Category Archives: USA

Cleric denies terrorist link to ‘California jihadists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – A cleric yesterday disputed FBI allegations that his 22-year-old grandson received jihadist training at his Islamic seminary near Pakistan’s capital, calling the charges “a pack of lies.”

Qari Saeed-ur Rehman, head of the Jamia Islamia madrassa in Rawalpindi, said his grandson Hamid Hayat and son-in-law Umer Hayat, 47, were wrongfully arrested in California last week, and he dismissed suggestions they were linked to an Al Qaeda cell. ”Hamid Hayat never received religious education at my madrassa,” Rehman, a supporter of Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime and a critic of the US government, said in an interview. “There is no terrorist camp here. We reject such FBI allegations.”

Associated Press, 15 June 2005

See also LA Times, 11 June 2005

For harassment by the FBI, see CAIR news release, 14 July 2005

US senators want to punish ICRC over criticism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Republican Senators believe the US should reconsider funds allocated to the International Committee of the Red Cross in view of its repeated criticism of rights violations by US troops in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a report titled “Are American Interests Being Disserved by International Committee of the Red Cross?”, the Senate Republican Policy Committee called for an audit of funds spent by the ICRC to ensure that American dollars are not being used for lobbying against US interests.

It noted that the US, the largest donor to the international humanitarian group, funds 28% of the group’s budget and has contributed $1.5 billion since 1990.

The report, circulated this week, accused the group of “inaccurately and unfairly” accusing US officials of not adhering to the Geneva Convention.

Continue reading →

At Gitmo, still no day in court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

One year ago, the Supreme Court told the Bush administration that in America, even detainees swept up in the war on terror and held at the military’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp were entitled to a day in court to contest their imprisonment.

Faruq Ali Ahmed is still waiting. A young Yemeni picked up in Pakistan in 2001, he has been held since then despite his insistence that he was doing nothing but teaching the Quran to children when war broke out. He is detained in part on the basis of accusations from a camp snitch who a military officer has denounced as a liar.

Newsday, 15 June 2005

The kids of Guantánamo Bay

Posted on by Bob Pitt

gitmoBritish lawyer Clive Stafford Smith writes:

“The United States has explicitly misled the public about kids being in Guantánamo Bay…. There are apparently at least six juveniles in Guantánamo Bay … and we know that some are being held in Camp V, which is the most onerous of the camps, with treatment that is shameful for adults, let alone children.”

Cageprisoners.com, 15 June 2005

See also here.

The Left and Islam: a ‘modern day Hitler-Stalin pact’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

unholy-allianceCarol Devine-Molin joins the chorus of right-wingers who applaud the role of former US radical David Horowitz in exposing “the collaboration that exists between Islamo-fascists and Leftists”.

Shamefully, these Leftists have opposed “a righteous war to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny, enforce UN resolutions, stabilize a region, and oust a dictator that was clearly funding and harboring terrorists”. By contrast, “the Bush administration and its supporters believe that democratization of the Middle East and concomitant free markets will provide Muslims with greater opportunities and improvement in their overall quality of life. And the majority of Iraqis are clearly on the same wavelength and conducive to the Bush plan”.

ESR, 13 June 2005

Yeah, sure. That must be why the majority of those Iraqis who voted did so for parties calling for an end to the US occupation and opposing the handover of Iraq’s assets to foreign corporations.

But the “Hitler-Stalin pact” business – that rings a bell. Where have we heard that one before? Oh yes, I remember. It was our friend Nick Cohen, berating the Left for engaging with the leaders of faith communities that are under attack: “You have to go back to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 to find a similar accommodation with the dictatorial right.”

Observer, 20 February 2005

So Cohen finds himself in a bloc with the most viciously pro-imperialist, neo-conservative, Islamophobic right-wingers … in accusing the Left of forming a bloc with the Right!

Islamophobe cries calumny

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A recent post here on Tariq Ramadan included, as an example of the sort of company Professor Ramadan’s leftist critics find themselves in, a link to the Fire Tariq Ramadan blog. This prompted an indignant reply from the site’s owner: “Allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ made by goose-stepping Islamist sympathizers to equate any critique of radical Islamists with hatred of an entire group of people. This borders on calumny.”

Fire Tariq Ramadan, 8 June 2005

And this from a blogger whose response to Tariq Ramadan’s observation that Muslims have an increasing presence in Europe was: “I’m sure Theo van Gogh is happy about that. So are the victims of the gang-rapes in Sweden.” (See here.)

Bizarrely we are told that the Islamophobia Watch collective “must be Islamophobes themselves, considering they probably have a low opinion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali”.

Well, speaking personally, I have an extremely low opinion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. However, given that she has publicly renounced Islam and spends her time attacking her former co-religionists, it’s difficult to see how contempt for this appalling right-winger, who plays a major role in stoking up anti-Muslim racism in the Netherlands, amounts to Islamophobia.

Postscript:

For a reply from Fire Tariq Ramadan, see here.

What were they thinking?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James Zogby assesses the official US delegation to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) “Conference on Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Intolerance” convened last week in Cordoba, Spain:

“For the most part, the participants appeared to have been selected for reasons having more to do with domestic political patronage and ideological purity than with the purposes of the conference itself. Most were political conservatives, including the group’s lone Catholic clergyman. One of the delegation’s Jewish representatives has been known to argue vigorously against Israel becoming a ‘nation of all its citizens’ or a ‘democracy’ since that would ‘dilute’ the state. Another appeared to have been selected mainly because he switched his support from Gore in 2000 to Bush in 2004. And the delegation’s only Muslim representative was an individual who has recently aligned himself with the far-right against all of the US’s Muslim organizations arguing that he alone stands against terrorism, which, presumably, he believes, the others support.”

Media Monitors Network, 14 June 2005

US suspects ‘face torture overseas’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It is no secret that the US military operates detention centres around the world for the interrogation of terror suspects. The treatment of prisoners in these places – including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq – has come in for intense scrutiny and evidence of human rights violations has been widely reported.

But less well-documented is the process by which terror suspects are sent by the United States for interrogation by security officials in other countries. This is known as “rendition” and is becoming increasingly controversial because many of these countries – including Syria and Egypt – are accused of using torture on prisoners, not least by the US State Department.

BBC News, 14 June 2005

Gulag

Court rejects Jose Padilla’s appeal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

chargepadillaThe Supreme Court rejected on Monday a request by Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for three years as a suspected enemy combatant, for an immediate decision on his detention instead of waiting for a federal appeals court to rule. His attorneys asked the justices to decide whether President Bush has the power to seize U.S. citizens in civilian settings on American soil and subject them to indefinite military detention without criminal charges or a trial.

Reuters, 13 June 2005

Rebecca ‘Oops’ Bynum pays tribute to David Horowitz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As we confront Islamists and their fellow travelers … we should remember that the choice between Islam and reason was made long ago…. The question before us now is, will Islam win against reason today? Let us hope that with valiant truth seekers like David Horowitz in our corner, the light of reason will prevail and go on to eventually triumph in the end.”

So writes Jihad Watch’s news editor Rebecca Bynum in a gushing review of David Horowitz’s memoirs. Yup, the same Rebecca Bynum who derives amusement from the fact that US forces target Al-Jazeera’s offices and kill its journalists (see here). Such a sensitive soul. Who could be better qualified to pay tribute to the “intimate immediacy” of Horowitz’s book?

Front Page Magazine, 13 June 2005