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By Matthew Russell Lee, Periscope video, II III

SDNY COURTHOUSE, August 23 – A three defendant passport fraud scheme that Inner City Press began covering in February 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York courtroom of Judge Jed Rakoff reached a peak on May 23, 2019 when Aboubarcari Wague was accompanied by at least 48 supporters in asking for sentencing to a halfway house, not jail.

   Judge Rakoff retired to his chambers to see what he could do. The courtroom remained almost silent, with five people in most bench rows and up to eight people in one. Judge Rakoff emerged with said he'd learned that the technical term for halfway house is "residential re-entry center." He agreed to Wague's request for a halfway house three days a week, until 180 days are served. He said this might lead to more rather than less general deterrence, since community members would see Wague checking himself back in, for more than a year.

  Like his co-defendants Malamin Jagana whom Inner City Press covered and Mahamadou Jabbi, Wague is from The Gambia. His sentencing submission recounts him returning to Banjul for high school, then New York requiring him to re-do the year. He drove a cab to support relatives.

  On the other hand he urged a woman he had dated, Binta Touray, to lie and tell law enforcement officials that she did not know him. Judge Rakoff referred to false grand jury testimony, before agreeing to the halfway house. At the end Wague's supporters, seemingly largely from the Harlem Community Islamic Center, filed out quietly.

Jump cut to August 23 when Jabbi was before Judge Rakoff on a Violation of Supervised Release, described as his third. He fled from the police, and tried to use the Whizzinator to evade drug testing - or a Judge Rakoff put it, commit a fraud on the court.

  Surprisingly the Assistant US Attorney said her Office had agreed to support release on bail for Jabbi, since he self-surrendered. Judge Rakoff did not accede to this joint request, and ordered Jabbi detained. There will be a September 14th hearing at 2 pm, amid a trial before Judge Rakoff.

The case is US v. Jabbi, et al., 18-cr-676 (Rakoff)

Further background: Back on February 28 before his now begun trial for US passport fraud, Malamin Jagana asked U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff to modify his bail to allow a trip to Gambia. His reason was humanitarian: to attend a ceremony with his wife who lives there for their baby who died in a miscarriage a year ago. As reported that day by Inner City Press, the only media present for the proceeding, his lawyer called the ceremony and the father's attendance a cultural requirement. The government opposed Jagana's trip, referring not to Gambia but to Africa as if it were a county: "He has connection to Africa... His wife lives in Africa." SDNY Judge Rakoff did not go "Africa Is A Country" but on risk of flight agreed, saying while "sympathetic to this tragic event... I don't think the risk of him not returning is anything other than huge. So the application is denied." On April 1, again with Inner City Press the only media in the courtroom as the trial in fact begun, Agent Nieves was questioned in several rounds about Jagana's passport moves through his and his brother's apartment at 31 Mount Hope Place in The Bronx, the claim of passport loss on a train in Europe as well as after soccer practice or "training" by Yankee Stadium, and a bag full of Gambian passports and certificates of good behavior. We'll have more on this.

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