[Imc] Fw: [gangbox] Fwd : MORE ON FBI HARASSMENT OF ARAB AMERICANS

[david johnson]

-----Original Message-----
From: The Infamous Vinnie Gangbox <gangbox at excite.com>
To: gangbox at yahoogroups.com <gangbox at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Friday, November 02, 2001 6:03 AM
Subject: [gangbox] Fwd : MORE ON FBI HARASSMENT OF ARAB AMERICANS


from the LONDON INDEPENDENT :

Independent. 2 November 2001. Foreigners are shackled, then jailed and 
denied their rights in FBI crackdown. 

When the FBI came for Al-Badr al-Hazmi in the early hours of 12 
September at his home in San Antonio, Texas, it thought that it had hit 
the jackpot in its burgeoning anti-terror investigation. 

The softly spoken Saudi radiologist had booked five tickets on a flight 
from San Antonio to San Diego through the online service Travelocity ? a 
pattern of behaviour similar to the suicide hijackers who struck New 
York and Washington the day before. 

San Antonio appeared to be a jumping-off point for two other suspects 
taken into custody after they were caught with box-cutters and large 
amounts of cash on an Amtrak train, suggesting that Dr al-Hazmi might 
have been part of a local terrorist cell. He also had a history of large 
money transfers from the Middle East. And, most promising of all, he 
shared a surname with two of the men who perished in the 11 September 
onslaught. 

The trouble was, none of it added up to anything. 

Al-Hazmi is one of the most common names in Saudi Arabia. The plane 
tickets were for Dr al-Hazmi and his family to attend a medical 
conference. He had never heard of Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader 
of the 11 September attacks, or the two men arrested on the train. And 
the big money transfer was funding for Dr al-Hazmi's medical residency 
at the University of Texas Health Science Centre. 

A simple misunderstanding, one might think, but the story turned out to 
be far from simple. 

Dr al-Hazmi was taken into custody, shackled, flown to New York and held 
in solitary confinement in a Manhattan correction centre a short 
distance from the World Trade Centre. For six days he had no access to a 
lawyer, and his attorney in San Antonio said she was literally unable to 
find out where he was. For 12 days he had no opportunity to learn what 
the case against him was, or to answer it. When he did finally come face 
to face with FBI interrogators, it took less than 24 hours to clear his 
name and obtain his release. 

He was one of the lucky ones. 

More than seven weeks after the attacks, the Justice Department says it 
has taken about 1,100 people into custody but almost nothing is known 
about who they are, why they have been detained, what charges, if any, 
have been filed, and how many of them have been cleared and released. 
One man has died in custody, in New Jersey, and others are being held 
indefinitely on immigration violations. 

While about a dozen detainees appear to have some link to the terror 
attacks, almost nothing is known about the rest except that they are all 
foreigners. Court proceedings have been sealed in many cases, making it 
almost impossible to find out why they are in detention and what access 
they have had to lawyers and consular officials. 

The veil of secrecy being maintained by the Attorney General, John 
Ashcroft, has appalled civil liberties activists and is now starting to 
cause widespread concern among members of Congress. 

Yesterday, a group of Democratic senators including Patrick Leahy, the 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to Mr Ashcroft asking 
him to release the names of those held and the reason for their 
detention. 

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, one of the signatories, said: "To offer no 
information on these people, why they are locked up and what access they 
have to lawyers doesn't 
seem consistent with any law or provision that I'm aware of." Senator 
Feingold is deeply concerned that innocent people might be held 
needlessly and in possible violation of the Bill of Rights. 

The scanty reports to have surfaced about detainees are not encouraging. 

Some are said to have been beaten -- either by their guards or by fellow 
prisoners, with the guards looking on. In at least one case, a detainee 
appeared in court with fresh bruises clearly visible. 

A Saudi Arabian student, Yazeed al-Salmi, reported that he spent 17 days 
in custody in San Diego, Oklahoma and New York despite being told early 
on that he was not a suspect. He said he was denied contact with his 
family, held in solitary confinement, prevented from washing or brushing 
his teeth and repeatedly humiliated by his guards. "They don't call you 
by name," he said of his time in Manhattan, "they call you 'f****** 
terrorist'." 

In many cases, the immigration violations justifying the detentions have 
been so minor that in the past they would have been dealt with by 
exchange of letter. For example, Ali Maqtari, a Yemeni citizen married 
to an American was detained on 12 September on the grounds that there 
was a 10-day gap between the expiry of his tourist visa and the 
beginning of his marriage visa. He remains in custody in a Tennessee 
jail. 

Dr al-Hazmi told The New York Times: "I would suggest that Americans 
don't rely on the FBI." 










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