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Libby Case May Aid Hamas Suspect

An alleged Hamas operative is likely to be among the first criminal defendants to try to capitalize on President Bush's commutation of the 2 1/2 year prison sentence imposed on a former White House aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., for obstructing a CIA leak investigation. Mohammed Salah, 57, is scheduled to be sentenced by a federal judge in Chicago next week on one count of obstruction of justice. In February, a jury convicted Salah and a co-defendant, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, of obstruction, but acquitted the pair of a far more serious charge of racketeering conspiracy in support of Hamas's terrorist campaigns in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

"What the president said about Mr. Libby applies in spades to the case of Mohammed Salah," Salah's defense attorney, Michael Deutsch, told The New York Sun yesterday. "We'll definitely be bringing it up to the judge. … It's going to be a real test, a first early test of whether we're a nation of laws or a nation of men."

Does the Commutitator not realize that everything he does has a domino affect? No, because he's so wrapped up in his tiny little sewer of a world that no, he doesn't realize that.