FBI fingerprint examiners were reluctant to admit that they had mistakenly linked an Oregon lawyer to the 2004 Madrid train bombings in part because he was a Muslim convert and had represented a terrorism defendant in court, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The 20-page summary report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that Brandon Mayfield’s religion “was not the sole or primary cause” of the FBI Laboratory’s mistaken identification of him, but it contributed to the bureau’s reluctance to reexamine conclusions in the case. Several FBI and Justice Department officials acknowledged that “Mayfield’s religion was a factor in the investigation,” the report said, in part because officials expected that any suspect in the bombings was likely to be Muslim.
Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism continue the witch-hunt of Tablighi Jamaat over the proposed new mosque – or “Ken’s mega-mosque” as they now dub it – at Abbey Mills in East London. The article contains the welcome news that Asif Shakoor and the Sunni Friends of Newham, who were co-operating with Irfan al-Alawi in the campaign against the mosque, “now profess indifference about the project”.
“When the first Muslim congressman in U.S. history, Keith Ellison (Hakim-Mohammed) of Minnesota, won the 2006 election and was making the regular thank-you-to-my-supporters speech, he allowed his fans to shout, ‘Allahu Akbar!’, the same phrase allegedly used by the 9/11 suicide pilots.
FBI agents have blown the whistle on sickening abuse of prisoners at the notorious Guantánamo Bay camp in Cuba.