Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer and.
I'm Steve Drissin.
In the wake of nine to eleven, keeping America safe was everyone's priority. But what happens when an innocent man gets accused of terrorism based on a false confession. Today's case includes one of the most outlandish confessions I've ever heard, a thousand pole vaulting terrorists, all dressed up like ninja turtles. It's a story that sounds like the punchline of a joke instead of the path to a conviction. But for US citizen Hamid Hyatt, the verdict was no joke at all.
Usually we start each episode by telling you about a crime, but in today's story, there was both a crime on a scale we've never seen before and no crime at all. You see, this case took place right after the horrific nine to eleven attacks. Thousands of Americans had died, and pressure was building on our government to prevent more attacks. Make no mistake, there was a lot of good police work done to keep us all safe, but sometimes fear
started to override good decision making. Some law enforcement efforts became driven by panic, and even prejudice, not proof. This story is one of the times we got it wrong. In two thousand and five, California native and US citizen Hamid Hyatt was accused of being part of a homegrown terrorist sleeper cell. Years later, the government admitted that no such sleeper cell ever existed, but Hamid had falsely confessed. He spent more than a decade in prison before being cleared.
As prosecutors prepare for trial, they review the evidence that the FBI agents obtained in the case, and they look at the interrogation and tapes, and you have to wonder what the prosecutors in this case were thinking when they saw these tapes. What were they thinking when the corroboration of this case was so thin.
Hamed is one of the first post nine to eleven terrorism defendants to be exonerated, and he probably won't be the last. His story is a caution to us all when we're talking about our national security, there's nothing more important than getting it right. Hamid's story takes place in Lodi, California, a medium sized town halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Lodi's downtown looks like the set of an old western,
complete with a train depot from gold Rush days. But if you go south a mile, you'll find a large Pakistani American community where families wear traditional clothing and center their lives around the local mosque. We'll get to Lodi in a minute, but our story starts in Oregon. That's where FBI agents traveled in October two thousand and one looking for a suspected terrorist named Nasim Khan. The Nasm Khan they've found was a twenty eight year old convenience
store employee. The FBI quickly realized this guy had nothing to do with terrorism. He simply had the same name as their suspect. But with the FBI at his door, Nasim smelled an opportunity. He gave the agents the biggest tip he could conjure up. He claimed to have seen i'm in al Zawahiri, one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, at a mosque in Lodi, California.
It's ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous that Osama bin Lan's number two person would make it into the United States without detection, and of all places, settle in Lode Eye, California.
The FBI, to its credit, didn't believe Nassem. They figured out soon enough that he had a reputation for lying. Even his own mother later called Nassim a bag full of lies, air and deceit. But this was a month after nine to eleven, and the government was desperate to recruit informants who could infiltrate Muslim American communities and expose any sleeper cells. Somehow, they decided Nasim was their guy. Being hired as an informant was a pretty big deal
for Nassim. He went from working in a convenience store to getting a cool FBI nickname Wildcat. He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the US government payroll. The FEDS even paid for his car washes. In exchange, they asked him to target the Lodi, California community. By early two thousand and two, Nasim wormed his way into Lowdei's Pakistani neighborhoods. He started befriending people looking for any information the FBI might consider useful, and pretty soon Nasine began
focusing on the Hyatt family, especially nineteen year old Hamid. Now, the Hyatt family was well known in Lodi. They had no history of political involvement or extremism whatsoever. Hahmed's dad, Umer, was the local ice cream truck driver.
The pairing of Nassim and Hahmed was a strange pairing from the get go. Nassim was ten years older than Hamid and Hamid nineteen or so at the time, acted much more immaturely than his age. He had suffered a terrible batt of meningitis years earlier, which left him cognitively and physically slower.
As a child, Hamad had split his time between his home in the US and his relative's home in Pakistan. Because of all the travel, he'd only finished elementary school, and he didn't have many friends in the States. So when Nassim, the informant, befriended him, Hamed couldn't believe his luck.
Nassim was paying attention to Hamid, and very few people in the community in lord I paid much attention to Hamid.
Nassim was older, he had a fancy car, and apparently endless money. This is the guy who wanted to chat up Hamed. Hamed was in Nasim Andhmaed became friends, or at least so Hamid thought. Over the next year or two, Nasim and Hahmed started having hours of phone conversations that Nassim was secretly recording. On those calls, Nassim portrayed himself as an extremist and told Hamed he'd been involved in
jihadi activities for years. Pretty Soon, hapless Hamed started trying to impress Nasim by making up fake stories about his own exploits. Once Hamed said he participated in a Taliban attack, another time he claimed he'd been held in a Pakistani jail. And when Nasim said that he wanted to go to a terrorist training camp, Hamed said that sounded cool. Fast forward a year to two thousand and three, twenty one, and his parents take him to Pakistan to find a
bride for Nasim. This trip was a chance to up the ante to bully Hamid into actually going to a terrorist training camp. He starts telling Hamed that he's going to come to Pakistan himself and force Hamed into jihadi training, but Hamid refuses. He fends Nasim off with one excuse after another. It's too hot to go to a training camp, it's too difficult, I need to stay with my sick mother.
It's pretty obvious Hamed has zero interest in becoming a terrorist. Finally, he straight out tells Nasim he's never going to a camp. It was their last phone call. Hamed gets married in Pakistan and ends up staying there for two years until June two thousand and five, when he decides to go back to the United States. He boards a plane in Pakistan.
With his whole family, but the plane gets.
Diverted to Tokyo because it turns out Hamed is on the no fly list. The whole Hyatt family is ushered off the plane and the FBI questions them about why they were overseas and who they were with. They even ask if the men Hamad was hanging out with had facial hair. Eventually, the family is allowed to get back on the plane and fly to California, but a day or two later, the FBI shows up again at the Hyatt family home and brings Hamad in to the Sacramento
office for more questioning. Now, let's step back for a minute. By June two thousand and five, there'd been a three year multi agency Federal Terrorism Task Force investigation that revolved around Nasim Khan and his stories. None of Nassm's claims yielded any real information about terrorism. Despite all the money he'd been paid, so by mid two thousand and five, the FBI was feeling pressure to show results in the worst way, and they got results from the Hyatt family in the worst way.
Ahmad's interrogation begins on June third, two thousand and five, at about eleven thirty in the morning, and it would go on for hours and hours before the agents turned on the video cameras.
They start taping at five o'clock in the afternoon. You can see skinny little Hamed, very nervous, sitting in a chair that's pushed against the wall of a small windowless room. He's facing two FBI agents who are staring him down.
The policy of the FBI at this time was that the decision to record interrogations was left in the discretion of agents, so it was unusual that they would record these interrogations. But thank god they did, because otherwise we wouldn't have the record that we do have about how at least some of Hamid's interrogation went down.
As soon as the tape's rolling. The agents accuse Hamid of spending between three and six months at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, and then come to lies. First, they say he failed a polygraph that he apparently took earlier that day. Second, they claim to have satellite photographs of a camp, implying Hamid's in those photos. Neither was true, and then the agents offer him help. As long as he talks over and over and over, they promise that
they're there to help him. Hamid looks desperate to please these guys. He says, he wants to cooperate for my country.
From our country are doing anything, you know, because you know these guys are.
Hunting our country about well, I appreciate that.
I mean it's important because you.
Know every day in the movie sees her. You know, our troops Erooklyn.
They're very hard for you know, making peace in the whole world in front.
While they're making peace, they're making peace for us so we can live together, all of us. Yeah, And what do they do with these camps.
What they're doing is to teaching people out to how to kill American of course, right, that's what.
The camps are all about.
The interrogation goes on for hours into the night, until Hamid starts breaking. He tells the agents he did go to a camp in Pakistan for several months, but his story makes no sense.
It's laughable.
They ask him when he'd gone to the camp. At first Hamad said it was during the hot season, but then he says it was during the cold season. When they ask him to describe the camp, Hammad's answer is just pathetic. He says the whole place had only four weapons in it, a shotgun, two pistols, and a machine gun.
He said the only weapon that he had handled was actually a pistol, and he'd only shot it three or four times. What kind of training is that?
The agents ask comed where the camp was, and he keeps switching his story there too. First it was in rural Afghanistan, then it was in rural path Pakistan.
You're all over the map here, and you're not helping yourself out it by doing that, you know, Okay, when one minute you're saying Northwest Frontier, next minute you're saying cash, you're saying where this building was? Which city was it?
Yes, yeah, I'll say about a court.
It's not that you will say you know where it is, you know where the building is, Tell me where was it? About a gourd and the BFP in NWFP.
And calling Coort and of course remember Hammad had said none of this to Nassin Khan, despite years of recorded phone calls. Instead, he told Nasim he'd never go to a training camp. It's only after this interrogation that Hamad starts saying whatever he thinks the agents want to hear, and piece by piece, the agents feed him nearly all the information in his confession, down to the types of buildings he was supposedly going to attack in the United States.
There are certain kinds of targets that you know, are are good targets.
You know, if you're going.
To be worth your salt as a gati.
You know about his targets.
Buildings and I'll say buildings. What kind of doings you take your babys you know, okay, financial buildings are private buildings, commercial buildings, think.
Of the United's commercial artics and those kind of buildings.
I see, all right, you're not yeah, but I'm not sure about the buildings you guys are talking about the big one that will say yeah, finance, I'll take What else?
What else did they tell you about Hoskins was.
Maybe Hammed's confession is not very believable, so the FBI needs corroboration. While those agents are questioning Hamid, other agents bring in his dad, Umer, the ice cream truck driver, and start questioning him too. They tell Umer that Hamed admitted going to a training camp in Pakistan, and they start pressuring Umer to say he also went to visit Hamed, just like a parent would check out his kids college. Eventually, Umer agrees that he had gone to visit Homed, but
his story is totally wild. Hamid had described a rural camp in a forested area, but Umer says the camp's in rawal Pindi, a two million persons city. And Umer's description well, he says he saw one thousand fighters at this camp and they're all in a huge underground basement practicing pole vaulting.
Do you know how high a ceiling has to be in order.
To pull vault?
I'll take shit you don't do in a basement for five hundred alex. And it gets even crazier because, according to Umer, those pole vaulters are dressed up like Ninja turtles. Umer later explained that he lifted this story from the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles he'd recently seen it on TV. All this goes on and on. Both men keep spinning stories and the agents aren't really getting anywhere. At three am, Hamid starts complaining that his head hurts. He asks to go home and gets in sleep.
You tell me Kashmir, You telling me Afghanistan, Northwest.
Blame it on whatever you want to blame it on.
But what's going up happening tonight? He ran up the rest of you.
Okay, so I'm here tour over.
No, No, you're not leaving here tonight now.
No, I mean tom, I'm going to be here tonight, staying here in that everything you're going, you're a jail and to Jeda. So I'm going to get place to sweep forward there like that.
Instead, the agents arrest him and charge him with lending material support to terrorism. Suddenly, he's facing up to thirty years in prison for his part. Umer's also arrested based on the crazy ninja turtle statement. He's charged with two counts of lying to federal agents. The Hyatt's arrest was a huge news story. Now, some media outlets were skeptical.
They ran stories highlighting the pole vaulting and the ninja turtles and the crazy mismatch between what Hammad and his dad had said, but other media bought it all hook line and sinker. They covered the story as proof that domestic sleeper cells existed.
You throw a word out there, you throw the word terror, you throw the word martyr, you throw the word gihad out into public space, and people will believe almost anything because the fear is so great.
There's a federal trial to get ready for, and the Hyatt family hires lawyers. But while the lawyer that Umer hires is very experienced, Hamed gets a novice. She'd never gone before a jury before. The plan was for her to imitate whatever Umer's lawyer did, but that was no plan at all. The cases were totally different, very different charges, very different confessions. Hamid needed his own defense, but he didn't get one, or at least not a very good one.
I mean, I've had some trial experience in my career. I know my way around a criminal courtroom. We've had contested hearings in our own post conviction cases, and I know more more about false confessions than a lot of other attorneys who practice in this area. But there is no way that I would ever take a case like this. This case required a trial lawyer, and one who had worked with a security clearance and had done cases in federal court against the FBI.
Hammid's lawyer had some of the best false confession experts in her backyard, including doctor Richard Leo at the University of San Francisco, but when Hahmed's trial rolled around in two thousand and six, his lawyer didn't call doctor Leo to testify. Hamed's lawyer also didn't adequately challenge the government's claim that he carried a jihadi prayer in his wallet. Hamed did carry a note a tauiz, a standard Pakistani
Muslim prayer for good health and protection. It was a gift from Hammed's uncle after the meningitis, but Hamid's lawyer didn't clearly explain that the note had nothing to do with terrorism, and the jury was left to think the worst.
I mean, it's a travel prayer. You know, Jews travel with eighteen cents in their front pocket when they go on an airplane.
All right, well, I feel comfortable traveling with you, Steve. You're gott me covered spiritually.
No, I kind of elapsed jewe okay, But people have these prayers with regard to travel, and that's what my understanding of this tawiz was. Yeah, I mean the language that that expert use makes it sound very ominous, but I'm not sure that was the right translation.
Despite a pretty weak defense, Hamid's conviction was far from guaranteed. Even after hearing his confession, The jury still took nine days to reach a decision, but in the end they're verdict guilty. Later it came out that there had been instances of jury misconduct during deliberations. The jury foreman himself had said that if you put all Muslims in the same costume, they all look alike. Umer Hyatt's trial, on the other hand, ended in a mistrial, no verdict at all.
He ended up pleading guilty to some minor customs violations and was released but Hamid. On September tenth, two thousand and seven, Hamed Hyatt was sentenced to twenty four years in prison. It was one day before the sixth anniversary of the nine to eleven attacks. Federal prison is no picnic for anyone, especially not a young muslinman who's been convicted of terrorism. Most inmates are allowed only a limited
number of visits, something like once a week. Hamed was allowed only one visit per year from his family members. His dad, Umer didn't get permission to see him for more than eight years. But even while Hamat endured prison, he grew up for the first time. He was meeting people of different faiths and backgrounds, albeit behind bars, and he began to realize that those things he'd said to impress Naseem about terrorism being cool or toxic. When a
reporter interviewed him in twenty sixteen, Hamad retracted everything. He told the reporter. It was wrong what I said. I totally disagree with myself. I didn't know much then. I wasn't open minded about a lot of stuff.
So Hamid is in prison and he's doing his time, and his case is winding its way through the system. He's losing at every stage. And then Hamid gets a new.
Lawyer, a great lawyer by the name of Dennis Riardon. For those of you who are real true crime junkies, you might remember Dennis Riardon as one of the leading lawyers on the team that freed the West Memphis three.
For us, of course, the important thing about the case is that this was not about just a bad trial. You can have cases like that where someone's rights are violated. We passionately believed and knew, we knew it was an actual innocence case.
So Dennis starts investigating the time that Hamid spent in Pakistan between two thousand and three and two thousand and five. Remember, the government said that during those two years, Hamad went off for three months to a training camp. And what does Dennis discover alibi witnesses, eighteen of them.
They described in great detail his daily routine. He was generally almost every day in the native village, except for the time when he took two trips to ral Pindi with his mother. So there were witnesses from raal Pindi, there were witnesses from the village of Babudi. He had never been out of their site for more than at most a couple of days, and had never attended at camp as the government alleged, for three to six months.
Person after person comes forward to say that when Hahmad was in Pakistan, he was living with family and friends the whole time. There were no three month unexplained absences. He spent his days playing soccer, not training for jihad.
Haman was no terrorist, He was totally innocent.
Dennis prepares an appeal based on these alibis. He's granted a hearing, a chance to make the case for Hamad's innocence. The alibi witnesses testify at the hearing over a live video feed from Pakistan. Dennis also calls that false confession expert to the stand doctor Richard Leo.
And doctor Leo testified that this confession was useless. It wasn't worth the tape that it was recorded on.
And of course, if you look at the interrogation itself, one of the almost humorous aspects of it was that he was painfully thin and hardly looked like someone who had trained for terrorist activities, and in fact gave this description during this marathon interrogation where he's trying very hard to please them and give them answers. Well, I was
in the camp. Did you ever do arms trading? Well, they gave me a rifle once, but it was too heavy for me, so they never gave it to me again, and so what they had me do was peel vegetables in the kitchen.
The media is following all of this. A PBS Frontline episode had been made questioning Hamid's conviction. A written piece in the intercept did the same thing, and while the hearing was going on, an episode of the Netflix series The confession tapes also pointed to Hammid's innocence. His case was attracting supporters, momentum was building fast. So what does the government do. They offer Hamid his freedom, but he's got to plead guilty.
As a lawyer, you're obligated to go to client and say the government is still talking about potentially helping you out if you provide them with information about Pakistan. And he said, I have nothing to provide them with.
Now we've heard the story way too often. As soon as a case starts falling apart, the government offers a deal. It lets prosecutors save face, and it's pretty hard for any defendant to turn down.
But Hamat, he said, I've gone through all of that and I am not going to stand up and say that I did something I didn't do. And we said, you know, we have a very strong case, but there's no way we can guarantee you that it will succeed. And he said, I'm prepared to see this through.
Years ago, he refused to go to a camp when a scene pressured him. Now he refuses to say he went to a camp. He turns down the deal. Instead, he bets that the truth will set him free.
Turns out he was right to take that bet.
You just see before you click on it, there's an order of the District Court, and you know you're talking about ten seconds of absolute terror. And then I clicked on it and the conviction is overturned. I'll admit it.
I wept.
I really did.
On July thirtieth, twenty nineteen, after fourteen years behind bars, hamit Hyatt's conviction was thrown out based on his trial attorney's ineffectiveness. If Hamid's lawyer had called those alibi witnesses, the court found, he would have been acquitted.
So where's Hamid today?
Laura Hamid was freed on August ninth, twenty nineteen, and formally exonerated just a few months ago. On Valentine's Day twenty twenty, the government dismissed all charges against him. He's the first post nine to eleven international terrorism defendant to be officially cleared of any.
Wrongdoing, and his family knew that he had been freed, but they didn't know what was the next step. Family was brought to the Council on American Islamic Relations, not knowing that he would be there, and the video of his mother seeing him for the first time in fourteen years because she was never able to visit him, and then the same with his father, Jeremah Jeremah. It was extraordinary. Everyone wept just watching it.
Since his exoneration, Hamid's been taking life one day at a time. He's living in California, although not in Lodi, and he's reconnecting with his family, including nieces and nephews who were born while he was locked up. But like all exoneries, he's struggling to navigate a world that's really different than the one he was taken from in two thousand and five. When I saw him a few months ago, I asked him if he was okay. He looked at me for a long time and simply said, no, I'm not.
Hamed's got a lot of healing to do. But the good news he's got an enormous number of supporters who believe in him, and Hamid, we're here to say for you too, Hey, Hamed?
Is that you?
Hey?
Laura? Are you doing good?
Good?
What are you up to today?
Not much? Where do you stand these days?
You sand with your family?
Yes, I'm with my family.
Yes.
What's it like to be back with your family after so many years away.
Truly a blessing.
They always believed in you.
My family was there, my legal team was there, almost supported. That was my hope, my star.
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
I just want to go back to school and get my school the Phoneline didn't go to college after that. I hope you'll find a good job.
I see you on social media posting pictures of you with your nieces and nephews.
It's amazing. You've been out what since August, and you're already way better than me at Instagram. So the checks.
And balances in our criminal justice system failed miserably in this case. And I think it's not because these are bad people or they were trying to frame Hamid Hyad and his father. I think it's because they were operating in the panic and fear that everybody in this country was living under in the wake of nine to eleven, And in that context, I think standards for what a good case is sometimes get.
Ignored, Standards start being cut short, and the results is the taking of more innocent life. Right in this case, fourteen years from the life of Hammed Hyad. When Hamad was released, he said I still think this is a dream. I wake up and I still think I'm in prison. I'll never be able to pay back my sisters and brothers, none of my supporters. I'm your servant until the day of judgment. That's the story of Hamed Hyatt. Next week,
join us as we go to South Carolina. We'll take you to a fight for justice that's stuck with Steve his entire career till then. Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and the
team at Signal Company Number one. Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and writing like a mad woman. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nywriter.
And you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
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