WASHINGTON—An Iraqi-born Dutch citizen who was extradited from the Netherlands on Saturday made his initial appearance today in federal court in Washington, D.C., to face charges for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to attack Americans based in Iraq, announced Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and Joseph Persichini Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Washington Field Office.

This case represents the first U.S. criminal prosecution arising from terrorist activities taking place in Iraq.

Wesam Al Delaema, a/k/a Wesam Khalaf Chayed Delaeme, was indicted by a grand jury in the District of Columbia in September 2005 and charged with six counts: conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens abroad; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives); conspiracy to maliciously damage or destroy U.S. government property by means of an explosive; possession of a destructive device (explosives) during a crime of violence; conspiracy to possess a destructive device (explosives) during a crime of violence; and teaching or demonstrating the making or use of an explosive with the intent to further a crime of violence.

The indictment alleges that Delaema traveled from the Netherlands to Iraq in October 2003 and, together with a group of co-conspirators calling themselves the “Mujahideen from Fallujah,” declared his intentions to kill Americans in Iraq using explosives. The indictment further alleges that Delaema and his co-conspirators hid explosives in a road in the area of Fallujah, Iraq.

Delaema, 33, was born in Fallujah, Iraq. He was arrested by Dutch law enforcement authorities on May 2, 2005, and he initially faced similar charges in that country. Following his arrest, Dutch law enforcement and prosecution authorities worked cooperatively with the FBI in its investigation of Delaema’s alleged terrorist activities.

In September 2005, the United States filed a formal request with the Netherlands seeking Delaema’s extradition. The extradition request was subsequently granted by a Dutch court and then by the Dutch Ministry of Justice. In December 2006, the extradition request was sustained on appeal in the Netherlands. This past weekend, Delaema was flown to the United States, arrested, and taken into custody by the FBI.

Today in court, Delaema was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

“After a lengthy extradition process, this defendant will now face justice for his efforts in orchestrating and launching roadside bomb attacks against our men and women serving in Iraq. We in the ranks of federal prosecutors are honored to play a role in protecting our military colleagues against such deadly and cowardly attacks,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein.

“We will continue to be vigilant in our efforts to bring to justice anyone who plots terrorist attacks against our citizens at home or abroad. We look forward to working cooperatively with the Dutch authorities in prosecuting this defendant under our criminal laws,” said U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor.

“Today’s announcement of the extradition of Wesam Khalaf Chayed Delaeme to the United States sends a clear message of the FBI’s unwavering dedication to our mission to detect, deter, and bring to justice any individual who conspires to commit terrorist acts against any U.S. citizen either in this country or on foreign soil. Together with the invaluable assistance of the Dutch National Police Agency and the Dutch Government, we were able to accomplish that mission,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Persichini Jr.

The investigation into this matter was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, with assistance from the Dutch National Police Agency and the National Office of the Public Prosecutor in the Netherlands. The Office of International Affairs in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice coordinated the extradition efforts on behalf of the United States.

The prosecutors handling the case are Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gregg Maisel and Matthew Cohen of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and Trial Attorneys Gregg Sofer, Jerome Teresinski, and Marla Tusk of the Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division at the Department of Justice.

If convicted of the charges in the criminal indictment, Delaema faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant violated a criminal law. All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Judge L. T. Senter, Jr. of the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on Friday rejected for the time being a proposed settlement reached between the State Farm insurance company and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on behalf of hundreds of Mississippi policy holders whose claims were denied after Hurricane Katrina. Senter said the parties had not provided enough information to allow the court to conclude that the "proposed settlement establishes a procedure that is fair, just, balanced, or reasonable." Senter was particularly concerned with the wellbeing of "other litigants... who are not members of the proposed class... and their views on the fairness of the proposed settlement," which would bind a "large number of policyholders into the process of binding arbitration" without their assent to the proposal.

The proposed settlement, if ultimately approved, would award $80 million to the 640 named homeowners who filed the lawsuit and would also provide an additional $50 million for approximately 35,000 other homeowners in Mississippi who did not sue State Farm after their claims were denied. The $50 million figure, however, is just a minimum and depending on the number of applicants, could easily reach hundreds of millions. The settlement would also end Hood's investigation into allegations of fraudulent claim denials by State Farm, including allegations that the company pressured its engineers to doctor their reports. Hood has also brought actions against other insurance companies, including Allstate and Nationwide.

Disc jockeys hosting an on-air water-drinking contest should have summoned medical help when a woman complained her head hurt and noted that her belly was so swollen she looked pregnant, said an attorney for a family suing for wrongful death.

Instead, "The talent verbally chastised and otherwise coerced her, exhorting her to remain in the contest by threatening that she would be disqualified if she 'puked,'" according to the lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of 28-year-old Jennifer Lea Strange's family.

The mother of three died Jan. 12, just hours after drinking as much as two gallons of water in the contest to win a video game console. In the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, the family claims the DJs on the "Morning Rave" program on KDND-FM knew of the potential dangers of drinking too much water, yet went ahead with the contest anyway.

"The talent admitted during the broadcast that they should have done more research once various participants, including (Strange), began to report medical symptoms," it said. "Such conduct was despicable and so vile, base or contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by reasonable people."

Strange was one of about 18 contestants who tried to win a Nintendo Wii gaming console by seeing how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. The DJs called the contest "Hold your Wee for a Wii."

"They keep telling me that it's the water. That it will tell my head to hurt and then it will make me puke," Strange said, according to an audio tape of the show.

At one point during the contest, a listener who identified herself as a nurse called in to warn the disc jockeys that the stunt could be fatal.

"Yeah, we're aware of that," one of the DJs responded to the caller's warning, the lawsuit said.

Another DJ said with laugh: "Yeah, they signed releases, so we're not responsible. We're OK."

The family claims Strange never signed a liability waiver. Instead, the form merely granted the station permission to use the contestants' names and photos for promotions, said the family's attorney, Roger Dreyer.

"I guarantee you if there was a waiver of liability they would have produced it," Dreyer said at a news conference.

The Sacramento-area station fired 10 employees after Strange's death.

The lawsuit names as defendants KDND's parent company, Entercom/Sacramento, as well as employees and managers who organized, promoted and participated in the contest.

The radio station would not comment directly about Thursday's lawsuit, Entercom spokesman Charles Sipkins said.

"We reiterate our deepest sympathies and condolences to the Strange family, but we do not comment on pending litigation," he said.

Sipkins said he did not know whether the DJs jockeys had retained their own attorneys.

After several hours of drinking water, Strange relented and accepted the second-place prize, tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert. Her mother, Nina Hulst, found her dead several hours later at the family's home in Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento suburb.

"I want nobody else to have to suffer the pain that our family is suffering," Hulst said at the news conference.

The Federal Communications Commission has joined the investigation into Strange's death at the request of the family's attorneys, spokesman Clyde Ensslin said. He said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was "troubled" by the information in the letter.

If it finds wrongdoing, the FCC could fine the station or deny its license renewal application.

The U.S. Justice Department filed court papers in Cincinnati arguing a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's wiretap program should be dismissed.

The department claims the lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs, is no longer significant because the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program is now being conducted under the supervision of a secret intelligence court, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Justice Department lawyers argued in papers filed with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the suit should be dismissed because it "no longer has any live significance."

The move follows an announcement last week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the program, which had allowed the NSA to monitor calls made between the United States and foreign countries without court approval if one of the parties was determined to be linked to terrorism, is being terminated and replaced by a surveillance program overseen by a secret 11-member court.

Federal authorities arrested a Mississippi man Wednesday for the 1964 kidnapping and deaths of two black men in another reopened civil rights-era case. James Ford Seale, now 71 years old, was originally arrested in 1964 on suspicion of kidnapping two young black men, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who were later found dead in the Mississippi river, but was released due to a lack of evidence after providing information to the FBI.

In 2000, after the Clarion-Ledger reported on the contents of Seale's file, the US Justice Department reopened the case, but the LA Times and later, the Clarion-Ledger reported that Seale had in fact died. Thomas Moore, brother of Charles Moore, had pushed for the case to be reopened again, but authorities hesitated, until the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for the civil rights era deaths of three civil rights workers.

Seale will be arraigned Thursday in Jackson, Mississippi, on kidnapping charges.

The PBSJ Corp. (PBSJ), a design and engineering firm based in Florida, has paid more than $6.4 million to resolve claims that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting false and fraudulent claims to the government, the Justice Department announced.

The settlement arises from a $36 million embezzlement scheme that took place between 1992 and 2005 and was perpetrated by PBSJ’s former Chief Financial Officer and two other employees. The scheme involved shifting funds and fabricating entries in the company’s books and records to cover up the fraud, and resulted in PBSJ’s audited overhead rates being overstated.

The settlement also resolves unrelated issues concerning how PBSJ treated certain indirect costs that also contributed to PBSJ’s audited overhead rates being overstated. The inaccurate overhead rates were submitted to the United States in connection with hundreds of contracts with federal agencies for the purposes of contract qualification, contract negotiation, contract billing, and applicable contract and audit reporting requirements. As a result, PBSJ submitted claims to the United States under federal contracts that were false or fraudulent because the claims relied on and incorporated the overstated overhead rates. More than a dozen federal agencies were affected by the fraud, including the Departments of the Army, Transportation, Interior and Homeland Security.

"Companies that enter into contracts with the government must maintain accounting controls and procedures that ensure that the costs and rates that they submit to the government are accurate," said Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler of the Civil Division.

Previously, three individuals responsible for the embezzlement, CFO William Scott Deloach, Maria Garcia, and Rosario Licata, pleaded guilty on Sept. 28, 2006 in the Southern District of Florida and currently await sentencing. The criminal investigation of the individuals was conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and the FBI, Miami Field Division.

The civil investigation of PBSJ was conducted by the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Transportation, and the Defense Contract Audit Agency.