This is why you want a lawyer present in any discussions such as this, false pretenses, FBI questioning you... yeah... "lawyer"
If you are in such a situation you are already in trouble due to power imbalance. In other places where you can't get a lawyer / have friends high up you might as well play along...
The Sixth Amendment guarantees adequate representation. Being accused of a crime by the FBI would qualify as a situation where that representation could be reasonably required if requested by the accused. Arab or not, citizen or not.
I'm neither in the US nor Arabic, but your second sentence sounds very problematic. How does this manifest? A person would say that they would like to speak to a lawyer, and then get ignored? Harassed until they relent?
The bigger issue is that you'll then be paying at least $300/hour for their services. So now you're burning money to have this conversation just so the FBI can fantasize about being heroes.
Don't talk to the police without an attorney is good baseline advice, but also misses the mark in many ways. Any way you look at it, getting into government crosshairs (whether it's merely civil questioning or a literal gunsight while being used for target practice) is a perverse reverse lottery that survives because of regressive politics and the just world fallacy. And this won't change until there is reform that fully compensates suspects/witnesses/etc for their time, expenses, and other damages incurred as a result of erroneous law enforcement.
FWIW as much as I hate the term, having a relationship with an attorney that you could call for urgent representation is a form of privilege.
"call a layer" doesn't just suppose you have their phone number, but that you have the on a retainer, because without being arrested, there is no emergency representation procedure for you.
edit I'm laughing at the impracticality of it all, but it's unhelpful, here is the deal : if really you think it's lawyer time, call a random lawyer of your family or business, anybody with a bar exam, and they will refer you to a co-worker of their best guess your case is about. And also, if you call right there in front of the police, you have forfeited your client-attorney privilege because you purposefully placed your call in front of a third party (crap, I went cynical again).
If I leave my car unlocked with an iphone on the dashboard and it gets stolen, I made a mistake, but I'm not to blame.
Why? just say you want to call a lawyer and have him present.
Any deal would have to be made with lawyer present, no objections, polite.
And call one anyway first point its possible.
Now, being an informant might be degrading but if you have genuine threats that you can help with, might as well cover all options.
Ok let’s go down this route. You say that and then they hand you a phone. Now what? You’re in an empty room, no internet access, no Yellow Pages nearby. What numbers do you press on the phone? I don’t even know a lawyer, let alone have one’s number memorized. That would really be a “they called your bluff” moment.
Call a friend / wife / parents - hey can you please find me a lawyer and call back - need him at address ...
Then they search and find someone and you shut up until one arrives. (most likely police/fbi will reschedule)
Helps if you actually have a social network, I have quite a few lawyer friends who would be present almost instantly or find someone willing fast.
In the UK we call the Police the filth for good reason. Law enforcement's job is to incriminate you. They are not there to "protect and serve" that is just marketing. That isn't true of every police officer and isn't true of every police force, but it is safest to assume that it is the truth.
If law enforcement are "wanting to chat" that means they are trying to push something on you. You don't tell them anything, you ask for legal representation and the answer to every question should be "no comment". Anything you tell them will be used against you in the court room.
It shouldn't be that way. But unfortunately that is the truth.
You are right, they can’t arrest him... which they didn’t try to do. They did something way worse, which was to put him on the no fly list and strand him out of country.
Avoiding being arrested was not the problem.
This isn’t an investigator trying to get information to bring to court, this is the FBI trying to coerce the guy into being an informant. They don’t care about his actual testimony at this point.
Instead he sent his family to lebannon and flew there himself.
Would have been cheaper just to lawyer up...
Lawyer should be able to help at least track down which agents did this, call bureau to confirm investigation and complain if things are sketchy, help avoid the no fly list or help get you off it... advice...
They are trying to brow beat him into being an informant. Their threat is the no fly list, which they were able to use without needing to go to court.
So why are people saying he should have asked for a lawyer? Sure, I guess, but that doesn’t help this situation at all. Why not suggest he should also eat a healthy breakfast before going to the FBI office? Yes, that is good advice in general, but doesn’t really matter for this situation.
The goal here was coercion via intimidation.
Law enforcement often use tactics like this to convince citizens to voluntarily testify against themselves. It's not fair as the tactic preys on our natural desire to help. But it's important to train ourselves into the mindset that if you are talking with uniformed law enforcement, then you are being interviewed by them.
To whit, if you are being interviewed by law enforcement, your best option is to never answer any of their questions and repeatedly ask to leave. If you are not able to leave then you switch to repeatedly asking for your lawyer.
This isn't something you ought to have to learn in a free and just society, just as you shouldn't have to know the going rate for a police officer in your town.
There is a lot of talk about the disparity of justice in America and how we are not actually so free after all. I believe most of this feels good to say because we know its true, but after we leave the seminar we go back to a standard civilian mindset.
What I mean is that we walk and talk out in the world like America is just and the police will be fair with you; it is only when we sit down and examine the system that we realize intellectually that this is not the case. But this epiphany fails to carry down to the reptile brain once we stand up again.
Changing that "walking around" mindset is the first step of self-defense training. It is necessary when dealing with American law-enforcement.
Although I agree that it ought not to be.