United States v. Rahmat Abd Hir

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Abd Hir is a forty-three-year-old American citizen. Born in Malaysia, where many of his immediate family members con- tinue to reside, Abd Hir moved to the United States approxi- mately twenty years ago and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past ten years. Abd Hir and his wife, also a United States citizen, have four young children, all of whom were born in this country. Aside from the current charges, Abd Hir has no criminal record and no history of substance abuse.

The charges in this case arise out of Abd Hir’s contacts with his brother, Zulkifli Abd Hir (“Zulkifli”). Zulkifli is an acknowledged member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (“MILF”), a secessionist force operating in the southern Phil- ippines, and an alleged high-ranking member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda affiliated foreign terrorist organization that operates in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Jemaah Islamiyah is suspected of carrying out numerous deadly attacks in Southeast Asia, among them, the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed over 200 people and the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed three people…