“After more than two years in prison – much of it spent in solitary confinement – former University of South Florida professor and political activist Sami Al-Arian finally went on trial in Tampa, Fla., this week. There’s little chance, however, that Al-Arian will be able to get a fair trial…. This trial is part of the U.S. government’s post-September 11 witch-hunt of Arabs and Muslims.”
Socialist Worker (US), 10 June 2005
See also Islam Online, 7 June 2005 and the Free Sami Al-Arian campaign
A top European human rights watchdog said on Wednesday Britain’s anti-terrorism laws breached European standards and could force London to opt out of parts of the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite improvements, Britain still tended to see human rights as an obstacle to the criminal justice system, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles said in a report.
He welcomed a decision by Britain’s top court which forced Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government to drop a measure allowing detention of foreign terrorist suspects without charge. But problems remained with the law that replaced it. The 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act allows Britain’s Home Secretary (interior minister) to issue “control orders” against terrorism suspects, which restrict their freedom of movement, where they live and with whom they may communicate.
“The Act acknowledges some … of these restrictions may be incompatible with Article 5 (of the European Convention on Human Rights) on the right to liberty, in which case the possibility of derogating from the UK’s obligations under this article is foreseen,” the report said.
Former President Jimmy Carter called on the United States on Tuesday to shut down its prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to demonstrate the country’s commitment to protecting human rights.
Federal agents searched the homes of two Islamic leaders in Lodi, California, and have made four arrests since Sunday, part of an ongoing terrorism investigation, according to the FBI and witnesses. Two of those arrested are top Muslim leaders in Lodi, including one who publicly condemned the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and issued a declaration of peace with Christian and Jewish leaders in Lodi three years ago
The US has a vast and very expensive Homeland Security bureaucracy with nothing to do. There hasn’t been a terrorist attack in America since 2001. There have been a vast quantity of terror alerts, the purpose of which was to scare Americans into supporting an unnecessary and illegal aggressive attack on Iraq.
As very few, if any, real terrorists have turned up, the FBI has resorted to creating terrorists by soliciting Muslim-Americans and appealing to them with schemes to aid ‘jihadists’. Recently, two American citizens were caught in a FBI sting. One, an Ivy-League educated physician, is charged with agreeing to provide medical care to wounded holy warriors in Saudi Arabia. The other, a famous jazz musician, is charged with agreeing to train jihadists in martial arts.
According to the Washington Times of June 1, the FBI began its sting in 2003, so it took two years of work and cajoling to manufacture the case against these two Americans.
What the FBI has done to Dr. R.A. Sabir and Tarik Shah was once known as entrapment. Judges would throw out entrapment cases, because crime was believed to require intent. If the intent was given to the accused by the police through enticement or threats, it was not regarded as criminal intent on the accused person’s part.
Unfortunately, “law and order” conservatives used fear of crime to “give our police more effective measures to clear criminals off our streets” and managed to eliminate the entrapment defense.
Arani & Co Solicitors has requested the assistance of all individuals in complaining about the treatment meted out to the Muslim detainees in Belmarsh Prison, especially the High Secure Unit.
Australian Muslims have decried anti-terror security measures as creating a climate of fear and apprehension among the Muslim minority in the country.
“We want to live in a country where I feel proud to be Australian, belong to this land, where I have rights like any other persons,” Ali Roude, the deputy chairman of the Islamic Council of New South Wales, told a parliamentary panel reviewing the measures on Monday, June 6.
“Not always targeted, not always seen as a possible threat to Australia’s security, which is the feeling at the moment,” he was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Roude complained that Australian Muslims feel targeted by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which has been given powers to detain people on terror-related suspicion for up to seven days and question them for up to 48 hours without charges.
Other sweeping powers also allow the security agencies to hold Australians even if they are not suspected of criminal behaviors.
The Pentagon on Monday rejected a call to close the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects and declined to express regret over five cases of U.S. jailers “mishandling” the Koran there.
US guards or interrogators kicked the Islamic holy book at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, stepped on it and soaked it in water, and in one case a guard’s urine splashed through an air vent onto a prisoner and his Koran, US Southern Command said.
Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said the United States was not considering shutting the Guantanamo jail, as suggested by a senior Senate Democrat. “Guantanamo serves a vital purpose in many ways.” Mr Whitman said. He said some prisoners are “very, very, very dangerous people”.
“They want to do harm not only to Americans but to US interests overseas, to our friends and allies and these are people that if released would certainly be found back on the battlefield in the war on terror.”
“What makes Amnesty’s gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Each has produced its own stories of abuse, torture and criminal homicide. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law. Prisoners have been transferred from camp to camp. So have commanding officers. And perhaps not coincidentally, so have specific methods of mistreatment.”
Editorial in the New York Times, 5 June 2005
Little Green Footballs is not impressed: “The New York Times defends Amnesty International’s comparison of Guantanamo Bay (where 600 unlawful combatants are held) with the Soviet Gulag (where more than 20 million innocent Russian citizens were imprisoned, and millions killed). As a solution to this towering injustice, the editors of the Times call for Gitmo to be shut down. Immediately. Turn them all loose. And make sure the evil Bushco doesn’t send those poor oppressed killers without consciences to places where they might be imprisoned again – like their home countries.”
See also “Senator urges Guantánamo closure after Pentagon admits Qur’an abuse”, Guardian, 6 June 2005
And “Quran splashed with urine at Guantanamo”, Informed Comment, 6 June 2005
Women wearing burkas in Italy should be reported to the police and fined, Silvio Berlusconi’s justice minister said at the weekend. Roberto Castelli said the garment was at odds with an Italian law that forbids masks.
The burka is rare, though not unknown, in Italy. But commentators yesterday noted that the minister’s ruling against masks could be applied to other garb more commonly worn by Muslim women, that leaves only the eyes visible.
Mr Castelli told a meeting in the northern town of Como: “No one may break the law.”
He was referring to a decision by the local prefect to overturn fines imposed last year on an Italian convert to Islam from nearby Drezzo, who wears a burka. Two other women have been fined for wearing the garment elsewhere.
Mr Castelli’s remarks were condemned by leftwing parties. Marco Rizzo of the Communist party said they were “at the threshold of incitement to racial and religious hatred”.
See also “Italian minister grilled over fining niqab”, Islam Online. 6 June 2005