Opinion ID: 781722
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Count Nineteen

Text: 53 In Count Nineteen, Yousef alone was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 32(b)(3) for placing a bomb on a civil aircraft registered in another country. Specifically, Yousef was charged with planting a bomb on board a Philippine Airlines flight traveling from the Philippines to Japan on December 11, 1994. The aircraft was a civil aircraft registered in the Philippines. 54 There is no dispute that Congress intended § 32(b) to apply to attacks on non-United States-flag aircraft. The statute applies expressly to placing a bomb on aircraft registered in other countries while in flight, no matter where the attack is committed, and provides for jurisdiction over such extraterritorial crimes whenever, inter alia, an offender is afterwards found in the United States. 18 U.S.C. § 32(b). 55 Yousef argues that he was wrongly charged in Count Nineteen because he was brought here against his will when Pakistan transferred him to United States custody for prosecution on charges relating to the World Trade Center bombing and, therefore, he was not found in the United States within the meaning of § 32(b). To support his position, Yousef points out that in another statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1651, Congress differentiates between one who is forcibly brought into the country and one who is found in the United States: Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life. (emphasis supplied). 56 Yousef reasons that if being found in the United States merely requires a defendant's presence here, then the afterwards brought into language of § 1651 would be superfluous. He thus concludes that because he was brought to the United States involuntarily, he was not found in the United States for purposes of § 32(b). 57 Upon examining the persuasive interpretation by other courts of an identical jurisdictional provision in a related statute, see United States v. Rezaq, 134 F.3d 1121, 1130-32, 1143 (D.C.Cir.1998); United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086, 1092 (D.C.Cir.1991), as well as the purpose and plain language of 18 U.S.C. § 32(b), we hold that Yousef was found in the United States within the meaning of § 32(b). 58 In Yunis, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that jurisdiction existed in a situation similar to Yousef's. Yunis, who claimed to be a member of Lebanon's Amal Militia, was indicted for hijacking a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight from Beirut, Lebanon, and destroying it on the ground in Beirut. Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1089. Initially, Yunis was charged with conspiracy, hostage taking, and aircraft damage. Id. After Yunis was indicted, FBI agents lured Yunis to international waters off the coast of Cyprus, where they arrested him on these charges. Yunis then was brought to the United States, where, in a superseding indictment, he was charged with the additional crime of air piracy under the Antihijacking Act, 49 U.S.C.App. § 1472(n) (1988). 20 Id. at 1090. The Court held that jurisdiction properly was established under the afterwards found in the United States language of § 1472(n) because by the time Yunis was charged with air piracy, he was already present in the United States and under arrest on other charges. 21 Id. at 1092; see also United States v. Rezaq, 134 F.3d at 1132 (relying on Yunis to hold that section 1472(n)'s `afterward found in the United States' language did not preclude jurisdiction even though the United States brought Rezaq into its territory against his will). 59 The instant case presents circumstances at least as compelling as those in Yunis for asserting criminal jurisdiction over Yousef. Yousef was already under indictment for his participation in the World Trade Center bombing before he was seized in Pakistan and returned to the United States. 22 Only after he was in the United States awaiting trial for the World Trade Center charges did a grand jury indict him on separate charges relating to the airline bombing plot. 23 By the time Yousef was charged with the crime detailed in Count Nineteen, therefore, he was already lawfully in federal custody in the United States. Accordingly, Yousef was found in the United States, and jurisdiction is proper under 18 U.S.C. § 32(b). 60 Indeed, any other interpretation would contravene the purpose and strain the plain language of § 32(b), which was adopted pursuant to the United States' obligations under the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation, (the Montreal Convention), Sept. 23, 1971, 24 U.S.T. 565, T.I.A.S. No. 7570; see also S. Rep. No. 98-619 at 3682 (1984), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N 3682. 61 The purpose of the Montreal Convention is to ensure that individuals who attack airlines cannot take refuge in a country because its courts lack jurisdiction over someone who committed such an act against a foreign-flag airline in another nation. See 24 U.S.T. at 565, art. 5. Accordingly, the Convention requires States parties to adopt legislation to assert jurisdiction over such an offender whenever an offender is present in the State and the State does not extradite the offender to another State party. Id. Although § 32 uses the words found in instead of present in, we agree with the reasoning of the Yunis court that, in enacting the statute to meet its obligations under the Montreal Convention, Congress intended the statutory term `found in the United States' to parallel the [Montreal] Convention's `present in [a contracting state's] territory,' a phrase [that] does not indicate the voluntariness limitation urged by Yousef. Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1091-92 (applying similar reasoning to analogous statute, 49 U.S.C. § 46502, formerly 49 U.S.C.App. § 1472(n)). Moreover, were we to conclude that the term found in the United States did not permit a United States court to assert jurisdiction over someone present in the country involuntarily, Yousef's extradition to the United States to be prosecuted for the bombing of the World Trade Center — and his resulting detention here — would prevent his prosecution for the later-charged aircraft attacks. Congress could not have intended such an absurd result when it enacted § 32(b). Cf. United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 580, 101 S.Ct. 2524, 69 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981) (absurd results are to be avoided); Adams-Mitchell Co. v. Cambridge Distrib. Co., 189 F.2d 913, 923 (2d Cir.1951) (if such [a] [statutory] interpretation led to absurd results, and thus imputed to Congress an irrational purpose, it should be spurned). 62 Finally, we reject Yousef's argument that the plain meaning of found requires that Yousef have been found in the United States by chance. Although come upon by chance is one possible definition of the verb to find, several other possible definitions of this verb do not incorporate this element of chance or happenstance. See 5 Oxford English Dictionary 922 (2d ed. 1989) (defining find (and its past tense, found) to mean [t]o discover or attain by search or effort ... [to] obtain by searching, as well as [t]o come upon by chance or in the course of events); see also Webster's New Third International Dictionary 851 (1976) (defining find as to secure or obtain (something needed or desirable) by effort or management (parentheses in original)). At most, the term found is ambiguous with respect to the issue of voluntary presence, and this ambiguity should be construed in favor of implementing the purposes of the Montreal Convention that are evident from its text read as a whole. 63 We thus hold that Yousef was found in the United States as required by § 32(b). 64