United States v. Sattar
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
272 F. Supp. 2d 348 (2003)
Sheikh Abdel Rahman, imprisoned leader of the designated terrorist Islamic Group, communicated with active IG leaders Ahmed Sattar and Yassir Al-Sirri (defendants) through his attorney Lynne Stewart and interpreter Mohammed Yousry, with Sattar and Al-Sirri relaying messages via three-way phone calls. The government charged the defendants with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization based on their use of phones to pass messages and their roles akin to personnel, and Sattar and Stewart moved to dismiss, arguing the statute was unconstitutionally vague as applied to their conduct.
Whether a federal statute prohibiting material support to a foreign terrorist organization is unconstitutionally vague as applied to defendants who used telephones to relay messages on the organization's behalf, where the government could not consistently define what conduct the statute actually prohibited.