Albuquerque’s Weekly Alibi reports today in their blog on the trial of “Freedom Flyer” Phil Mocek scheduled to begin Tuesday morning:

Phil Mocek’s trial in Bernalillo County Metro Court tomorrow might be the first of its kind in the country. He was arrested after refusing to present identification to the Transportation Security Administration….

Edward Hasbrouck is a consultant to the Identity Project in California…. “We were obviously disturbed to find that Mr. Mocek had been arrested and had been essentially framed on these charges,” Hasbrouck says in an interview with the Alibi.

He adds that the four charges leveled against Mocek are not the real reasons he was arrested. “The real reason he was arrested is that the TSA didn’t like what he was doing,” Hasbrouck says. “The real charge is questioning the illegitimate authority of the TSA. Now, why the local authorities are choosing to put themselves out on a limb, trumping up bogus charges just to keep the TSA [happy] is a question that you’d have to ask the prosecutor in Albuquerque.”

Neither Dan Rislove, the attorney representing the state, nor TSA spokesperson Luis Casanova have yet returned the Alibi’s calls.

Ironically, despite the nationally precedent-setting TSA resistance case about to go to trial, an airport spokesperson told Albuquerque’s KRQE-13 TV news last month that, with respect to TSA “screening” procedures at ABQ,  “We have not seen a lot of resistance locally here.”

We’ll be posting updates on the trial here.  But since no cell phones, laptops, pagers, or other electronic communications devices are allowed anywhere in the courthouse, don’t expect live-blogging or for us to be able to return phone calls or e-mail messages from the courthouse or until the end of each day of the trial.