NEW YORK (AP) -- An Afghan tribal chief cannot escape trial on federal drug charges just because government agents tricked him into traveling to the United States by promising he could return home, a judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain said the U.S. government acted legally in the 2005 arrest of Bashir Noorzai, who was put on the list of Most Wanted drug kingpins before he was charged with smuggling $50 million worth of heroin into the United States with Taliban support.
Noorzai's lawyer, Ivan Stephan Fisher, said he was disappointed by the ruling. He said Noorzai was eager for his May 19 trial to begin.
``We are working now on what the hardest part of the trial is going to be _ to find a jury that could be fair to an accused who is Muslim and from Afghanistan,'' he said.
Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for prosecutors, said the government had no comment.
The ruling pertained to unusual circumstances in which Noorzai helped the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by providing information and turning over weapons and munitions to U.S. authorities, a fact the government did not contest.
The judge also noted that most of Noorzai's contacts with U.S. officials were cooperative, although he was detained for six days by the United States in 2001 at the Kandahar Airport in Afghanistan.
Noorzai, chief of the Noorzai Tribe and its more than a million members, was told by two U.S. representatives in August 2004 that he would be granted safe passage to and from the United States if he agreed to meet authorities, the judge said.
In April 2005, Noorzai and two of his associates arrived in New York City, where he arrested after he was questioned for 11 days by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in a hotel near the World Trade Center site. The judge noted that he was repeatedly read his Miranda rights during the questioning and he never indicated he did not understand them.
An indictment accused Noorzai and his organization of providing weapons and manpower to the Taliban between 1990 and 2004 in exchange for protection for opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug transportation routes out of the country.
In one instance in 1997, Taliban officials seized a truckload of drugs and discovered the cargo belonged to Noorzai, only to return it ``with personal apologies from Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban,'' according to the indictment.
The Taliban militia ruled Afghanistan until it was toppled by the United States in late 2001. Taliban-led militants are still operating along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border with Pakistan.
Swain said that the promises to Noorzai, ``even if made by authorized officials, were not ones that by their terms negated the possibility of prosecution.''
In a footnote, she wrote that constitutional entitlements to due process focus on a defendant's full opportunity to defend himself. False assurances that he would not be arrested would not compromise his ability to defend himself, she said.
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