David Conway poses the question. His answer? The niqab not only receives the support of Ayman al-Zawahiri but also represents a serious security threat. His conclusion? “There are enough genuine concerns as to who and what may really lie behind the veil to justify its proscription in public places.”
Category Archives: State Oppression
German Muslim held, denied US entry
A German businessman of Syrian descent who wanted to surprise his daughter with a holiday visit was detained for four days in a Las Vegas holding cell before being sent back home without explanation. A civil rights group called authorities’ treatment of Majed Shehadeh a case of anti-Muslim discrimination.
Shehadeh touched down Thursday afternoon on a direct Condor Airlines flight to McCarran International Airport, where his American wife was waiting to pick him up. The couple had planned to visit family in the Las Vegas area, before surprising their daughter for the New Year and celebrating her wedding anniversary in Central California.
“I gave them my German passport, and he looked to see which countries I visited. He found I had stamps that looked like Arabic and asked if they were fake,” Shehadeh said Tuesday in a phone interview from his home in Alzenau, a small Bavarian village. “Nobody ever informed me why I was being questioned,” he said. “All that was ever told to me was this had to do with Washington.”
After being interrogated by Border Protection and FBI agents for more than 12 hours at the airport, Shehadeh said he was handcuffed and transported in the back of police car to a North Las Vegas jail. Once in the holding facility, Shehadeh said he was stripped of his shoes, jacket and prescribed heart medicine and locked in a cell with about 25 other detainees. There was one toilet in the middle of the room, and access to a telephone was extremely limited, he said. On Sunday, he was released and sent back to Frankfurt on the same charter airline.
Associated Press, 2 January 2007
See also CAIR news brief, 2 January 2007
Americans oppose Dutch Islamic veil ban
Many adults in the United States are against a proposal developed by the Dutch government that seeks to ban Islamic veils, according to a six-country poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times.
59 per cent of Americans believe Islamic women should have the right to wear the garments if they wish to do so.
Support is significantly lower in the five European nations surveyed, with Spain at 39 per cent, Italy at 34 per cent, Germany at 33 per cent, Britain at 23 per cent, and France at 23 per cent.
Angus Reid Global Monitor, 31 December 2006
PM shelves HT ban
“The Prime Minister has been forced to shelve a central plank of his ‘war on terror’ strategy after opposition from senior police officers and the Home Office. Plans to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group, have been dropped in the past few days following intense discussions between Number 10 and legal advisers.
“Counter-terrorism sources said Tony Blair had been warned that banning the group, which campaigns for Britain to become a caliphate – a country subject to Islamic law – would serve only as a recruiting agent if the group appealed against the move.
“The decision is a significant personal blow to Blair, who announced his intention to outlaw it shortly after the London bombings on 7 July, 2005, as part of a 12-point strategy to counter Islamic extremism.”
HT have welcomed the decision, while also pointing out that the organisation “works for the return of the Caliphate in the Muslim world” – which, contrary to the Observer‘s assertion, does not include the UK.
Ban veils in public, says bishop
Muslim women should be banned from wearing the veil, to improve security and cohesion in Britain, the Church of England’s only Asian bishop has said. The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, urged the Government to introduce legislation that would force Muslims to remove the veil when they are at work or travelling.
In an outspoken attack on the custom of Muslim women to cover their faces, the Pakistani-born bishop said that the Islamic community needed to make greater efforts to integrate into British society.
His call for new laws to control the wearing of the veil in public comes only days after it was revealed that Mustaf Jama, the Somali suspected of murdering WPc Sharon Beshenivsky, is thought to have fled the country by dressing in the niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes.
‘Off with the veil at UK airports’ says Sun
“The Sun today launches a campaign to close the veil loophole making a mockery of Britain’s airport security. We told yesterday how a member of the gang which killed WPC Sharon Beshenivsky sneaked out of Heathrow by donning a Muslim niqab, with just a slit for eyes. Now we are calling on Home Secretary John Reid to turn passport control at every airport in the country into a veil-free zone.“
Cases of detained Muslims tarnish Canadian Mounties’ image
Canada’s top law enforcement agency has been shaken by the aftershocks of its role in the abduction of a Canadian Muslim in 2002, when U.S. agents transported the man from New York for interrogation under torture in Syria.
Last week, the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned, even though he had already apologized publicly to the victim, Maher Arar. On Tuesday, the government announced new inquiries into the cases of three other Canadian Muslims who had been imprisoned in Syria, and a judicial commission recommended broad new oversight of the RCMP’s intelligence arm.
The spotlight on the RCMP resulted from a two-year judicial inquiry into the case of Arar, now 36, who was stopped while changing flights at an airport in New York City in 2002. The Canadian citizen was bound, blindfolded and spirited to his native Syria by U.S. agents for questioning about terrorism.
Arar was kept for 10 months, much of it in a coffin-like dungeon, and tortured before being released without charges to return to Canada. In September, the extensive inquiry concluded that Arar was an innocent computer programmer who was named as an “Islamic extremist” because of fabrications and incompetence by an overzealous Mountie intelligence operation.
Over 100 prisons identified worldwide for illegal detention in ‘War on Terror’
Disappearances in the War on Terror have formed an integral part of the Bush administration’s programme of secret detention.
This latest report by Cageprisoners: Beyond the Law: The War on Terror’s Secret Network of Global Detentions, highlights the wide-reaching extent of those countries that house these detainees, generally at the behest of the US government. The report shows that out of the 120 prisons identified worldwide, 72 have been, or are currently being used by the US to interrogate detainees.
By piecing together statements of released detainees, work of investigative journalists and human rights organisations, we provide the most definitive and up to date list of prisons used in the “War on Terror”.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, wrote, “… Cageprisoners publishes a comprehensive report which reveals the systematic practice of enforced disappearances in a global network of secret places of detention.”
Further the Chair of the British Institute of Human Rights, Geoffrey Bindman, states that in the policies of the War on Terror, “This report is directed at one glaringly disgraceful element in that strategy: the detention without charge or trial and the physical abuse of those suspected of involvement in terrorism.”
Why did they torture Jose Padilla?
There’s a rancid odor escaping from the cracks in the Jose Padilla case. Padilla is the American citizen arrested in Chicago and declared by President Bush to be an “enemy combatant.” He was then kept for nearly two years in a South Carolina brig without access to a lawyer, family or friends.
The courts finally forced the Bush administration to release Padilla into the justice system, and he is now imprisoned in Miami awaiting trial on charges that have nothing to do with what he was arrested for, an alleged plot to use a dirty bomb in the United States. It is claimed he had al Qaeda connections.
What makes this case so insidious is that, according to a psychiatrist who examined him over a 22-hour period, the treatment Padilla received in the South Carolina brig was such that he now “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.” In other words, a U.S. citizen was secretly worked over for 21 months to the point he is unable to think well enough to engage with his lawyer.
Philadelphia Daily News, 12 December 2006
See also George Monbiot in the Guardian, 12 December 2006
FBI pays $2 million to US Muslim in terror-suspect case
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to pay Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield $2 million as part of a settlement for wrongfully arresting him in connection with the 2004 Madrid terror attacks.
The New York Times reports that the FBI also apologized for its actions and agreed to destroy all materials collected during its electronic surveillance of Mr. Mayfield and secret searches of his home and office. Mayfield is also allowed to continue his lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the Patriot Act. He charges that the antiterrorism law violates the Fourth Amendment because is allows for government searches without first establishing “probable cause” of a crime.
Mayfield, an American-born convert to Islam, was put under government surveillance after the FBI mistakenly linked him to the March bombings. He was arrested in May 2004 and held for two weeks as a terrorist suspect, despite evidence from the Spanish government that he was not connected to the attack.
“The horrific pain, torture and humiliation that this has caused myself and my family is hard to put into words,” said Mr. Mayfield, an American-born convert to Islam and a former lieutenant in the Army.
“The days, weeks and months following my arrest,” he said, “were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.”