[Peace] IMC story on Ahmed's hearing

[peterm at shout.net]

Article by: Chris Geovanis/CIMC                          
Thursday 13 Jun 2002
                        
Email: hammerhard at aol.com

Summary:The government escalated its attack on civil liberties Wednesday
by barring the public from local activist Ahmed Bensouda\'s immigration
hearing -- as a prelude to introducing \"secret evidence.\" The fight-back
continues Friday with a 4PM protest at the Metropolitan Correctional
Center at 71 W. Van Buren to support imprisoned Muslim Cleric Rabih Haddad
-- and all wrongfully imprisoned immigrants.

Reference at indymedia website:
http://www.ucimc.org//front.php3?article_id=5950

Article:

Chicago, Wednesday, June 12: The government escalated its attack on due
process and civil liberties Wednesday by barring the public from local
activist Ahmed Bensouda's immigration hearing -- as a prelude to
introducing "secret evidence" in his INS case. Civil liberties activists
have vowed to fight back, beginning with a 4PM Friday protest at the
Metropolitan Correctional Center at 71 W. Van Buren to support imprisoned
Muslim Cleric Rabih Haddad -- and all wrongfully imprisoned immigrants. 

Until the passage of the U.S. Patriot Act in the wake of September 11, it
was almost unprecedented for the federal government to ask that
immigration hearings be held in secret. 

Bensouda was arrested on May 30 by federal officials in Champaign,
Illinois, where he had been a student and secular political activist on
issues that include Palestinian solidarity work and support for boycott
campaigns targeting companies that sell military equipment to Israel. He
was subsequently transferred to an INS detention facility in DuPage
County, and on Wednesday was brought before immigration judge James
Fujimoto in Chicago for a bond hearing in his case. 

While Bensouda has ostensibly been held by the INS for a technical visa
violation, he has been repeatedly interviewed by both INS and FBI
officials, and it remains unclear which federal agency actually arrested
him -- and which agency is ultimately pressing to expel the press and
public from his hearings. During Bensouda's immigration hearing today,
federal officials argued that his case should be closed to the public
because of 'national security' concerns and announced that they sought to
present secret evidence showing why Bensouda should be denied
bond. Federal officials asked that Bensouda's hearings be held 'in camera'
-- that is, in secret, in court proceedings closed to the press and
public. 

Bensouda was brought into court under the auspices of the Special
Investigations Unit of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which
has asserted that the Bensouda case is a 'special investigations'
case. The little-known INS unit is believed to be part of the same INS
project that charged for years that Florida resident Mazen Al-Najjar, his
brother-in-law Sami Al-Arian and their acquaintances had helped bankroll
terrorism. In that case, the government ultimately admitted that it had no
evidence to back up those claims and was forced to release Al-Najar, who
had been imprisoned for three years while the case wound through
court. The government has subsequently rearrested Al-Najar on visa issues,
and Al-Arian, a university professor in Florida, has been fired by his
school in a closely-watched academic freedom case. Both Al-Najar and
Al-Arian have been active in promoting Palestinian rights. 

In court today, Bensouda's attorney Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers'
Guild argued that another recent decision in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of
Appeals set a precedent to keep Bensouda.s hearing open to the press and
public. In that case, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals denied a Justice Department request to block U.S. district judge
Nancy Edmunds.s ruling that the government must open immigration hearings
for detained Lebanese immigrant Rabih Haddad to the press and public. The
6th Circuit panel also ruled that the government must release documents
related to Haddad's previous hearings, which had been closed to the press
and public at the government.s request. 

But Judge Fujimoto rejected that argument, noting that Bensouda's case
falls under the purview of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals -- not the 6th
-- and that in addition, he is bound by law to enforce new regulations
promulgated two weeks ago by the Executive Office of Immigration
Review. At that point, observers and Bensouda supporters were then
expelled from the court hearing. 

Observers believe that the new INS regulations effectively compel Fujimoto
to honor the government's request for secrecy, at least for the forseeable
future, and handle Bensouda.s case in camera -- outside of public scrutiny
-- if the government so requests. 

"It is my belief that Judge Fujimoto's hands have been effectively tied
for the time being," said Fennerty. "We're going to have to mount a
comprehensive legal strategy that both challenges these new rules and that
supports the right to open immigration hearings in the 7th Circuit." 

The Chicago Immigration Court falls under the jurisdiction of the Office
of the Chief Immigration Judge, which is a component of the Executive
Office for Immigration Review under the Department of Justice. Observers
note that, within the federal judicial system, the 7th Circuit has tended
to give Justice Department officials sweeping preference in specific
requests related to cases where the government invokes the mantra of
'terrorism.' 

Bensouda.s next hearing is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Friday, June 21, at
the INS.s basement courtroom, located at 10 W. Jackson in downtown
Chicago. 

Bensouda's supporters believe that he has been targeted by the federal
government for his political activism. 

"Once again, the government is attempting to use 'secret' evidence in a
case that is clearly politically motivated, despite the fact that the
government was rebuked in the 6th Circuit from doing so," says Bill
Massey, a member of the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism who
attended today.s hearing. "It seems that the government is dropping a net
on as many Palestinian activists as possible through these methods --
which they are literally inventing as they go -- with the blessing of the
judicial system." 

Bensouda was arrested on the same day that federal authorities arrested
another secular Arab student activist, Jaoudat Abouazza, a Palestinian
activist with Canadian citizenship who has been working with the Boston
ANSWER coalition. Cambridge police stopped and arrested Abouazza and then
turned him over to FBI officials, who in their interrogation continually
probed about Abouazza's possible support of 'terrorism,' an allegation his
supporters say is completely false. Abouazza remains in 'detention' --
what is effectively an open-ended state of imprisonment -- for technical
immigration violations. 

Boston Indymedia reporter Saurabh Asthana has noted that Abouazza's case
is garnering national attention as an example of repression of dissent and
the persecution of Arabs and Muslims under the new post-9/11 security
regime. 

Civil liberties supporters also point to the case of Farouk Abdel Muhti as
an example of the federal government's aggressive new strategy to silence
activists of Arab dissent in the United States. Abdel Muhti, coordinator
of the Palestine Aid Society, a secular relief group based on the east
coast, has also been arrested on alleged technical visa violations. 

Abdel Muhti is a high-profile political activist in the New York area, and
his associates charge that he has been targeted for his work in support of
Palestinian human rights. On April 29, Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW
reported that three plainclothes New York police officers and an INS agent
attempted the previous Friday to enter Abdel-Muhti's Queens apartment
without a warrant, claiming they wanted to ask him questions about
September 11th and saying they had information that there were explosives
in the apartment. When Abdel Muhti's roommate, Bernard McFall, refused to
open the door unless the officers produced a warrent, they threatened to
break it down. 

The attack was the second time Abdel Muhti's apartment had been raided by
law enforcement that month. The first time, agents threatened to throw his
teenaged son from the window of their 14th floor apartent if he did not
tell them where his father was. After Abdel Muhti's arrest, law
enforcement authorities told him that if he did not 'cooperate' and
provide them with political information about other Arabs, they would
activate extradition papers they had been provided by the Israeli Mossad. 

"Ahmed Bensouda's arrest is the third case in the last month alone in
which a secular political activist involved in the struggle for
Palestinian rights has been scooped up for nothing more than technical
visa violations -- and, I might add, for actively disagreeing with United
States foreign policy in Palestine," said Massey. "The government is
aggressively seeking to deny the right to dissent -- and for all intents
and purposes, no wall in the right to dissent exists between those who are
not citizens and those who are. Today's developments in the Bensouda case
threaten all of us very deeply. We have entered a period of political
repression more dangerous than that of the McCarthy era or COINTELPRO." 

For more information on new detention rules for immigrants, check out
analysis on immigrant rights and the Patriot Act by the Center for
Constitutional Rights. 

For more information on the history of COINTELPRO in the United States,
check out the background article by civil rights attorney Mike Cassidy and
University of Vermont philosophy professor Will Miller in the Albion
Monitor. 

For more information on Ahmed Bensouda.s case, check out his
supporters. website, as well as ongoing coverage on the Urbana/Champaign
Indymedia website.