Today federal judge Leonie M. Brinkema reversed a US magistrate’s misguided decision to release Masoud Ahmad Khan, one of 11 Muslims arrested for alleged connections to Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terror gang: Judge Orders Md. Terror Suspect Held. Amazingly, the same idiot magistrate—what the hell is wrong with this fool?— today ordered the release of four other members of this group, including Randall “Ismail” Royer.

A few minutes after the ruling that Masoud Ahmad Khan should remain in custody, the magistrate ordered and then delayed the supervised release of four other members of a group of 11 men who prosecutors said wanted to join an organization that wants to drive India from Kashmir.

The Justice Department said it would immediately appeal the releases, setting up more legal confrontations over the rights of defendants in U.S. courts and the government’s war on international terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she was convinced that Khan, 31, was a risk to flee prosecution because his family has property in Pakistan and he has traveled extensively in the past. Prosecutors say he traveled to a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba camp in Pakistan shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The FBI also found assault weapons, shotguns and other firearms and a document called “The Terrorist’s Handbook” — it contains instructions on making explosives and dangerous chemicals — when agents in May searched Khan’s home in Gaithersburg, Md.

That was sufficient to make Khan a danger to the community, Brinkema said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg also said that Khan and the others were told repeatedly by a Muslim spiritual adviser, identified only as “unindicted coconspirator No. 1” in court documents, that American soldiers could be attacked as part of a “jihad” and that the United States was Islam’s greatest enemy.

“What this is about is people who wanted to die as martyrs,” Kromberg said.

UPDATE: Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is also presiding over the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, which may explain why she isn’t letting that stupid release order stand.

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