Thursday, January 15, 2009

Missing a piece...


The sergeant, Haytham Khalil, 34, was charged in November with using a computer without authorization and obtaining information belonging to a federal agency.

According to his guilty plea, Sergeant Khalil, who lives in Brooklyn, borrowed a fellow police officer’s account on Dec. 6, 2007, to obtain access, using a Police Department computer, to a state database called e-Justice. The database permits qualified state and local law enforcement authorities to get access to the terrorist watch list maintained by the F.B.I. and available through the bureau’s National Crime Information Center.

Sergeant Khalil obtained a document from the database that identified a person as being on a terrorist watch list and forwarded it to an acquaintance involved in a custody dispute in Canada, according to the guilty plea.
Follow me here for a second.

The NYPD seargeant (Khalil) was charged with "using a computer without authorization and obtaining information belonging to a federal agency." He pleads guilty just yesterday.

Sergeant Khalil pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger to a misdemeanor, “accessing a computer and as a result exceeding his authority by obtaining information belonging to a department and agency of the United States.”
I don't see where there was any benefit to this plea. Essensially, the plea matches the arrest. So, over a year goes by between the deed and the plea...and Khalil gets nothing beneficial out of it? Sentencing is put off for over three months?

Something here doesn't sound right. One would also have be curious as to why the person targeted by Khalil would be on the "watch list" and what added information he possessed suggesting that his uauthorized inquiry would bear fruit. I doubt Haytham Khalil would run a name for an "acquaintance" just because said name was "Muslim." That would be profiling...