Government Seeks Dismissal: Federal Inmate Saaed Moslem Claims There Was No Arrest Warrant And Valid Indictment

By Milton Allimadi

Photos: Moslem Family|YouTube Screenshots|Wikimedia Commons

In its effort to have a federal prisoner’s petition for release dismissed, the U.S. government has failed to address what may be the most consequential allegation in the case, according to inmate Saaed Moslem and his father, Mehdi Moslem: that there is no arrest warrant and no valid indictment authorizing his imprisonment.

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC), they contend, contains no arrest warrants. Saaed Moslem further claims that forensic evidence shows the indictment and grand-jury records now being relied upon were created or altered after the fact.

Those are among the central contentions in a new filing by Saaed Moslem opposing the government’s motion to dismiss his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

The same issue is at the center of a writ of mandamus filed by Mehdi Moslem, Saaed’s father. The elder Moslem himself served nearly two years in prison and remains on probation after being convicted on the same charges that the Moslems now challenge on the grounds that critical instruments authorizing their arrests, prosecution and imprisonment are allegedly lacking.

Mehdi Moslem claims in his legal argument that he confirmed with law enforcement that there was no warrant to enter his home and no warrant to arrest him or his son in August 2019. He repeatedly states that no warrants were found in the National Crime Information Center.

Mehdi Moslem was first arrested at his home when a SWAT team arrived early in the morning and entered his property. Saaed Moslem was arrested at his home that same morning.

Mehdi Moslem’s request for relief in his writ of mandamus, based on the alleged lack of arrest warrants, was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The Court did not address the fact that there was never a warrant issued to enter my property and that there was no warrant to arrest me,” he said. He said the court has access to NCIC and could have easily confirmed that there were no warrants ever issued to arrest him or his son, Saaed.

“No warrant to arrest is not some minor procedural deficiency, and that occurred before, and goes along with, no valid indictment,” he said.

His son, Saaed, who has spent more than five years in federal prison, is not asking the court in this particular proceeding to reconsider the rulings of the trial judge, Cathy Seibel, or to correct his sentence.

He is asking a more fundamental question in the legal filing that the government wants dismissed: What legal document authorizes the warden to keep him imprisoned?

According to Saaed Moslem’s Aug. 1, 2026, filing, the government has not answered that question in its own court papers.

The government moved to dismiss his petition on July 29. But Moslem argues that its response does not produce a certified indictment bearing the signature of a grand-jury foreperson and a “True Bill” endorsement, something he says he has been demanding for years.

Nor, he says, does the government produce the original grand-jury transcript or the AO-190 document that he contends should exist in the court file. Instead, Moslem says, the government filed six pages that “admit and deny not one allegation and attach not one certified record.”

That omission, he argues, is critical because his petition is based on a simple constitutional premise: before the federal government can imprison a person for a felony, there must be a valid indictment returned by a grand jury.

“No person may be imprisoned by the United States for a felony except on the indictment of a majority of a grand jury,” Moslem’s filing states, invoking the Fifth Amendment.

The dispute therefore goes far beyond whether a particular document contains a technical defect. Moslem alleges that the indictment itself did not exist when the government says it did. Only one of the parties can be correct.

According to forensic evidence cited in his petition, the indictment bears a face date of July 30, 2019, but its PDF metadata allegedly shows that the file was actually created on Aug. 2, 2019—three days after its purported filing date. The document was allegedly modified again on Dec. 15, 2025.

Moslem also alleges that the purported transcript of the grand-jury proceeding was not created until April 28, 2021—approximately 21 months after the July 2019 proceeding it purports to record.

He further cites a witness who, he says, inspected the clerk’s file and found no original signed true bill, no AO-190 and no original grand-jury transcript. Moslem argues that these are precisely the allegations the government must answer before his petition can simply be dismissed.

The U.S. Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons and Michael Leo Ivory, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, did not respond to detailed questions from Black Star News sent via email concerning Saaed Moslem’s allegations about the arrest warrant, the indictment and the grand-jury transcripts.

All were also asked about Mr. Moslem’s allegations of possible retaliation.

Saaed Moslem’s filing puts the issue bluntly: “If the warden of FCI McKean possessed lawful authority to detain him, she would have produced it in minutes,” the petition states. “If a valid indictment existed, the United States Attorney would have attached it to the motion now before the court in the time it takes to walk to a copier.”

“Neither happened. It has never happened,” it states.

Moslem argues that the government’s failure to produce the original documents is especially significant because his petition was brought under Section 2241 to challenge the authority of his current custodian to continue holding him—rather than the underlying conviction itself.

“This is why this is a 2241 petition,” his filing states. “Petitioner asked his custodian for the instruments that authorize his imprisonment—the judgment and commitment order committing him to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, and the indictment on which any such judgment must rest.”

His argument is that the Bureau of Prisons’ authority is derivative. The Bureau does not independently acquire the power to imprison someone. Its authority flows from a judgment and commitment order, which, in turn, must rest on a constitutionally valid charging instrument.

Moslem, in his filing, describes the chain this way: “Indictment, conviction, signed and entered judgment, commitment to the Bureau—is the entire warrant for holding a federal prisoner.”

“Break any link and the Bureau is not a jailer; it is simply a party detaining a citizen,” the filing adds.

He says these are not obscure historical documents buried somewhere in a federal archive. “They are the documents a warden must have to open a cell.”

Moslem filed his current petition on May 16, 2026, while incarcerated at FCI McKean. On May 20, AUSA Ivory entered an appearance. On May 27, the court ordered the government to answer.

Moslem says that instead of addressing his central allegations concerning the existence and authenticity of the indictment and grand-jury records, the government’s response ultimately sought dismissal without providing the documents he demanded. His Aug. 1 opposition argues that the government has not said that an original, wet-ink indictment exists, has not produced one and has not explained why the alleged original documents cannot be produced.

“On the single question this case presents, the United States has said nothing at all—and then asked this court to presume the rest,” Moslem’s filing states. The filing argues that this is particularly significant under the habeas rules, which require the respondent to address the allegations and certify the true cause of the detention.

Moslem’s petition raises another troubling allegation: that he was retaliated against after demanding that the government produce the indictment. Fourteen days after his May 16 filing, on May 28, Lt. D. LeBlanc issued incident report No. 4311330 accusing Moslem of “threatening bodily harm.”

Moslem was placed in the special housing unit. He points out that during more than five years of imprisonment he had no disciplinary history involving violence and was not convicted of a violent offense. His underlying federal conviction concerns financial crimes.

On June 23, DHO Zeher found that Moslem had committed the charged acts and imposed 15 days of disciplinary segregation, six months’ loss of commissary privileges and forfeiture of 27 days of good-conduct time.

In July, Moslem was transferred out of FCI McKean and outside the district to USP Lewisburg, where he remained for approximately three weeks. Moslem believes the disciplinary proceeding and transfers were retaliation for his legal filings and his demand that the government produce the indictment.

From Lewisburg, he was again transferred, this time to FCI Berlin, in Berlin, Massachusetts.

He does not ask the court in the present proceeding to reverse those disciplinary actions, he says. Instead, he asks for release.

“Finally, the court should note what happened fourteen days after petitioner asked the question,” his filing states. “A single officer, with no witness and no recording, charged him with threatening staff; he was put in segregation and moved out of this district.”

“Petitioner does not ask this court to undo any of that. He asks for one thing, and only one thing: release.”

In seeking dismissal, the government cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Cotton.

Moslem argues that Cotton has little bearing on his case because, unlike his allegation, the indictment in Cotton unquestionably existed.

In Cotton, a grand jury had indicted the defendants on drug-conspiracy charges. After their convictions, the district court imposed enhanced sentences based on a 50-gram drug quantity that had not been alleged in the indictment or submitted to the petit jury. The Supreme Court ultimately held that the omission did not require reversal because the defendants had failed to object and the error did not satisfy the applicable plain-error standard.

But Moslem argues that Cotton “presupposes an indictment.” That distinction, he contends, is decisive.

“A document cannot be ‘defective’ if it does not exist, and one cannot amend a nullity,” his filing states, referring to his own case.

In other words, Cotton concerned the consequences of an existing indictment containing an alleged defect. Moslem’s claim is fundamentally different: that no valid indictment existed in the first place.

“The absence of an arrest warrant, combined with the missing wet-ink indictment, missing AO-190, missing original transcript, and missing judgment-and-commitment chain, leaves a shocking question,” the elder Moslem, Mehdi, said. “How were my son Saaed and I prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned when the most basic documents that authorize a felony case and federal detention cannot be produced?”

He echoed the statements in Saaed’s court filing:

“If a valid original indictment existed, it could have been certified and produced long ago. If a lawful arrest warrant existed, it could have been produced. Instead, every effort to obtain these records has been denied, ignored, or pushed aside while the case continues to stand and the damage to this family continues.”

Saaed Moslem’s current challenge is part of a broader series of filings he has made concerning his prosecution and conviction in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

He was convicted on June 3, 2021, and sentenced to 96 months. His projected release date is Dec. 8, 2027.

In earlier filings, Moslem has alleged that his conviction was procured through fabricated or altered evidence and has challenged the authenticity of court records surrounding his case.

Among those allegations is a dispute over a May 2021 proceeding. Moslem has pointed to inconsistencies involving transcripts and the identities of court reporters. He has also alleged that Judge Seibel made contradictory statements concerning the date of a critical proceeding, initially referring to May 18, 2021, and later stating that the proceeding actually occurred on May 12.

Moslem has separately challenged the statute of limitations applicable to the alleged conspiracy, arguing that it ended in December 2012 while the indictment bears a July 30, 2019, date.

He has also raised arguments concerning the government’s alleged use of the “right-to-control” theory, the treatment of loan proceeds and tax losses, and evidence that he says demonstrated that loans were substantially over-collateralized.

Those issues are broader than the narrow question now presented by his Section 2241 petition.

The immediate issue, Saaed Moslem insists, is simpler. His father, Mehdi Moslem, puts the question even more fundamentally:

“Without a warrant to arrest, how did it even progress to indictment? There was no warrant to enter our homes or to arrest us, and there was no valid indictment.”

Moslem’s filing argues that the Fifth Amendment’s grand-jury requirement is not a technical procedural rule that can simply be waived away when the government cannot produce the charging instrument.

“The right to have the grand jury make the charge on its own judgment is a substantial right which cannot be taken away,” his petition states.

“It stands between the executive and a citizen’s liberty, and it is the executive that holds petitioner today.”

Moslem argues that the government cannot cure the alleged absence of an indictment by pointing to the subsequent conviction and sentence because those proceedings, in his view, depend upon the existence of a valid charging instrument in the first place.

His petition asks the court whether the warden has lawful authority to hold him today.

“The question is not whether the sentencing court erred,” the petition states. “It is whether this warden can show the paper that lets her keep him.”

If the government can produce the arrest warrant, the original indictment and the underlying grand-jury records, Moslem’s central claim could presumably be tested against those documents.

But his Aug. 1,  filing argues that the government has instead asked the court to dismiss his petition without addressing the allegations that those documents do not exist in their original form.

That leaves the court with a striking question at the center of the Moslems’ case: If an arrest warrant and indictment exist, why hasn’t the government produced them?

The first in a series examining the case against Saaed and Mehdi Moslem.