[Peace-discuss] Fwd: A washingtonpost.com article

[Al Kagan]

FYI

>
>
>  Intense Airport Scrutiny Angers Muslim Travelers
>
>  By Caryle Murphy
>
>   A delegation of 18 Yemeni citizens invited to Washington by the 
>U.S. State Department was held for five hours after arriving at 
>Dulles International Airport while immigration officials questioned 
>and fingerprinted them.
>
>  The Sept. 3 incident, during which one member of the delegation was 
>handcuffed for half an hour, angered the visitors from Yemen, whose 
>government has been a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism.
>
>  "I was in shock. If things are going to continue like this, why 
>should I come to this country?" said Yahya al Habari, 44, a member 
>of Yemen's legislature who had come to meet with senior trade and 
>agriculture officials. Habari, who travels on a diplomatic passport 
>and has been to the United States dozens of times for his business 
>as an importer of U.S. crops, said, "I'd rather import Australian or 
>Canadian wheat and save myself problems."
>
>   Besides businessmen and legislators invited to meetings with top 
>U.S. officials, the Yemeni delegation included cultural figures 
>participating in "Windows on the Cultural Heritage of Yemen," a 
>symposium held Sept. 5 and 6 at the Smithsonian Institution's Freer 
>Gallery of Art. The event was sponsored by the Smithsonian, the 
>State Department, the Yemen Embassy and the American Institute for 
>Yemeni Studies.
>
>  The episode at Dulles is one of many recent cases in which Muslim 
>air travelers have complained of being subjected to lengthy delays 
>and sometimes being questioned by U.S. law enforcement officials for 
>no apparent legitimate reason.
>
>  Last month, two well-known Muslim scholars who live in the United 
>States were questioned for several hours at U.S. airports after 
>traveling abroad. Ali A. Mazrui, 70, a professor at the State 
>University of New York at Binghamton, said he was detained for more 
>than seven hours at Miami International Airport and asked to explain 
>his ideas on jihad. Radwan Masmoudi, who heads a Washington-based 
>think tank that promotes democracy in the Middle East, was delayed 
>four hours because of FBI questioning at a Detroit airport.
>
>  Asked about the treatment of the Yemenis at Dulles, Bill Anthony, a 
>spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the State 
>Department had not notified immigration officials at the airport 
>about their arrival. Had it done so, the delegates would have been 
>exempted from a special registration procedure -- involving 
>fingerprinting and photographing -- required for male visitors 
>between the ages of 16 and 45 from about 20 designated countries, 
>Anthony said.
>
>  "Without pre-clearance, we are required to enforce the law, and we 
>don't have discretion on the ground," he said.
>
>  The handcuffing of Mohannad al Sayani, 40, who is general director 
>for antiquities in one of Yemen's provinces, was a case of mistaken 
>identity. "It was a very close match that turned out to be 
>incorrect," Anthony said, declining to elaborate.
>
>  The State Department did not return a call seeking comment.
>
>  Anthony said Mazrui was detained in Miami for about six hours 
>because of a "breakdown in communication" between immigration and 
>customs officials. He said this led to Mazrui being questioned 
>separately by two sets of officials and possibly an official from a 
>third agency. Anthony declined to say why Mazrui was flagged for 
>interrogation, saying, "There are many reasons why people get 
>detained."
>
>  Mazrui, a political scientist, is the Albert Schweitzer professor 
>in the humanities and director of the Institute of Global Cultural 
>Studies at SUNY-Binghamton and also teaches at Cornell University. 
>An Internet search brings up his picture and biography. He travels 
>on his Kenyan passport and has been a permanent U.S. resident since 
>1974.
>
>  In a telephone interview, Mazrui said that after he landed at Miami 
>on Aug. 3 as he returned from Trinidad, he was questioned first by 
>immigration officials, then by customs representatives and finally 
>by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
>
>  Their questions included " 'What is jihad?' and whether I believed 
>in it. I gave them 'Jihad 101,' " Mazrui said.
>
>  "Then they wanted to know what sect of Islam I believe in. When I 
>said Sunni, they asked why I was not Shia," he recalled. "That was 
>definitely a first. That's like asking a Catholic why he isn't a 
>Protestant."
>
>  During the last round of questioning, Mazrui said, officials asked 
>him whether he had met with a radical Islamist leader in Trinidad. 
>"I told them no but that I did try to meet him," he said. "I said 
>it's my business to know about Muslims because I teach that."
>
>  His final interrogators, Mazrui said, apologized for keeping him so 
>long, gave him $25 for dinner, paid for a hotel room and booked him 
>on a flight the next morning.
>
>  He said he still does not know why he was singled out.
>
>  Masmoudi, 40, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and 
>Democracy, said he landed in Detroit on Aug. 11 after visiting five 
>Arab countries as part of the center's efforts to promote democracy. 
>His trip was funded by a National Endowment for Democracy grant.
>
>  He said FBI agents questioned him about his trip while he was 
>waiting for a flight to Charlotte, where he lives. "They asked me 
>what I was doing, who I met with, if I knew anybody who had contacts 
>with Islamic terrorist groups," said Masmoudi, a U.S. citizen.
>
>  "I showed them my passport, my business card and even told them 
>that we are funded by the State Department, and that didn't seem to 
>make a difference for them," he said. "We support the government's 
>efforts to fight terrorism, but sometimes it goes overboard. They've 
>got to be careful not to antagonize the Arabs and Muslims of the 
>United States."
>
>  Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the Detroit office of the FBI, said 
>Masmoudi "was only interviewed for an hour. He missed a connecting 
>flight, so he had to wait two to three hours for another one." She 
>declined to say why the FBI wanted to speak with him. "Sometimes we 
>have things we have to clear up. That's all. I can't be specific."
>
>  Fouad Al-Kohlany, the Yemen Embassy's commercial and economic 
>attache, said his country's citizens "understand the need for 
>security, we know the magnitude of September 11, and we sympathize 
>with the policies and regulations that the United States has. 
>However, the U.S. government should have more faith in their own 
>officers and embassies abroad. If business people are issued 
>invitations from the U.S. ambassador himself, that should count for 
>something."
>
>   
>
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu