violations other than driving under the influence, including 469 detainees held only for driving without a license.

The impact in this area has been deep. Vanessa Kosky, the defense lawyer who represented Ms. Valencia, said her young practice has been overwhelmed with cases of Hispanic immigrants arrested for driving without a license. To avoid deportation, they have clogged the courts to fight charges they once would have dispatched by paying a fine.

“These are not horrific drivers,” Ms. Kosky said. “These are not D.U.I.'s. These are not people who are putting people in danger.”

Hispanic leaders said immigrants are learning to avoid the police. Latino restaurants have lost business as their patrons choose to stay home. Attendance at Catholic churches dropped when police set up traffic checkpoints nearby.

“It's like a persecution,” said Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama, the auxiliary bishop of Atlanta. “These laws only affect one group: the Latino community.”

Law enforcement officials point to a sharp drop this year in arrests for driving without a license. Some unlicensed immigrants are car-pooling, and some are moving elsewhere in Georgia.

“I mean, that's success,” Sheriff Conway said. “That's the point of the program, to remove illegal aliens from Gwinnett County.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/10license.html?ref=us

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Jury Convicts 3 Officers in Post-Katrina Death

NEW ORLEANS — More than five years after a man named Henry Glover was shot and his body burned here by police officers in the days after Hurricane Katrina, a jury has weighed in on the circumstances of his death. Three police officers were found guilty Thursday night on nine federal counts in an emotionally charged case that painted a grim portrait of the city's troubled Police Department.

David Warren, a former police officer, was found guilty of manslaughter in the shooting of Mr. Glover; Officer Gregory McRae was convicted of obstructing justice and other charges for burning Mr. Glover's body; and Lt. Travis McCabe was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice for drawing up a false police report.

Two other police officers were found not guilty on various counts. The mixed verdict, returned by the jury after nearly three days of deliberation, left relatives and friends of Mr. Glover with an incomplete sense of vindication.

“All of them should have been found guilty,” said Rebecca Glover, Mr. Glover's aunt, as she left the courtroom. “They all participated in this. How are you going to let them go free?”

This was the first trial of an untold number of New Orleans officers being investigated by the federal authorities. There are at least eight other such investigations into actions by the city Police Department, including one into shootings on the Danziger Bridge on Sept 4, 2005, that left two civilians dead and six wounded.

Six police officers who were indicted in that case face trial, four of them charged in connection with the deaths. Five other officers have pleaded guilty. One of them, Michael Hunter, was sentenced to eight years in prison last week.

The horrific nature of some of the actions being investigated, as well as the city's stubborn crime rate, led the Justice Department to begin conducting a full scale review of the department in May.

Few of the criminal cases contain such grisly details as the one involving Mr. Glover, which remained uninvestigated for years despite repeated inquiries by his family. In late 2008, an article about the killing was published by The Nation, in a joint investigative project with ProPublica. Federal investigators began looking into the case shortly afterward.

Preparing to leave the city, Mr. Glover, 31, and a friend drove in a stolen truck to a strip mall in the Algiers neighborhood, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. They had come to pick up suitcases that had been looted from the mall but left behind earlier, prosecutors said.

Mr. Warren, who was patrolling the strip mall — which was being used as a detective bureau — shot Mr. Glover, who was unarmed. Mr. Warren claimed at trial that he had fired in self-defense, and that he had perceived something in Mr. Glover's hand. His partner testified that he shot him in the back. Mr. Glover, his shirt covered in blood, was picked up by a stranger, William Tanner, who drove him, his brother and a friend to an elementary school that was being used as headquarters for a police special operations division.

There, Mr. Tanner says, he was beaten by Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and Officer McRae, though they were both found not guilty on this count. Officer McRae did not deny taking Mr. Tanner's car, with Mr. Glover's body inside, and driving it to a levee behind a police substation. There, Mr. McRae used flares to set afire the car and the body.

The other two defendants, Robert Italiano, a retired lieutenant, and Lieutenant McCabe, were charged with creating a false report to cover up the killing. Lieutenant Italiano was found not guilty.

All of the testimony was haunted by the specter of Hurricane Katrina, and a debate about the nature of law and order within catastrophe.

“When you take into account reasonable versus unreasonable,” Rick Simmons, who represents Mr. Warren, said in his closing arguments, “you have to take into consideration the conditions under which he was living.”

But prosecutors, who described Mr. Warren as zealously looking for an opportunity to use his expensive personal assault rifle, said that even under the harrowing conditions after the hurricane, the rule of law was never abandoned.

“Hurricane Katrina didn't turn petty theft into a capital offense,” said Jared Fishman, a federal prosecutor in his closing arguments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/10katrina.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Feds: Va. Tech broke law in '07 shooting response

by DENA POTTER

The Associated Press

Friday, December 10, 2010

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Tech officials argued they did their best under the rules at the time to notify students of a gunman on the loose at the outset of the 2007 shooting rampage. Federal education officials found they broke the law.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a report Thursday confirming that the university violated the Clery Act, which requires that students and employees be notified of on-campus threats.

The report concludes that the university failed to issue a timely warning to the Blacksburg campus after student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed two students in a dormitory early on the morning of April 16, 2007.

Virginia Tech officials did not send an e-mail to the campus community about the shootings until two hours later, about the time Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more students and faculty, then himself.

The federal department first found that Tech broke the law in January, but the university had its chance to respond to the allegations.

That response was soundly rejected Thursday in a report that brought satisfaction for some victims' family members who have repeatedly called for more accountability from school officials for their actions on the day of the shootings.

"Virginia Tech's failure to issue timely warnings about the serious and ongoing threat deprived its students and employees of vital, time-sensitive information and denied them the opportunity to take adequate steps to provide for their own safety," the report stated.

The university could lose some or all of the $98 million in student financial aid it receives from the federal government, and could be fined up to $55,000 for two violations - failing to issue a timely warning and not following its own emergency notification policy.

Any sanctions will be decided by a Department of Education panel and federal officials have not provided a timeline for when sanctions might be announced. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said the school likely will appeal any sanctions. University president Charles Steger was traveling and unavailable for comment, Hincker said.

Some of the arguments in Tech's defense centered around the definition of a "timely" warning. The university argued there was no definition of "timely" until two years after the shooting, when the DOE required schools to immediately notify people on campus upon confirmation of a dangerous situation or an immediate threat.

The university argued that the definition of "timely" is still not clear.

"Today's ruling could add even more confusion as to what constitutes a 'timely warning' at a time when unambiguous guidance is needed," Hincker said. "It appears that timely warning is whatever the Department of Education decides after the fact."

The federal report countered that since 2005, the Department of Education has stated that the determination of whether a warning is timely is based on the nature of the crime and the continuing danger to the campus.

While Thursday's finding makes official the federal verdict for the university, it echoes some of the conclusions already made by a state commission that investigated the shootings. That panel also found that the university erred by failing to notify the campus sooner.

The state reached an $11 million settlement with many of the victims' families. Two families have filed suit and are seeking $10 million in damages from university officials. A judge recently ruled those lawsuits could move forward.

One victim's mother was satisfied that the federal report included actions that Virginia Tech officials took to protect themselves that morning. Victims' families had long wanted those details included in the report of the state commission.

"They couldn't fine enough money for what happened that day and how it altered our lives," said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was injured in the shootings. "It's more about the truth of what happened. That's what I sought for all these years."

The university said one official advised her son to go to class anyway, while another only called to arrange for a baby sitter.

But the federal report notes a few actions on campus after word of the shootings spread but before the e-mail warning was sent: a continuing education center was locked down; an official directed that the doors to his office be locked; the university's veterinary college was locked down; and campus trash pickup was suspended.

"If the university had provided an appropriate timely warning after the first shootings (in the dormitory), the other members of the campus community may have had enough time to take similar actions to protect themselves," the report said.

Carter, the director of Security on Campus, said he found Virginia Tech's response troubling.

"Our fundamental goal is not to place blame, but to make sure students are kept safer," he said of the Act. "But their policy arguments would be very detrimental to protecting students all across the country if they were to be accepted."

The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to report information about campus crime. To receive federal student financial aid, the schools must report crimes and security policies and provide warning of campus threats. It is named after Jeanne Ann Clery, a 19-year-old university freshman who was raped and murdered in her Lehigh University dormitory in 1986. Her parents later learned that dozens of violent crimes had been committed on her campus in the three years before her death.

The report also found:

-The university's e-mail stated only that "a shooting incident occurred" and that the community should be cautious. The report said that could have led recipients to think the shooting was accidental and that it failed to give students and employees the "information they needed for their own protection."

-The warning would have reached more students and employees and "may have saved lives" if it had been sent before the 9:05 a.m. classes began.

-That Tech's warning policy - which is required under the Clery Act - was vague and did not provide the campus with the types of events that would warrant a warning, who would deliver it or how it would be transmitted.

-The university's process for issuing a warning was complicated and not well understood even by senior officials.

The financial impact for Tech is not decided. An expert on the federal Clery Act said loss of federal aid is unlikely.

S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security On Campus, a nonprofit organization that monitors the Clery Act, said reviews based on the law are relatively rare and that the Virginia Tech review was the 35th in two decades. No school has ever lost federal funding, and the largest fine to be levied was $350,000 against Eastern Michigan University for failing to report the rape and murder of a student in a dormitory in 2006.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121000450.html

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Stepmother of slain children headed back to Ala.

The Associated Press

December 10, 2010

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The stepmother of two Alabama children who authorities say were killed and buried in the woods was on her way back to Alabama, where she could be charged in the deaths, a Kentucky jail spokeswoman said early Friday.

Heather Leavell-Keaton was being held in Louisville, Ky., on child abuse charges. She was picked up from the jail around 1 a.m. Friday to be brought back to Mobile, Ala., Louisville Metro Corrections spokeswoman Pam Windsor said.

The children's father, John DeBlase, is charged with two counts of murder, child abuse and corpse abuse in their deaths. Skeletal remains found in the woods of rural Mississippi on Wednesday are believed to belong to his 3-year-old son Chase. Authorities are still searching for the remains of 5-year-old Natalie DeBlase.

DeBlase told police he dumped his daughter Natalie in the woods north of Mobile in March. He said he discarded the boy's body, dressed only in a diaper and stuffed into a plastic garbage bag, in Mississippi in June on or around Father's Day. Police say the children were killed separately, then immediately disposed of.

"He didn't keep them around," Mobile Police Officer Chris Levy said Thursday.

Arrest warrants in the case accuse Leavell-Keaton of abusing the little boy and girl.

The documents were prepared before the murder charges were filed and detail the children's mistreatment at the hands of Leavell-Keaton. They say DeBlase allowed her to bind the girl's hands and feet with duct tape, put a sock in her mouth and stuff her in a suitcase in a closet for about 14 hours.

The warrants also detail how Leavell-Keaton duct-taped the boy's hands to the side of his legs, strapped a broom handle to his back and shoved a sock in his mouth. The boy was then forced to stand in a corner all night while the adults went to bed.

The documents don't specify when the abuse occurred, only saying it happened sometime after March 1.

Police have said she and DeBlase share responsibility for the killings, but each one blames the other.

The two were arrested last week on the abuse charges, and authorities began their search for the children's remains in Alabama and Mississippi over the weekend. Neither child had been seen for months.

An investigation into their disappearance didn't start until late last month after Leavell-Keaton sought a protective order against DeBlase in Kentucky, Levy said. She said in the Nov. 18 filing that DeBlase "may have murdered his children," and that she feared for her life because he was abusive. The couple just had a child together this summer.

"I am afraid that he is going to do something to harm our daughter because of what he has done to the other children," she wrote.

DeBlase pleaded not guilty to the lesser charges Wednesday and is due in court again Friday for a bond hearing on the murder charges. His attorney, Jim Sears, said DeBlase will plead not guilty to those charges, as well.

"He maintains his innocence," Sears said Thursday. "He is terribly upset about everything.

"He maintains that it was his common-law wife" who murdered the children, Sears added.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121001276.html

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Unfruitful time lapse concerns police chief

Investigators are questioning whether 12-year-old Brittany Smith is a hostage or a willing companion.

by Amanda Codispoti

The Roanoke Times

December 10, 2010

The grainy photo of Brittany Smith leaving the Salem Walmart a week ago with the man police say abducted her shows the 12-year-old girl clasping her hands, or perhaps picking at her fingernails.

At her side, Jeffrey Easley, her slain mother's 32-year-old boyfriend, pushes a shopping cart loaded with a tent, bottled water, Gatorade and camping equipment.

The picture, the last confirmed sighting of Brittany and Easley, betrays no clues that tell whether the child is a hostage or a willing companion, Roanoke County investigators said.

She's not being forced at gunpoint. She's neither resisting nor crying. She isn't running away.

Does that mean she's part of a plot to flee her mother's home on Fort Lewis Circle, where the body of Tina Smith, 41, was found Monday?

"Depending on his personality, she may not have been able to say no," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "If she refuses, there's coercion and an implied threat to the child's well-being."

Or she may have said yes.

Brittany and Easley knew each other well. Easley met Tina Smith online over the summer and moved into her house with Brittany in October.

Brittany's MySpace profile mentions the pair exercising together and watching movies.

Adolescents are more likely to comply with someone whom they see as an authority figure, said Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia and the author of "You and Your Adolescent."

They lack the decision-making skills of adults, and focus on the immediate future.

"Twelve-year-olds are going to be more shortsighted, more impulsive and less likely to think of the risks involved," Steinberg said.

Photos from Brittany's Facebook and MySpace pages show a girl who looks older than 12, wearing eyeliner and fashion sunglasses.

Looks can be misleading, Steinberg said.

"Even if she's physically mature for her age, that has nothing to do with the maturation of the brain," Steinberg said. "We shouldn't be judging this girl's decision-making and competence on the basis of what her physical appearance is."

If Brittany agreed to go with Easley, it doesn't matter to the law, said Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder.

"What we're dealing with is a 12-year-old girl," the chief said.

Brittany isn't old enough to legally agree to do anything with Easley, said Roanoke Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch, who specializes in prosecutions involving children.

"She's still a minor under the eyes of the law," said Ekirch. "She's not of an age to give consent."

Ekirch pointed to a 2008 case that involved a 10-year-old Roanoke girl who ran away with a 22-year-old man and willingly had sex with him.

The man was charged under a law that presumes anyone younger than 13 is incapable of consent, so any sexual intercourse amounts to forcible rape. He was not charged with abduction.

Police grew more concerned Thursday that none of the 500 tips from the public has led to a confirmed sighting of the pair.

"I've been in police work a long time. You can probably tell that in the lines on my face," Lavinder said Thursday. "Not to hear from anybody, not to have any confirmed sightings -- that's a great deal of concern."

The pair had little cash, and Lavinder repeated his belief that someone must be hiding them.

Palm Beach County, Fla., SWAT team deputies dragged a man from a gas station restroom Thursday after a clerk reported he matched Easley's description. The man had overdosed on drugs, said sheriff's spokeswoman Teri Barbera, who praised the clerk for his vigilance.

Lavinder said Easley is about 50 pounds lighter than his original description of 265 pounds. And he could have otherwise changed his appearance.

"He could have shaved," the chief said. "There are wigs available."

As the trail grew cold, Brittany's relatives appeared in front of TV cameras Thursday, the third set of family members connected to the case to plead with Easley to let her go.

"Mr. Easley, I know you don't know me. But sir, please let Brittany come home for Christmas," said Rhonda Blanton, Brittany's aunt.

Lavinder said officers were searching campgrounds and parks. Photos of Brittany and Easley would be posted on billboards "very shortly" in Florida, Alabama, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina, Lavinder said.

Police are getting more help from MySpace and Facebook, which weren't initially cooperating with the investigation, Lavinder said.

Police won't say Tina Smith's cause of death and haven't declared Easley a suspect in her killing.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/270316

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From the Department of Justice

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Maryland Man Indicted for Operating a Child Pornography Online Bulletin Board Case

Resulted from a Two-Year International Investigation Called Operation Nest Egg

WASHINGTON - A federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Md., has indicted George Sell, 68, of Cumberland, Md., for advertising, transporting, receiving and possessing child pornography in connection with his operation of an online bulletin board in which members circulated images of child pornography and links to other child pornography websites.

The indictment, returned on Aug. 30, 2010, and unsealed today, was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein for the District of Maryland; Acting Postal Inspector in Charge Keith A. Fixel of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) - Washington Division; and Special Agent in Charge William Winter of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Office of Homeland Security Investigations.

According to the 10-count indictment, Country Lounge is a secure web-based bulletin board that at various times during the conspiracy was located on servers in Virginia and Texas, which advertised and offered for dissemination pictures and Internet web addresses directing members to secure websites depicting the sexual abuse of minors.  A member could join this group only upon invitation and after approval by the group's administrators.  To obtain access to Country Lounge, a member had to have a log-in username and password.  Members were instructed by a specific set of rules and guidelines on how to post images using Country Lounge in order to avoid detection from law enforcement.  As of August 2008, 142 members belonged to Country Lounge.

The indictment alleges that Sell managed the day-to-day operations of Country Lounge.  From December 2006 to August 2008, Sell allegedly conspired with others to publish notices and advertisements on Country Lounge, seeking and offering to trade and distribute Internet web addresses directing members to websites depicting the sexual abuse of minors.  Sell, along with other co-conspirators, allegedly arranged for and obtained different web host companies to host County Lounge on computer servers maintained by members of the conspiracy, and decided and assigned a hierarchy of administrators and membership levels to Country Lounge members.  Each level of membership contained different duties and responsibilities.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of Sell's home and any other property used to commit the alleged crimes.

Sell faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for conspiracy to advertise child pornography; 20 years in prison for conspiracy to transport child pornography; 20 years in prison on each of the seven counts of receiving child pornography; and 10 years in prison on each of the two counts for possession of child pornography.

The charges announced today are merely accusations, and a defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.

The charges against Sell are a result of “Operation Nest Egg,” an ongoing and joint international investigation led by the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Indiana, USPIS and ICE.  To date, as a result of Operation Nest Egg, more than 80 searches have been conducted in the United States.  In total, more than 50 individuals have been arrested and 40 individuals have been convicted.  The investigation is ongoing.  

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.  Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacy Belf, and CEOS Trial Attorneys Darcy Katzin and Jennifer Toritto Leonardo.  The case was investigated by the USPIS and ICE.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/December/10-crm-1417.html

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