It’s been two weeks since I first wrote about Syaed Ali and a week since I followed up. (Last November Ali detained and interrogated while Buffalo police searched his home and confiscated his possessions—all because he was suspected of harassing Mayor Byron Brown.) The story has since been picked up by other news outlets, but the mayor’s office remains mum: Brown won’t even admit that Ali is accused of harassing him, though Ali insists that’s what his interrogators told him. Buffalo Police won’t say whether or not they’re investigating Ali.

City Court Judge Craig Hannah—an old friend of Byron Brown whom the mayor appointed to the bench just 11 days after taking office in 2006—won’t admit he signed the search warrant that Buffalo Police presented when they ransacked Ali’s house on November 7. But here is a copy of that warrant, and that appears to be Hannah’s signature at the bottom.

On the last page of that document is a makeshift receipt given to Ali’s family by Buffalo Police Detective Anna Mydlarz, who led the raid on Ali’s house and is supposedly in charge of the investigation that Buffalo Police won’t acknowledge. After the jump is a much longer list of items that Ali says Buffalo Police actually took from his home on November 7. It’s coming up on three months, and none of the items have been returned. Nor has Ali been charged with a crime.

Because no one will comment on this case, I have yet to receive answers to these questions:

1. Why bother with a search warrant for a misdemeanor harassment charge? What were police looking for?

2. On what basis was Ali suspected of harassing the mayor? Where is the evidence on which Hannah agreed to sign the search warrant?

3. Even if Ali had done what he is accused of doing—spreading prurient rumors about the mayor’s personal life—does that constitute harassment? Does that justify sending Buffalo Police into his family’s home with what is apparently a flimsy warrant to seize his propoerty and his person?

More on this soon.

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