U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has ordered a near total clampdown on a jailed Al Qaeda goon, citing the "high probability" that he might try to order a terrorist attack from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.
Muhanad Mahmoud Al-Farekh was indicted last spring in Brooklyn Federal Court on charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization. Al-Farekh, a U.S. citizen, allegedly participated in terrorist attack planning with Al Qaeda officials in Pakistan in 2007, including a plot involving suicide bombers blowing themselves up in the New York City subway system.
Lynch ordered the special administrative measures for Al-Farekh on Aug. 19. They're similar to the 23-hour-a-day lockdown conditions at the Supermax prison in Colorado. He's also banned from group religious services and his contact with the outside world is severely restricted.
Defense lawyer Sean Maher is seeking a court hearing to overturn the order, arguing that the United Nations has called long-term solitary confinement of prisoners a form of torture.
It was unclear why federal prosecutors in Brooklyn sought the SAMs order only recently.