Month: September 2024

Source: United States Department of Justice

Director Rachel Rossi of the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) traveled to Kansas this week to engage with stakeholders about the access to justice challenges rural communities face and to discuss innovative solutions. The visit built upon the ongoing work of ATJ to address the rural access to justice gap in the United States.

Director Rossi began by meeting with the Executive Director of Kansas Legal Services, a grantee of the Legal Services Corporation that serves all 105 counties in Kansas, to discuss the importance of civil legal aid, the barriers that low-income Kansans face in addressing their civil legal needs and the operational challenges of providing legal services in rural areas of the state. Director Rossi highlighted various initiatives, including the office’s work to expand and modernize the Federal Government Pro Bono Program — which mobilizes federal government employees to engage in pro bono work, often in partnership with legal service providers, and the online resource developed through the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable to make federal funding opportunities more accessible for legal service providers.

Following her meeting with Kansas Legal Services, Director Rossi met with the Dean of the University of Kansas (KU) School of Law and Directors of the Law School’s Legal Aid Clinic, which offers students the opportunity to represent low-income clients in civil, criminal and juvenile cases under the guidance of supervising attorneys. Director Rossi and KU Law faculty discussed the recruitment and retention issues plaguing public defense and youth defense systems in Kansas. The clinical professors and Dean shared unique insight into current challenges and potential solutions to several access to justice issues in Kansas, focusing on creative recruitment strategies to encourage law students to pursue public interest and public defense careers.

Later in the day, Director Rossi met with the Executive Director and the Director of Special Projects for the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services (BIDS), which oversees Kansas’ 18 regional public defender offices and manages the statewide assigned counsel program, legal services for people in prison, non-capital appellate services and capital defense. Director Rossi shared ATJ’s Public Defense Resource Hub, a digital compilation of federal resources and materials that can be used to support public defense. The meeting included a discussion of caseload and workload standards, the public defense recruitment and retention crisis and the expansion of public defense in Kansas. Following her meeting with BIDS, Director Rossi met with the Federal Public Defender for the District of Kansas, who also serves as the chair of the Defender Services Advisory Group, to discuss issues federal public defenders are facing, implementation of the Report and Recommendations Concerning Access to Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Pretrial Facilities and the innovative defense provided laptop program within the district that ensures discovery access for detained clients.

On Thursday, Sept. 19, Director Rossi met with the Rural Justice Initiative Committee, which was created in 2022 by the Kansas Supreme Court to collect information and data on unmet legal needs and the availability of legal help in rural Kansas and to issue a report and recommendations to address gaps and promote effective solutions. Director Rossi also met with the Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Committee and the Language Access Committee to discuss their programs in rural Kansas and ways in which ATJ can advance access to justice in rural areas. Director Rossi also had the opportunity to meet with a group of state court judges and Kansas Supreme Court justices who serve on these committees to hear their perspective on the role that the judiciary plays in addressing access to justice barriers in the state. She highlighted the work of ATJ to convene all 40 state access to justice commissions quarterly, and the office’s work to expand language access under the leadership of the department-wide language access coordinator.

Director Rossi next met with the Kansas Farm Bureau (KFB) Legal Foundation, an organization established by the Kansas Farm Bureau to provide legal education, information and research for those directly engaged in agriculture or related enterprises. They discussed the civil legal help provided by the KFB Legal Foundation to agricultural communities, including programs to educate farmers and ranchers about significant legal issues such as farm bankruptcy and probate issues, farm ownership transitions, agricultural land use and zoning and more. They also discussed the need for more attorneys and legal help in rural communities, and how the KFB Legal Foundation recently responded through the launch of a Rural Law Practice Grant to help defray the educational costs of law school and to encourage new attorneys to locate their legal practice in rural Kansas.

To conclude the trip, Director Rossi traveled to Washburn University Law School (Washburn Law), in Topeka, Kansas, to meet with faculty, administrators and students participating in Washburn Law’s Rural Law program that focuses on identifying rural externship and employment opportunities and providing support for students to transition into rural law practice. They discussed the program’s effort to expand the range of accelerated and remote study options to lower the barriers to rural students seeking a degree. This engagement highlighted the perspectives of law students, many with backgrounds from rural communities, on effective solutions to the rural lawyer shortage. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Lebanese national Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi, 60, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to conduct and to cause U.S. persons to conduct unlawful transactions with a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

In May 2018, the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Bazzi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for assisting in, sponsoring and providing financial, material and technological support and financial services to Hizballah. Hizballah is a foreign terrorist organization that, since the 1980s, engaged in numerous terrorist activities, including attacks against American military members, government employees and civilians abroad.

According to the OFAC designation, Bazzi is a key Hizballah financier who has provided millions of dollars to Hizballah over the years, generated from his business activities in Belgium, Lebanon, Iraq and throughout West Africa. As a result of the designation, Bazzi’s interest in any property in the United States were blocked, and all U.S. persons were generally prohibited from transacting business with, or for the benefit of, Bazzi.

Following Bazzi’s designation and according to the court documents, Bazzi and his co-defendant, Talal Chanine, who remains at large in Lebanon, conspired to force or induce an individual located in the United States (U.S. Person) to liquidate their interests in certain real estate assets located in Michigan and covertly transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds of the liquidation out of the United States to Bazzi and Chahine in Lebanon without the required OFAC licenses, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

During recorded communications, Bazzi and Chahine proposed numerous methods to conceal from OFAC and law enforcement officials that Bazzi was both the source and destination of the proceeds of the sale and to create the false appearance that the U.S. Person was conducting legitimate arms-length transactions unrelated to Bazzi and Chahine. For example, Bazzi and Chahine proposed that the funds be transferred through:

• A third party in China as part of a fictitious purchase of restaurant equipment from a Chinese manufacturer;
• A third party in Lebanon as part of a fictitious real estate purchase;
• Chahine’s family members in Kuwait as part of fictitious intra-family loans; and
• As part of a fictitious franchising agreement as payment for the rights to operate a Lebanese-based restaurant chain throughout the United States.

Bazzi was arrested in February 2023 by Romanian law enforcement authorities and subsequently extradited to the Eastern District of New York. The Justice Department thanks the Romanian authorities for their assistance in this matter.

A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date. Bazzi faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. He has also agreed to forfeit the nearly $830,000 that was involved in the illegal transaction, and to be removed from the United States upon completion of his sentence. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the National Security Division, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York and Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of the FBI’s National Security Branch made the announcement.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Francisco J. Navarro, Jonathan P. Lax, Nomi D. Berenson, Claire Kedeshian and Robert M. Pollack for the Eastern District of New York are prosecuting the case with assistance provided by Trial Attorney Charles Kovats of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section and Scott Claffee of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Section. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs assisted with the extradition in this case.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at www.justice.gov/OCDETF.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

The Justice Department yesterday convened its quarterly interagency meeting with Jewish community stakeholders. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland provided remarks with those at the meeting, underscoring the department’s commitment to addressing hate crimes. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division outlined relevant enforcement efforts across the department and highlighted actions to prevent and combat discrimination and hate crimes. Assistant Secretary of Education Catherine Lhamon of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also addressed the attendees and highlighted efforts to ensure safe learning environments at schools, colleges, and universities.

Justice Department leadership, including representatives from the Civil Rights Division, FBI, Community Relations Service, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Privacy & Civil Liberty, and the Office of Public Integrity, heard from participating organizations about hate crimes and incidents, campus safety, and civil rights protections around the election, among other areas. Representatives from other federal government agencies were also in attendance, including Officer Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and representatives from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Combating hate crimes, protecting religious freedom, and addressing claims of discrimination are among the division’s top priorities. Yesterday’s meeting represents the department’s ongoing efforts to engage with organizations and stakeholders on issues affecting Jewish communities.

The department has continued to prosecute hate crimes, including recent cases involving a North Carolina man charged with making antisemitic threats to a rabbi in Georgia; California man who pleaded guilty to shooting two Jewish men, leaving an Los Angeles synagogue; Michigan man convicted and sentenced for conspiring with other members of a white supremacist group, the Base, to victimize Jewish and Black people, including desecrating a Jewish synagogue in Hancock, Michigan, with Neo-Nazi symbols; Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and harassing synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses in Pennsylvania; Indiana man sentenced for sending violent antisemitic threats to the Anti-Defamation League; and the leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a transnational terrorist group for using digital platforms to solicit others to engage in hate crimes and terrorist attacks against immigrants and other groups based on hate-fueled bigotry and white supremacy.

In May, Assistant Attorney General Clarke recognized Jewish Heritage Month and delivered remarks at the annual federal inter-agency Holocaust Remembrance Program.

In March, the department hosted a community safety webinar for Jewish community stakeholders, during which the department released resource documents designed to help the public better understand federal civil rights laws, including laws that prohibit violence and discrimination on the basis of religion and national origin, and protections afforded by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law that prohibits discriminatory land use decisions, and Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in public accommodations.

If you believe that you or someone else experienced religious or national origin discrimination, you can report a civil rights violation online at civilrights.justice.gov. If you believe you are a victim or a witness of a hate crime, you can report it to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or submitting a tip at tips.fbi.gov. Learn more about the department’s work on hate crimes here.