How intelligence agencies frame “terrorism” charges?

 

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

A British Court of Appeal, on February 13, 2008, completely exonerated Lotfi Raissi, a British pilot of Algerian origin, from the charges that he trained some of the hijackers in the 2001 terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. His episode is the latest example of how British and U.S. intelligence agencies try to frame terrorist charges against innocent people.

Raissi was seized in the early hours of September 21, when armed police raided his flat in Colnbrook, Berkshire. A gun was put to his head, an arrest warrant thrust into his face and he was led naked to a police car. Raissi’s wife, Sonia, a French national, was also arrested, as was his brother Mohammed, who lived in Hounslow, west London. Raissi’s wife and brother were released without charge four days later.

For seven days Raissi was questioned by the British police while an FBI agent observed from a remote location via a television link.

In court appearances in 2001, a British prosecutor representing the American government said that Raissi (who was qualified in the US to fly a Boeing 737) had trained at least four hijackers at a flight school in Arizona, and that his main responsibility had been training Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have been the pilot of the plane that struck the Pentagon. Raissi was part of an “active conspiracy,” and correspondence, telecommunications records and videos proved it, the prosecutor told the court. A video that the FBI claimed showed Raissi with Hani Hanjour was revealed in court as footage of him with his cousin.

Interestingly, the British prosecution also concocted its own story. It asserted that six pages were missing from Raissi’s flight log, which had been seized from his home. The implication was that he had removed the pages to cover up the times he had flown with Hanjour. It turned out that the pages had been removed by the British police, and then stapled back in the wrong order, the court noted.

When the seven-day holding period was up, and Raissi was to be released, the United States sought to extradite him after hastily filing what the court described as “trivial” charges: failure to note on his pilot license application that he had had knee surgery, and that, at the age of 19, he had been arrested for stealing a briefcase at Heathrow and given a false name at the time.

The extradition proceedings were a device to secure Raissi’s presence in the U.S. for the purpose of investigating 9/11 rather than for the purpose of putting him on trial for nondisclosure offenses. “Viewed objectively, it appears to us to be likely that the extradition proceedings were used for an ulterior purpose, namely to secure the appellant’s detention in custody in order to allow time for the US authorities to provide evidence of a terrorist offence,” the judges said.

Luckily Raissi was arrested before the new extradition arrangements under the Extradition Act 2003 came into force. If he were arrested now he would have been whisked off to the US without the possibility of a British court considering the strength of the charges against him.

After five months as a Category A prisoner in Belmarsh high security prison, in south-east London, he was released when a judge ruled there was no evidence whatsoever to link him with terrorism.

Lotfi Raissi’s case indicates how easily the intelligence agencies can persuade themselves of a need to detain someone for terrorism on the basis of the flimsiest of suspicion and then concoct evidence to prove their misplaced suspision.

The court has now allowed Raissi (who was 27 year old when he was arrested in 2001) to seek compensation from the British government for wrongful arrest and detention. The question is that will any compensation make up for his ruined life because of “terrorism” accusation and wipe out the bitter memories of his five months ordeal in prison and the sufferings of his wife and brother for no fault other than the presumed guilt by association?

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com E-Mail: asghazali@gamil.com

Lessons from the Japanese internment during WWII

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The February 19 marks the Day of Remembrance when President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order that sent about 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps during the World War Two.
The mass displacement and internment of the Japanese-Americans is a dark spot of our history from which we can learn valuable lessons.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which marked the beginning of institutionalized profiling and massive interment of American citizens of Japanese descent.

The justification that was proffered for such drastic action was that Japanese-Americans, who were born in this country, were suspected, without proof, of being loyal to Japan and disloyal to America. They were victims of guilt by association.

This Executive Order effectively suspended civil liberties for Japanese Americans. The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.

These Japanese Americans were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps. President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities “concentration camps.” Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted

At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a “military necessity” to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented by Michi Weglyn in her book - Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps - that “our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage.”

At the same time, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, said that the causes for this unprecedented action in American history, “were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Michi Weglyn argued that the injustice done to Japanese Americans “has been only partially perceived” and hoped that her account will remind Americans to be constantly on guard to protect their always vulnerable liberties.

Rev. Emery Andrews, a Baptist minister and former missionary to Japan, was right what he observed in 1943 about the internment of the Japanese Americans: “Future historians will record this evacuation — this violation of citizenship rights — as one of the blackest blots on American history.”

So egregious was this violation of basic civil rights that 40 years later, in 1983, the Presidential Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians called the internment program an act of racism and wartime hysteria and in 1988 President Reagan signed a reparation agreement that officially apologized and provided each surviving camp member with $20,000 in compensation.

While apologizing on behalf of the nation, the Congress pointed out that a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians. “The excluded individuals of Japanese ancestry suffered enormous damages, both material and intangible, and there were incalculable losses in education and job training, all of which resulted in significant human suffering for which appropriate compensation has not been made.”

Despite this redress, the mental and physical health impacts of the trauma of the internment experience continue to affect tens of thousands of Japanese Americans. Health studies have shown a 2 times greater incidence of heart disease and premature death among former internees, compared to non-interned Japanese Americans.
In spite of these historic lessons, today we witness members of the Arab/Muslim American community experiencing similar civil and human rights violations: institutionalized profiling, exclusion, detention and extradition in the post 9/11 and Iraq War era. More than six years after 9/11, American Muslims and Arabs remain at the receiving end.

The words of Fred T. Korematsu, who lost a Supreme Court challenge in 1944 to the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans, seem to resonate with the American Muslims: “Fears and prejudices directed against minority communities are too easy to evoke and exaggerate, often to serve the political agendas of those who promote those fears. I know what it is like to be at the other end of such scapegoating and how difficult it is to clear one’s name after unjustified suspicions are endorsed as fact by the government.” (Korematsu, who was vindicated decades later when he was given the Medal of Freedom, died in March 2005 at the age of 86.)

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of online magazine the American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com e-mail: asghazali@gmail.com

Reflections on the Black History Month

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present. French Philosopher Paul Valery says it is necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time. There is always a connection between the way in which men contemplate the past and the way in which they contemplate the present. Although history cannot give us a program for the present or future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the present and future.

Hence, history isn’t really about the past but it’s about defining the present and also the future. The Roman philosopher, Marcus Cicero strongly argued the study of history because “to be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.” In short, to borrow historian Sidney E. Mead, history, is an analysis of the past in order that we may understand the present and guide our conduct into the future.

Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950), remembered as the Father of Black History, realized the importance of history and argued that those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history. He recognized and acted upon the importance of a people having knowledge of its race and its contributions to civilization.

Woodson believed that if you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. “If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door.”

Woodson saw the current history books no more than a record of the “successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies, and the quarrels, of those who engage in contention for power.” As a result, Woodson said, blacks had virtually no knowledge about their history and were seen as a “child-like race.”

He observed that schools are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority. “The thought of the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.”

But for Woodson the necessity of documenting black history was more than just about the recognition of black contributions: it was to wage a battle against racism. Woodson believed that racism was not inherent in human nature, but was a consequence of the belief that blacks had contributed nothing to mankind; therefore, blacks were viewed as inferior. It was inevitable, said Woodson, that all achievements would eventually be attributed to one race.

Born to parents who were former slaves, Woodson spent his childhood working in the Kentucky coal mines and enrolled in high school at the age of twenty. He graduated within two years and later went on to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. The scholar was disturbed to find in his studies that history books largely ignored the black American population - and when blacks did figure into the picture, it was generally in ways that reflected the inferior social position they were assigned at the time.

Woodson decided to take on the challenge of writing black Americans into the nation’s history. He established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History) in 1915, and a year later founded the widely respected Journal of Negro History. In 1926, he launched Negro History Week as an initiative to bring national attention to the contributions of black people throughout American history. The initiative was also aimed at underlining the harms of racial prejudice and to cultivate black self-esteem following centuries of socio-economic oppression.

Americans have recognized black history annually since 1926 but what you might not know is that black history had barely begun to be studied - or even documented - when the tradition originated. Although blacks have been in America at least as far back as colonial times, it was not until the 20th century that they gained a respectable presence in the history books.

When the tradition of Black History Month was started, most representation of blacks in history books was only in reference to the low social position they held, with the exception of George Washington Carver (1864 –1943). Carver was an American botanical researcher and agronomy educator who worked in agricultural extension at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, teaching former slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency.

Today, unlike in Woodson’s time, knowledge about black history has certainly come a long way. Now, there are numerous books written about important black people and their contributions. This is definitely one part of Woodson’s goal that has been achieved. As for Woodson’s goal to end racism, it has not been completely recognized, but significant progress has been made and this, in fact, may be due in part to the education about blacks in American history.

Interestingly, Black History Month sparks an annual debate about the continued usefulness and fairness of a designated month dedicated to the history of one race. Some African American radical/nationalist groups, including the Nation of Islam, have criticized Black History Month. Other critics contend that Black History Month is irrelevant because it has degenerated into a shallow ritual.

Some critics argue that sanctioning a racially distinct observation moves Americans away from a common history.

In February 2006, Actor Morgan Freeman re-energized the debate over the pertinence of Black History Month, now an 82-year-old cultural institution for African Americans. In an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Freeman said: “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? ….. I don’t want a black history month. … Black history is American history.”
Perhaps Woodson, creator of the Negro History week in 1926 that later turned into the Black History Month, had hoped that the week would eventually be eliminated, when African-American history would be fully integrated with American history.
However, Mel Watkins, author of “On the Real Side,” a history of African American comedy, believes it is necessary because African American history isn’t yet fully integrated into American history. “The irony of it is that we still have to have a Black History Month to remind people that we have a history.”

The Black History Month is celebrated in the United States and Canada in February while in Britain in October every year.

US Air Force Academy encourages Islamophobia?

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Three self-styled “ex-terrorists” – Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani - were star speakers on February 5, 2008 at the 50th annual United States Air Force Academy political forum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The three anti-Muslim fear-mongering bigots have spent the past couple of years on speaking tour across America but this is the first time that the trio has spoken at a military academy for which they picked up $ 13,000.

Shoebat urged his audience to resist “political correctness” and not to fear being labeled a “xenophobe, Islamophobe or American bigot.” “The problem with Islam is if you speak out against Islam, you are a racist,” Shoebat told a group of about 250 cadets and students.

Saleem said “if America is taken down and Sharia laws take over, there is no hope,” he said during a spirited talk, in which he shouted and stomped in driving home his points.

Anani called it a mistake to limit discussion about terrorism to “radical Islam.” “There is no radical Islam; there is Islam itself,” he said.

In the past events at campuses and TV appearances, they made similar bigoted and inaccurate statements about Islam and Muslims. They told one California university audience that Americans need to “wake up to the dangerous realities of the Islamic faith.”

Walid Shoebat has built a lucrative speaking career by manipulating the fears and whipping up hatred between Jews and Muslims. He told Springfield News-Leader, a Missouri newspaper, on Sept. 24, 2007 that he sees “many parallels between the Antichrist and Islam” and “Islam is not the religion of God — Islam is the devil.”

Zachariah Anani, who claims to have killed 223 people in the name of Islam, says he is an advocate against what he calls “the violent doctrines of Islam.” (Michigan Daily, Jan. 30, 2007)

Another prominent speaker at the Air Force Academy is Islamophobe and controversial “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson, whose apparent lifelong goal is to banish Muslim Americans from American civil life. Like all professional propagandists, Emerson aspires to be detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the post 9/11 life in America, where fear-mongering is a reality, that notorious career Islamophobes, such as these individuals, are subjected to little scrutiny and virtually no credibility tests.

Who are they? Shoebat and Kamal Saleem, are U.S. citizens and Zachariah Anani, is a Canadian. Shoebat and Saleem say they are former members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, according to their Web site. Saleem converted to Christianity after being treated by a Christian doctor. The three are evangelical Christians who being are promoted by their publicists as “the former terrorists” who “practiced hatred against Christians, Jews and Americans” and were “part of sleeper cells in the USA.” Not surprisingly, many civil right groups, academics and at least one Canadian expert on jihad have called the men fakes.

Who is Walid Shoebat?
Walid Shoebat has found a way to make money by fabricating a fantasy story and claiming to be a former terrorist. Shoebat’s father was from Beit Sahour in Palestine and his mother was an American Christian. His father was not a practicing Muslim and Shoebat spent very few years in Palestine. When Shoebat was young his father killed another man in Beit Sahour and the family was forced to leave town while Shoebat was young. Walid Shoebat and his mother returned to the United States and he was raised a Christian. Shoebat now gets between $13,000 to $15,000 per speaking event, and mostly speaks to right-wing or Jewish groups.

Shoebat does not merely regurgitate the same polemical and superficial criticisms of Islam shared by other luminaries in the Christian Right and the growing anti-Islam crowd but he confirms these unwise beliefs by suggesting that there is some credibility to them.

Who is Kamal Saleem?
Doug Howard, a professor of Middle East history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., says he and several other academics have been researching the men since Kamal Saleem spoke at the college last fall.

“We suspect he’s a fraud,” Howard said. Howard has determined that Saleem’s real name is Khodor Shami, a Lebanese who immigrated as a student and worked for the Christian Broadcasting Network for 16 years starting in the late 1980s. He was hired in 2003 at Focus on the Family.

Who is Zachariah Anani?
Tom Quiggin, Canada’s only court-qualified expert on global jihadism and a former Police intelligence and national security expert, says that Zachariah Anani’s tales of terror and murder just don’t jibe with the time and place he claims to have been killing. “Mr. Anani’s not an individual who rates the slightest degree of credibility, based on the stories that he has told,” said Quiggin, who is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security in Singapore.

“It appears to be that Mr. Anani is nothing more than an extremist who is trying to create an imaginative history from a contemporary set of fears and stories,” said Quiggin. “Mr. Anani’s myths that he has built up around himself lack validity on a number of key points.” (Windsor Star, Canada - January 20, 2007)

Why they are not arrested?
The question is if the three were actually terrorists then why they weren’t jailed or deported?

Robert Birach, an immigration law attorney in Detroit, says the men would have had to have disclosed their affiliation with the PLO on their applications to become U.S. citizens if what they claim is true. “Failure to list the affiliation on the citizenship application is enough to go back and open the file and charge them with fraud and perjury,” Birach said. “And now they are admitting to being former terrorists. So under the Real ID Act, that’s enough for their removal from the United States.”

According to Rev. Jim Sutter of the HateWatch.com, every known terrorist is on one or more of the 12 US watchlists, and the combined watchlist used by TSA to screen airline passengers. Shoebat is going around the country, making this claim over and over that he used to be a terrorist - are you really naive enough to think that if his claim were true, he wouldn’t be on a watch list?

Shoebat has a “highly questionable” background. He has admitted to not using his real name as he travels around the country, picking up a small mountain of cash at speaking engagements, through his writing books and columns, where he tells us how Islam is evil, and how he was a big, bad former terrorist. Yet he freely flies around the country, not being on anyone’s watchlist or the no-fly list.

UC Davis police asked to detain admitted ‘terrorist’
Not surprisingly, in February 2007, the Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) called on campus police at the University of California - Davis to detain Walid Shoebat who was scheduled to speak at UC Davis because he has stated publicly that he bombed an Israeli bank and participated in other acts of violence in the Middle East.

“Walid Shoebat is either a self-admitted criminal or complete fraud. In either case, the public and law enforcement authorities have a right to know,” said CAIR-SV Executive Director Basim Elkarra.

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) at UC Davis had also called on the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate and deport Shoebat for past acts of terrorism.
“We are concerned that a self-confessed ‘ex-terrorist’ is walking free in this country, simply because he has converted to Christianity and supports this country’s policies toward Israel,” according to Shazeb Qadir, president of the Muslim student group.

Why Shoebat is not arrested? Mission statement on his website gives us some clue: Walid Shoebat Foundation: An organization that cries out for the Justice of Israel and the Jewish people.

Who is Steve Emerson?
A self-anointed “terrorism expert” whose rhetoric is characterized by charged terminology and a dislike for open debate, Steve Emerson harbors a longstanding track record of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry.

In April of 1995, Emerson confidently asserted on a live broadcast of CBS News that the Oklahoma City bombing – then breaking news – showed “a Middle Eastern trait” because it was carried out “with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible.” “Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East,” Emerson explained with an enthusiasm bordering on elation.

While Emerson preoccupied himself with indulging his knack for conjecture, real detectives worked calmly and professionally to reveal that, contrary to Emerson’s “expert perceptions”, Timothy McVeigh and company were behind the bombings. Emerson’s incompetence was duly exposed; CBS decided not to renew his contract and blacklisted him for five years.

Then again, Emerson’s aversion to facts and affinity for bias were exposed by the New York Times. Its review of Emerson’s 1991 book Terrorist said the book was “marred by factual errors . . . and by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.”

His 1994 controversial film Jihad in America caused veteran reporter Robert Friedman to accuse Emerson of “creating mass hysteria against American Arabs” (The Nation, May 15, 1995).

John F. Sugg, then of the Tampa Bay Weekly Planet, revealed in a 1999 article that Emerson’s priority is “not so much news as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims.”

So what explains Emerson’s anti-Muslim and anti-Arab spin? The Wall Street Journal provided us with one answer 16 years ago: “Mr. Emerson’s prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics,” wrote Alexander Cockburn.

In January 2007, Emerson appeared on Fox News Channel and denounced the Attorney General for meeting with a number of major American Muslim organizations.

His agenda is essentially inspired by the Israeli ultra-right, and seeks to block the development of any major Muslim or Arab American political empowerment in the United States by denouncing any and all major organizations or prominent public figures from those communities as “extremists,” and promoting insofar as possible fear and hatred of American Muslims in general by casting the community as a threat to our country and a fifth column.

Not only does Emerson want to prevent the American Muslim community from developing effective national organizations and political empowerment commensurate with its size and accomplishments, he wants them excluded from the normal American system of law and the protections of civil court.

Steve Emerson was the keynote speaker at the final Plenary Session and Banquet hosted by Lt Gen John Regni, Superintendent of the Air Force Academy.

Air Force Academy’s invitation to such anti-Muslim and anti-Islam speakers tantamount to its tacit endorsement of their Islamophobic views. The First Amendment protects even bigoted speech, but those who value mutual understanding should have an equal right to speak out and be heard. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had offered to help the Academy officials find representatives of the Colorado Muslim community who can offer a balancing perspective to the “hate-filled rhetoric” of the invited speakers. But CAIR’s offer was rejected which further indicates that the Academy was bent on poisoning the minds of cadets with the hate-filled rhetoric of these individuals.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine the American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com e-mail: asghazali@gmail.com

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