By NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter
Chicago -Suntimes
[email protected] Tuesday, June 12, 2012
He spent 600 days in solitary confinement before winning a ruling that put him into the general population at a downtown lockup.
Now, Shaker Masri, a 29-year-old Chicago man charged with plotting to travel to Somalia on a suicide-bombing mission, wants a federal judge to release him on bond.
Attorneys for Masri said on Monday that Masri, arrested in 2010, has spent far too long behind bars. Prosecutors though, urged the court not to release Masri, saying he posed a continuing threat to the public.
Defense lawyers on Monday asked U.S. Judge Sharon Coleman to release Masri under the condition of home confinement, that he be placed on an electronic monitoring device and that his first cousin act as a third-party custodian.
Masri is asking to be on bond until his trial, which had been scheduled for July but was been postponed to September.
“Obviously, in a terrorism-related case, most people don’t get out on bond,” said one of his lawyers, Thomas A. Durkin. “But this case is extraordinary in the sense that most people don’t have to sit and wait for a trial the length of time he has. This is [an] unreasonable delay.”