Arrests in Lodi raise fears of profiling and entrapment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AttorneysOn June 16th, a federal grand jury indicted Umer Hayat, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, and his son Hamid on charges they lied to FBI agents. The two men were arrested on June 5th and accused of lying during interrogation about a trip Hamid took to Pakistan. The FBI gave the media a far more damaging version of the affidavit against Umer and Hamid Hayat than was finally given to a court in Sacramento.

The affidavit filed Thursday June 9th did not contain any of the sensational material from earlier in the week which said the son’s “potential terrorist targets included hospitals and groceries, and contained names of key individuals and statements about the international origins of ‘hundreds’ of participants in alleged Al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Pakistan.”

In response to the leaked FBI accusations Hamid Hayat’s attorney stated, “my client and his son are only charged with one thing, and that is making a false statement. Though there are very alarming statements in the complaint concerning terrorist organizations … it’s important to note that my client is not charged with being involved in terrorist acts. He has been painted with the brush of being a terrorist and he’s not even charged with it.”

Attorneys say they will challenge the government on this discrepancy, which they see as a deliberate move by the FBI to prejudice the case against their clients.

San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia, 17 June 2005

CAIR: burned Qurans left at Virginia mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group has called on Americans of all faiths to obtain and read the Quran after burned copies of Islam’s revealed text were found outside a Virginia mosque. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said worshippers at the Islamic Center of Blacksburg found a shopping bag filled with burned copies of the Quran in front of the mosque’s door on Saturday. Local police are treating the incident as a possible hate crime.

CAIR new release, 16 June 2005

Che admirer assists Islamist terrorists shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Michael RatnerFront Page Magazine witch-hunts radical lawyer Michael Ratner:

“Since 9/11, Ratner and his comrades have attempted to extend undeserved ‘civil rights’ on Islamist murderers with notable success. On this front, Ratner and the Legal Left have dealt America its few setbacks in the War on Terror. One year ago the U.S. suffered its first major loss in this war, a strategic and propaganda defeat, related to America’s abilities to imprison and interrogate enemies that it captures. Abu Ghraib was a huge propaganda victory, both for Islamists, who used it to ‘justify’ their violent attacks, and for fifth column leftists, who made use of the media’s saturation coverage to portray the U.S. as the world’s biggest oppressor….

“Now, as our memories of 9/11 continue to fade into the past, Michael Ratner has opened another battle against the War on Terror – at Guantanamo Bay. Never mind that almost all of the prisoners at Guantanamo were picked up by U.S. forces doing battle for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or that many of them are, in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld words, ‘the worst of the worst’. Never mind that al-Qaeda members and close associates of Osama bin Laden fill their ranks, or that they’re trained to fabricate tales of abuse to erode their enemy’s morale. Although most of them are violent religious fanatics, and although they’ve been treated better than any captured combatants in world history, Michael Ratner and his lawyers want to provide them the chance to trumpet their ‘grievances’ to a sympathetic press, exploit legal loopholes, and ultimately return to the battlefield.”

And, worse still, he’s an admirer of Che Guevara!

The politics and discourse of humiliation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“By regularly dehumanizing Muslims and demonstrating contempt towards the cornerstone of the Islamic belief system – the Qur’an – the US has given credibility to all those in the Muslim world who believe that Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ is another Western crusade against Islam. It also gives America’s so-called ‘friendly dictators’ in the Middle East a green light to continue to abuse their own citizens.”

Kareem M. Kamel analyses the background to Guantánamo.

Islam Online, 16 June 2005

Rotterdam mosque gutted in latest anti-Muslim arson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AMSTERDAM — A mosque was gutted by an arson attack in the west of Rotterdam in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Police have said the inside of the Shaan-e-Islam prayer room in a warehouse on the Aleidisstraat has been destroyed.

The mosque is linked to the Dutch Muslim association NMA and is mainly frequented by members of the Surinamese community.

Several slogans were clearly visible on the outside walls of the building in news footage of the building on Wednesday morning. The message in one of the slogans read: “geen moskee in Zuid” (no mosque in south). Another was the word “Lonsdale” along with a cross in a circle, a far-right symbol.

Some Dutch right-wingers, particularly teenagers with fascist sympathises, have a preference for clothing made by the Lonsdale clothing company in the UK because the middle letters of the brand name — nsda — call to mind Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, NSDAP.

Another slogan “Theo R.I.P.” which was daubed on the wall of the mosque is a reference to filmmaker and Muslim critic Theo van Gogh.

Expatica, 15 June 2005

Ethnic minorities face climate of fear, says race watchdog

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ethnic minorities face a “climate of fear and suspicion”, with Muslims, asylum-seekers and refugees bearing the brunt of growing hostility to immigrants, an investigation into racial prejudice in Britain has concluded.

A Europe-wide human rights watchdog noted the high numbers of attacks on minorities and said that anti-Muslim discrimination had intensified in the four years since the 11 September attacks. It criticised “negative attitudes” among the police to blacks and Asians, the disproportionate number of non-white prisoners and the exploitation of “racist and xenophobic discourse” by the far right.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), set up by EU heads of state to investigate racism and xenophobia, denounced the use of “provocative, sensationalist and sometimes outright racist language” in the reporting of asylum and immigration.

Independent, 15 June 2005

Download the ECRI report here.

See also Islam Online, 15 June 2005

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

Terrorist sympathiser at Chatham House!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

muslimsinfranceMad Mel denounces the Royal Institute of International Affairs for inviting Tariq Ramadan to address a Chatham House conference on “Is Islam a threat to the west?”

Haven’t they read Daniel Pipes’ informed and balanced account of Professor Ramadan’s career? You know, his meetings with Ayman al-Zawahiri, his financing of Islamist terrorist groups, his plot to destroy western civilisation?

Thank goodness there are commentators like Melanie Phillips who are alert to the danger such Islamist extremists pose to our national security.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 15 June 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