Is it Islam that’s ‘Inherently Intolerant’ or is it American Society?

An account of the sentencing of Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen sentenced to 15 years for aiding al-Qaida.

By Madeleine Dubus

June 30, 2010

On June 9 at 3:30 p.m. over a hundred people lined the halls outside a courtroom at the U.S. District Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in New York City to witness the sentencing of Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen accused of providing support to al-Qaida.

A court clerk paced past the line, occasionally yelling to the crowd that the courtroom could only fit 50 people. Those who stood in line but couldn’t make it into the courtroom had to go to a second room to watch the proceedings on a live video stream. Those that filtered off the elevator to stand in line were an eclectic mix of women in hijaab, college students, and young professionals who left work early to attend. Eventually, a third room was opened to accommodate the overflow of viewers. Some of those who came to Hashmi’s sentencing knew him at one point, before all this began. Others were strangers who came to simply show solidarity.

While Hashmi’s supporters and other viewers waited for the courtroom to open, Faisal Hashmi, Fahad’s older brother, walked up and down the line greeting friends and family. Faisal is a tall man, but on this day he walked with his shoulders slumped, diminishing his stature. He carried his one-year-old son, pausing frequently to kiss his cheek and whisper in his ear. Faisal’s son nestled next to his father’s long beard, but since Fahad Hashmi has been in captivity for more than three years, he has never met his nephew.

Hashmi is something of a guinea pig in post-Sept. 11 criminal justice. He has spent the past three years in solitary confinement, the last two–and-a-half under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), which allow the prison to limit or entirely cut off his communication to other prisoners, his lawyers, and keep him under 24 hour video surveillance. Hashmi decided to plead guilty on April 24 to one count of supplying material support to Al-Qaeda, realizing that pleading guilty would cap his maximum sentence at 15 years compared to the 70 years he could face were he to plead innocent and lose.

Hashmi’s story goes back to 2006, when he was arrested at Heathrow airport. At the time, he was a grad student in London, and he had granted an old acquaintance, Junaid Babar, permission to stay in his flat. The government alleges that Babar brought luggage containing “military gear” used by al-Qaida into Hashmi’s apartment and used his mobile phone to call other conspirators in Pakistan.

Later, Babar was arrested for providing material support to third-ranking al-Qaida members in Pakistan. But in a deal with the FBI to greatly reduce his sentence, Babar became an informant and named numerous acquaintances he had contact with in recent years, including Hashmi. Today, Babar is free and will most likely spend the rest of his life in the Witness Relocation Program.

Meanwhile, Hashmi’s future is grimmer. The severity of his treatment and the extent of his solitary confinement, before his case even went to trial, have called attention to the United States’ ethics in terrorism cases and what constitutes torture.

Eventually, those in the courtroom were seated and quiet. Hashmi, flanked by his two lawyers, entered. He looked gaunt and skinny and wore a long white Kurta shirt. His head was adorned with a simple, embroidered Kufi, the traditional cap worn by Muslim men.

Hashmi’s lawyer, David Ruhnke, spoke first and cited the time Hashmi has already served in prison. Ruhnke argued what occurred in his London flat was not intended conspiracy, and that Babar was the primary player in the case.

While his lawyer spoke, Hashmi hunched at the defendant’s table arranging papers in quick, halted movements. He was preparing to recite his personal statement, waiting to speak publically for the first time in years. Within seconds of beginning, the judge, Loretta A. Preska, asked Hashmi to stop and slow down.

“I have a bad habit of speaking fast,” Hashmi told Preska. “I have no one to talk to because of the [special administrative] measures.”

Hashmi began again. First, he thanked his supporters and asked Allah and his family for forgiveness for the pain he’s caused saying, “I pray inshallahthat I will return to you in a better condition.”

Only a few sentences into his statement, Hashmi broke down in tears.

“I have made many, many mistakes,” he cried.

Once he was able to speak again, Hashmi said he has a better understanding of himself and began to relate what happened in London. When Babar came to his door Hashmi says that at first he told him he could not stay with him, but Babar “imposed himself.”

“I was in a strange land,” Hashmi said, and said that despite not wanting Babar to stay, Hashmi says he felt Babar was a familiar face. Islam teaches the importance of charity, and Hashmi says he felt he was obligated to help a fellow Muslim.

What he didn’t know, Hashmi says, were Babar’s full intentions. Hashmi contends that he believed him when he said that the phone calls Babar made were to Babar’s wife in Pakistan regarding the couple’s sick daughter. He believed Babar’s story of an ailing daughter and lent him a conservative amount of money to help. He says there was only a small amount of clothing with Babar that could be considered gear for terrorists, not the suitcases full that Babar himself alleged.

Ultimately, Hashmi concludes his greatest mistake was being under “the false impression that it was something Islam allowed me to do.” He since realized that Babar was an “evil man” and that he was not obligated to show him charity under Islamic law.

Hashmi emphasized his connection to his American roots and community and his regret for doing anything that opposed American law. He also touched on the oppression facing Muslims in America today, from the extreme treatment in his own experiences to the more widespread surveillance, suspicion, and discrimination Muslim-Americans face daily. He, like many others in the Muslim-American community, hope this will change.

At the end of his speech, as he succumbed to tears once more, his voice faltering, Hashmi said, “The one who is truly imprisoned is the one whose heart is away from Allah.”

Once Hashmi finished his speech, prosecutors argued that he was a product of Islam, an “ideology of intolerance,” and the sentence he receives should serve as a public deterrence.

Loretta A. Preska, the presiding federal trial judge, gave Hashmi the maximum sentence, 15 years in prison with three years supervised probation.

Hashmi’s comments about intolerance toward Muslim-Americans today resonated with many attendees. Hashmi was pleading with Americans to distance themselves from the fear and hatemongering targeting Muslims that has become common since Sept. 11. After all, according to a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of Americans believe Islam encourages violence more than other religions, a statistic that is surprisingly higher than it was in 2002, just after Sept. 11, when it was 25 percent.

This expresses an alarming trend that discrimination and misconception of Muslim culture has built since Sept. 11, implying that it did not derive from immediate spite after the attacks, but from subsequent years of creating a society where vilifying Muslims is expected, is even considered a responsibility for the sake of security. Though prosecutors seemed to agree with the 38 percent of Americans, indicating that Islam is an inherently violent religion, Americans should consider whether it is the post-Sept. 11 culture that has become the product of an “ideology of intolerance.”

Today the country we live in is not what America should be, a place where suspicion and prejudice is an excuse to forget that all men are created equal, to torture and depreciate, and to put lives to waste.

Madeleine Dubus is a staff writer for Campus Progress. She graduated from the New School this spring.

http://www.campusprogress.org/opinions/5804/is-it-islam-that-s-inherently-intolerant-or-is-it-american-society

A License to Witch-Hunt

A Supreme Court decision on the Patriot Act shows where Barack Obama stands.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/23/license-to-witch-hunt

June 23, 2010

THE U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a part of the USA PATRIOT Act that criminalizes free speech as “terrorism”–and the Obama administration, which was expected to stop its predecessor’s assault on the Constitution, is celebrating the decision as a victory.

The 6-3 decision of the court, announced June 21, upholds a portion of the 2001 Patriot Act that classifies some speech and other “intangible assistance” as material aid to terrorists.

The justices agreed with the arguments of the Obama administration–specifically, its choice to sit on the Supreme Court, former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who made the White House’s case before the court.

The administration opposed a lawsuit brought by the Humanitarian Law Project that challenged the law’s provision that prohibits material support–specifically the giving of “expert advice or assistance”–to groups designated as “terrorist” by the U.S. State Department.

The law project wanted to provide advice to two groups–the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party–on peacefully resolving disputes and working with the United Nations. But in his opinion justifying the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the motives of the Humanitarian Law Project didn’t matter, and any assistance to a group on the State Department’s terrorism list represented “material support.”

The consequences of the ruling are far-ranging, as the New York Times pointed out [2]:

The court at least clarified that acts had to be coordinated with terror groups to be illegal, but many forms of assistance may still be a criminal act, including filing a brief against the government in a terror-group lawsuit.

Academic researchers doing field work in conflict zones could be arrested for meeting with terror groups and discussing their research, as could journalists who write about the activities and motivations of these groups, or the journalists’ sources. The FBI has questioned people it suspected as being sources for a New York Times article about terrorism, and threatened to arrest them for providing material support.

In a strong dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, supported by Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the court’s majority was too willing to believe the government’s argument that national security concerns required restrictions on speech and had “failed to insist upon specific evidence, rather than general assertion.”

As David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Times, “This decision basically says the First Amendment allows making peacemaking and human rights advocacy a crime.”

On an individual level, the ruling strengthens the government’s ability to pursue the kind of witch-hunts carried out against Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian or Pakistani student Syed Fahad Hashmi, two of the approximately 150 defendants that the government has charged with violating the material-support provision since 2001.

In Hashmi’s case, after enduring nearly four years in solitary confinement, he agreed to plead guilty to a single count of material support for the “crime” of helping an acquaintance store and transport ponchos and waterproof socks that allegedly ended up with al-Qaeda organizations in Pakistan. For this, he has been sentenced to another 15 years in prison.

But the lawyers who argued the case pointed out that the impact goes further–the Patriot Act’s material-support provision is so vague that humanitarian groups and journalists and their sources can be ensnared.

Some legal theorists believe the law is so broad that it could be interpreted as criminalizing any speech that could be said to give legitimacy to a terrorist group–for example, those who support the right of Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority (after being democratically elected), even though the organization is on the State Department list. That’s because, as Breyer pointed out in his dissent, the law could have made a distinction between “when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions” and when they don’t–but it fails to do so.

“Instead,” as lawyer Wendy Kaminer noted in The Atlantic [3], “the majority gave the administration a blank check to criminalize political speech specifically intended to advance peace.”

The ruling also fails to acknowledge that there are almost no checks on the ability of the State Department, under the direction of the Secretary of State, to designate groups as “terrorist”–and that those decisions are often based on political calculations.

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THIS RULING will be seen as another win for the Supreme Court’s right wing, now led by Chief Justice Roberts, a Bush appointee. But it’s also claimed as a victory by the Obama administration–and in particular, its former Solicitor General and current Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who argued the government’s case in February.

Kagan has been criticized as too liberal by some conservative Republican senators, but this case shows she fits in squarely with the majority of justices who support expanding presidential power at the expense of our rights.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons she was chosen to join the court. She agrees with the Obama administration’s fundamentally conservative position on these “war on terror” issues.

Barack Obama was expected by millions of people who voted for him to challenge George Bush’s shredding of the Constitution. But a year and a half into his presidency, not only is the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay still up and running, but the Obama White House has explicitly upheld Bush administration policies on trial by military commissions, rendition of prisoners to allied regimes where torture is legal, warrantless wiretapping and the use of executive powers to hinder the prosecution of U.S. officials for illegal acts.

One of the latest outrages is the case of Yemeni detainee Mohamed Hassan Odaini. The government has concluded that Odaini did nothing wrong–but the Obama administration has refused to release him, and instead has fought vehemently in court to keep him imprisoned at Guantánamo. As Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald wrote [4]:

[T]he Obama administration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last eight years, since he’s 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong…

If you’re willing to work to keep a person whom you know is innocent imprisoned, what aren’t you willing to do? What decent human being wouldn’t be repulsed by this? I don’t care how many times someone chants “Pragmatism” or “The Long Game” or whatever other all-purpose justifying mantras have been marketed to venerate the current president; these are repellent acts that have no justification.

Of course, none of this is new for the Obama administration; it’s consistent with their course of conduct from the start.

The lesson here is that Barack Obama and the Democrats may have talked a different talk about civil liberties on the campaign trail, but they are committed to the same vicious policies as their predecessors. The Obama administration is willing to curtail all of our civil liberties in pursuit in the name of what was once Bush’s “war on terror”–but is now wholly Obama’s.

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1. [1] http://socialistworker.org/department/Opinion/Editorials

2. [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22tue1.html

3. [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/material-support-bans-and-the-criminalization-of-political-advocacy/58469/

4. [4] http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/pundits/index.html

5. [5] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

NYC Case a Wake-Up Call for Muslims

May 6, 2010

by Aisha Gawad

I was raised in the Southern United States, reciting the pledge of allegiance every morning, memorizing the Bill of Rights, and listening to country singers croon about good ole American values. Like many young Muslim-Americans, I felt just like my blonde, blue-eyed classmates until the events of September 11 made me suddenly and irrevocably different.

At first, it didn’t change much about me. The pledge of allegiance resonated in the same way and the Bill of Rights remained an untouchable beacon of justice. But over the past eight years, I feel like I’ve lost my footing. Patriotism has become synonymous with Security, and Security has become synonymous with two unjustified wars and a host of laws and administrative measures that seem to fly in the face of the American values I was taught to hold so dear.

I feel like many of us have been trying to weather the storm, to lay low until “Muslim” is no longer a dirty word in this country. But something has to wake us up to the fact that this isn’t about 9/11 and it isn’t about Iraq. It’s about us asserting our rights as Americans and as human beings.

Over the past two years, I feel like I’ve had a wave of wake up calls that keep me from falling into a routine of passivity. Last week, the news of Fahad Hashmi’s plea deal came more like a slap in the face.

Unfortunately for Fahad, he’s become a symbol of the extent to which Islamophobia and racism plagues this country.

Fahad was arrested in June 2006 after he allowed an acquaintance, Junaid Babar, to stay in his London apartment for two weeks. Babar apparently had with him bags containing ponchos and socks which allegedly were delivered to Al Qaeda members. Once Babar was arrested by U.S. authorities, he took a plea deal and was more than willing to tell police what they wanted to hear in order to save his own skin, including implicating Fahad.

Since Fahad’s arrest, he has been kept in solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. The isolation in which he has been kept (permitted under the atrocious Special Administrative Measures passed in October 2006) amounts to psychological torture.

His trial was set to begin on April 28th, but its fairness was questioned before it even began. As his brother Faisal Hashmi writes in a public statement on behalf of his family, Fahad “faced the prospect of going before an anonymous jury based in part on the prosecution’s ugly assertion that his friends and family were as dangerous as they alleged Fahad was. Furthermore, the case against Fahad relied on secret evidence based in large part on the testimony of a government informant with a history of lying. The material support statute under which he was charged is notoriously flawed and the subject of outrage from civil libertarians. It enables the government to take a grain of truth and bury it in an ocean of innuendo and outright lies.”

So on the eve of his trial, Fahad changed his innocenet plea to a guilty one and accepted a deal from the prosecution in which he now faces just a single charge of material support to terrorism. He will serve 15 years in prison with credit for time served.

A “Free Fahad” (www.freefahad.com) campaign has been waged for years by activists outraged by the treatment he has faced and what it stands for. For them, this is surely a hard prospect to swallow – that Fahad was forced to accept the government’s assertion of his guilt in order to escape extended solitary confinement and decades in prison. But we cannot expect him to make a martyr of himself; the plea deal was realistically the best option he could hope for.

The sad truth for him is that for many brothers like Fahad, this is the best they can hope for. If this reality doesn’t wake us up as a community, then I don’t know what will.

I don’t want to quietly weather the storm. I want to put an end to injustice now. It is our responsibility as Muslims, as Americans, and as human beings to come out of hiding and assert our rights. I’m not asking for much. I just want to feel truth in the words I was taught to memorize in elementary school.

Contact the author:

Email: aisha.gawad@gmail.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ArabRaptor

Published in the Elan Magazine:

http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/site/blog_detail/nyc_case_a_wake_up_call_for_muslims-nid646486841/

Published on Thursday, April 29, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Fahad Hashmi and Terrorist Hysteria in US Courts

by Andy Worthington

In America’s post-9/11 zeal for elevating terror suspects to the status of supermen, existentially threatening the very life of the United States in an unprecedented manner (rather than managing one massive attack on the US through the intelligence agencies’ inability to communicate with one another), Guantánamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s torture dungeons are not the only places where the rule of law was shredded.

With the exception of Guantánamo, none of the prisoners held in the facilities mentioned above had, or have had access to lawyers, or to the full protections of the Geneva Conventions, but even in dealing with the cases of the men in Guantánamo, who have secured three Supreme Court victories in their favor, judges are not empowered to order the release of prisoners who win their habeas corpus petitions, and justice for some will only be delivered, if at all, in a trial by Military Commission — a second-tier judicial system, exclusively for foreign terror suspects, that was recently revived by the Obama administration and by Congress, even though its earlier incarnations were an almost unmitigated failure.

Opponents of the Military Commissions have long pointed out that federal courts have a proven track record of successfully prosecuting terrorists. This is a powerful argument against the Commissions, of course, which look set to face innumerable unknown and unexpected hurdles as they stumble back to life this week. However, to cast a critical eye on the federal courts, for a change, terror suspects face a system that often seems to have been specifically designed to hand down punitive sentences for “associations” with terrorists that range from the flimsy to the risible. This was demonstrated on Tuesday, when Syed Fahad Hashmi, a US citizen, accepted a plea bargain and admitted to conspiring to provide material support to terrorism on the eve of his trial.

Describing the breadth of the material support charges endorsed by Congress, Jacob Sullum explained in the most recent edition of Reason magazine:

Under the law, it is a crime to provide an organization on the State Department’s [List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations] with “training,” defined as “instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill”; “expert advice or assistance,” defined as “advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge”; “personnel,” which means any person, including oneself, who works under the organization’s “direction or control”; or “service,” which is not defined at all.

Or, as Jeanne Theoharis described it in an article in Slate on the eve of Hashmi’s intended trial:

Material-support laws are the black box of domestic terrorism prosecutions, into which all sorts of constitutionally protected activities can be thrown and classified as suspect. The law defines material support as the knowing provision of “any service, training, [or] expert advice or assistance” to a group designated by the federal government as a foreign terrorist organization. The prosecution need not show an actual criminal act, just the knowing “support” to a group designated a terrorist organization. It’s a prosecutor’s dream: You don’t need to show evidence of a plot or even a desire to help terrorists to win a conviction — a low bar the standards of traditional criminal prosecution would not allow.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have relied on the statute’s vague nature — what the Bush Department of Justice described as “strategic overinclusiveness” — to criminalize a wide range of activities. Operating by the logic of preventive prosecution, material-support charges often target small acts and religious and political associations, which take on sinister meaning as ostensible manifestations of forthcoming terrorism.

In Hashmi’s case, it seems probable that he accepted a plea bargain on the eve of his trial because, as a result, he will receive a sentence of 15 years compared to the 70 years that he was facing if convicted. This is in spite of the fact that the only charges against him are that in 2004, while he was living in London as a student, Junaid Babar, an acquaintance of his from Queens, who stayed with him for two weeks, “had luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks (what the government terms ‘military gear’) and that later Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of al-Qaeda in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Babar borrowed Hashmi’s cell phone and then allegedly used it to call other conspirators in terrorist plots.”

The quote above is from the article by Jeanne Theoharis, who taught Hashmi in a seminar on human rights at Brooklyn College in 2002, prior to him receiving a B.A. and then traveling to London to take a master’s degree at London Metropolitan University. Theoharis also explained that Hashmi was “[a] critic of US foreign policy and its treatment of Muslims, [who] held the rather optimistic view that you could change people’s minds by talking and arguing with them. He could often be found in the hall before and after class debating other students. For my seminar, he wrote a research paper on the abridgement of the civil liberties of Muslim-American groups in the United States after 9/11.” She added, poignantly, “Now it is his rights that have been violated.”

Even if the government’s case was genuinely sound, rather than being a chilling demonstration of why offering hospitality to an acquaintance — any acquaintance — should be avoided after 9/11, there are serious doubts about the reliability of the supposed evidence incriminating Hashmi in providing space for his house guest’s luggage and allowing him to borrow his phone, because it comes directly from Junaid Babar, who, as Theoharis also explained, “was himself subsequently arrested on material support charges and has agreed to testify in a number of cases in exchange for a much-reduced sentence.”

Moreover, Hashmi has been treated appallingly since he was first arrested in the UK on June 6, 2006, after the US authorities requested his extradition. In the UK, he was imprisoned as a Category A, high security prisoner in Belmarsh prison (where other foreign terror suspects are held, pending deportation, on the basis of secret evidence) until March 2007, when the High Court approved his extradition. Since his arrival in the US, he has been held in conditions that are only marginally less severe those under which US “enemy combatants” Jose Padilla, Ali al-Marri and Yaser Hamdi were held during the Bush administration, when each was imprisoned without charge or trial in strict solitary confinement in the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and subjected to variations on the administration’s torture program that, in Padilla’s case, were so severe that he apparently lost his mind.

As Jeanne Theoharis explained:

Hashmi’s pre-trial detention — nearly three years of solitary confinement –has been served in severe isolation under Special Administrative Measures imposed by the Bush administration and then renewed by the Obama administration. The federal government created SAMS in 1996, at first to target gang leaders and mafia bosses in cases where “there is a substantial risk that an inmate’s communication or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.” After 9/11, the DoJ relaxed the standard for imposing a SAM and expanded their use. In Hashmi’s case, the government cited his “proclivity for violence” as the reason for these harsh measures — even though he has no criminal record and is not being charged with committing an act of violence.

The result is that Hashmi is allowed contact only with his lawyers and his immediate family — one visit by one family member every other week for one and a half hours. His cell is electronically monitored 24 hours a day, so he showers and relieves himself in view of the camera. He cannot receive or send mail except with his immediate family. He cannot talk to other prisoners through the walls or take part in group prayer. He is allowed one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. These conditions have degraded his health — in pre-trial hearings, he appears increasingly withdrawn and less focused — and have interfered with his ability to participate in his own defense.

Before the trial, Theoharis and Fahad Hashmi’s many supporters had pointed out how the prosecution was trying to rig the proceedings, with the government asking for jurors to be anonymous and kept under extra security (a request that was granted by Judge Loretta Preska) in a filing in which the government’s lawyers claimed that “jurors will see in the gallery of the courtroom a significant number of the defendant’s supporters, naturally leading to juror speculation that at least some of these spectators might share the defendant’s violent radical Islamic leanings.”

With this in mind, Fahad Hashmi may have decided that a plea bargain provided his only opportunity to avoid a 70-year prison sentence, but whatever the truth, his treatment over the last four years, and the paucity of the evidence against him, appears only to demonstrate that the overreaction of the Bush years in relation to the perceived terrorist threat is as exaggerated as ever.

Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files [26], the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in America’s illegal prison. For more information, visit his blog here [27].

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/29-7

Pakistani-Born New Yorker Faces Terrorism Trial

Carolyn Weaver | New York23 April 2010

They call it “Radio Free Fahad,” the vigil held by friends and supporters of Syed “Fahad” Hashmi every two weeks outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The 29-year-old Hashmi, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who grew up in New York, has been held here in pretrial solitary confinement since 2007.

Every two weeks outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, friends and supporters gather to hold a vigil for New Yorker Syed “Fahad” Hashmi, an American citizen who has been held in solitary confinement for nearly three years.

The 29-year-old – the first U.S. citizen ever to be extradited from the United Kingdom to the U.S. – stands accused by federal prosecutors on four counts of providing material support to al-Qaida.

Fahad’s brother Faisal attends every vigil together with their parents, Arifa, a housewife and Anwar, a retired city accountant.

“My brother is charged with material support to terrorism, basically saying that he knowingly allowed someone to stay that had ponchos and socks in their luggage which were to be used for terrorism,” Faisal Hashmi said in an interview.

In 2004, an acquaintance from New York, Junaid Babar, stayed with Fahad Hashmi during a two-week visit to London, where Hashmi was a graduate student in international relations. “This person showed up in London and didn’t have a place to stay, and basically called my brother to ask to stay with my brother,” said Faisal Hashmi.

According to court filings, Babar brought with him a suitcase containing raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks that he later delivered to an al-Qaida leader in South Waziristan, a region in Pakistan. He also used Hashmi’s cell phone to contact another al-Qaida member.

Babar pleaded guilty in 2004, and became a cooperating witness, testifying in terrorism cases in Britain and Canada in exchange for favorable treatment. He’s expected to be the main witness against Hashmi, whose trial opens April 28.

“This case is a fabrication,” Faisal Hashmi said. “There is no evidence that my brother had any knowledge of the sort. No charges were ever brought against my brother in 2004 by the British, in 2005. Not until 2006 were charges brought up to say that my brother had knowledge of socks in somebody else’s luggage,” he said.

Hashmi was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2006 as he was preparing to board a plane to Pakistan. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2007, after being held for months in the general population in a British prison.

His case has become a cause célèbre among liberal justice groups who object as much to the extreme conditions of Hashmi’s pretrial confinement in the U.S. as to the charges. Hashmi is alone 24 hours a day, under constant video monitoring. He has no access to sunlight and may not communicate with anyone other than his lawyers and immediate family.

Biweekly visits are restricted to his mother, father or brother, but even those have been denied in the last few months, according to Faisal Hashmi. He says his brother’s isolation amounts to “torture,” noting that Senator John McCain said solitary confinement was the worst cruelty he experienced as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

Political science professor Jeanne Theoharis taught Hashmi at Brooklyn College and helped to organize the campaign to publicize his case, including a recent fundraiser in Manhattan. She says the conditions of his jailing are tantamount to a Guantanamo being permitted in downtown New York, even as President Obama has vowed to close the prison in Cuba.

“These kinds of conditions are inhumane, they violate international standards, they compromise people’s ability and Mr. Hashmi’s ability, to participate in his own defense,” she said. “And frankly, they are un-American.”

Tony Barkow, a former U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, disagrees. He noted that courts have consistently found that such conditions do not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” in American law. “Whatever the psychological literature or opinion might be, the law is that those conditions don’t violate the Constitution and don’t violate the law and don’t violate his rights,” he said.

The prosecution has argued in court that Hashmi’s total isolation is necessary to protect the public, by cutting off any chance that he could communicate violent plans to the outside. Barkow says that is the correct thing to do.

“Here is someone who provided assistance and resources to Al Qaida and who combines that with a belief that western governments should be overthrown,” he said. “So, on its face that is a dangerous person who, if you accept those allegations to be true, is someone the law enforcement community has to do something about.”

As for whether the charges against Hashmi represent a prosecutorial overreach, Barkow said, “They’ll have to show one way or another that he knew what the items were and where they were going: Either that he knew the ultimate recipient was Al-Qaida, or that he knew the person staying in his apartment was affiliated with Al Qaida.”

He added, “I recognize that the material support statues are very broad. And that’s deliberate. Congress wanted the statute to sweep as broadly as possible, consistent with individual rights, in order to choke off the provision of resources to these organizations.”

But according to Emily Berman, counsel in the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, “The prosecution and everything [Hashmi's] been subjected to seem wildly out of proportion with the allegations against him.”

“Much of the evidence is classified and there may be something we don’t know,” she said, “but certainly this man was not a linchpin in the Al Quaida organization. By all accounts, he was a good student and a leader in his community. And the guy whose allegations are serving as the foundation of the government’s case has made a deal with the government to testify in order to have a reduced sentence himself.”

Hashmi is not charged with helping al-Qaida or any terrorist organization directly, but prosecutors have noted that he belonged to al-Muhajiroun, a now-banned British group that they say promotes the violent overthrow of Western society. They also allege that Hashmi threatened the lives of U.S. and British soldiers and officials when he was arrested.

Hashmi’s family and friends say he is a believer in debate, not violence, however. They contend that he is being prosecuted for his beliefs and opinions rather than for criminal acts. They say he was not the kind of man who would have supported violence.

“My fear is they’re going to use his politics to say that proves intent,” says Jeanne Theoharis. She remembers her former student as “respectful,” a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy, who listened to those who did not agree with him. She said his pretrial isolation makes no sense. “Babar was arrested in 2004, but Fahad did not get arrested for two years. If he’s this dangerous person, why did [the British] let him stay out there for two years?”

Some studies have found severe psychological deterioration after only two weeks in solitary confinement. Hashmi’s supporters say that his three years in solitary confinement could make him unable to participate in his own defense. He could be sentenced to 60 years in prison if convicted on all four counts of conspiracy and material support to terrorism.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/Pakistani-born-New-Yorker-Faces-Terrorism-Trial-91926319.html

Prosecutor Seeks Anonymous Jury in New York “Terror” Trial

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Apr 22 (IPS) – U.S. Justice Department lawyers petitioned a federal court Wednesday to begin a controversial terror-related trial in New York City with an “anonymous jury” in order to protect the jurors, lawyers and court officials.
The motion asks that the jurors hearing the case of U.S. citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi for conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda should not be required to disclose their names, addresses or places of employment, and that they be kept under the watchful eyes of the U.S. Marshal Service, which will provide extra security services.

Anonymous juries have been used in three terror-related cases in this same court, including the conviction of lawyer Lynn Stewart for passing a message from her terror-suspect client to his colleagues.

If Judge Loretta Preska grants the motion, jury selection would proceed under a process known as voir dire, referring to giving a true verdict.

The voir dire process in the U.S. is controversial. The amount of privacy that the potential jurors are afforded when questioned raises the issue of the definition of “impartial jury”.

Some question whether the intensive questioning of potential jurors looks not just for inherent bias but for a potential to be emotionally swayed. Proponents argue that this method gives both sides more confidence in the verdict.

But one of Hashmi’s most ardent defenders – Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, Hashmi’s teacher at Brooklyn College – terms the government’s action “egregious”.

“There’s so many ways this is egregious – not the least of which is that it speaks to how the U.S. Attorney’s office views Muslims in the audience and countenances racist speculation,” she says.

Theoharis referred to the petition by the U.S. Attorney: “It is likely that the jurors will see in the gallery of the courtroom a significant number of the defendant’s supporters, naturally leading to juror speculation that at least some of these spectators might share the defendant’s violent radical Islamic leanings.”

But Theoharis says there are no demonstrations planned for the first day of trial. “This is just about ratcheting up the fear of the jurors. (Hashmi’s lawyers) will obviously contest the government’s motion, saying that in a democracy people are allowed to come and watch court. But of course the judge is very sympathetic to the government and will likely agree to do so.”

Clearly, she says, “this is proof that our organizing is getting to them – but also that, in this climate, they will try to use that to increase the fear (and secrecy) of the jury. They are using this activism – and people exercising their right to watch the process – to make the jury scared and gain a conviction.”

Theoharis is not without allies. In response to the government’s anonymous jury motion, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said, “The case against Fahad Hashmi in itself raises many red flags related to the violation of his rights, prosecutorial overreach under the material support statute, and the unduly punitive and restrictive special administrative measures under which he has been kept without trial for nearly three years.”

CCR said “The government’s call for the jurors at his trial…to be anonymous and kept under extra security because of the attention and political activism these issues have drawn to the case is a clear attempt to influence the jury by creating a sense of fear for their safety and to paint Mr. Hashmi as already guilty.”

“The government is manipulating the fact that many individuals and human rights organisations are supporting Mr. Hashmi and raising important criticisms of his treatment in detention in order to gain a conviction. This is deplorable,” the group said.

He has been held in New York since the Memorial Day weekend, 2007.

In the Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York, Hashmi, a Muslim, is not allowed to pray with others of his faith. He is on a 23-hour solitary-confinement lockdown and 24-hour surveillance including when he showers and goes to the bathroom. He was not allowed family visits for months.

Now, he can see one person for an hour and a half, every other week. Visits are through a thick glass. No touching or hugging is permissible or possible.

Hashmi is permitted to write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but cannot use more than three pieces of paper per letter. Within his own cell, he is restricted in his movements and he is not allowed to talk to guards or other inmates.

Hashmi is forbidden any contact – directly or through his attorneys – with the news media. He can read newspapers, but only those portions approved by his jailers, and not until 30 days after publication. He is forbidden to listen to news radio stations or to watch television news channels.

He is also under 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside his cell. He is allowed one hour of recreation every day – which is periodically denied. He is not given fresh air but must exercise alone inside a cage.

Prof. Theoharis, who has attended the hearings in his case, told us that Hashmi’s “mental health appears to be deteriorating”.

His attorneys are concerned that his extreme isolation “will cause lasting psychological, emotional, and physical damage” to their client.

Hashmi’s friend Babar has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support of al Qaeda and has agreed to serve as a government witness in terrorism trials in Britain, Canada, and at Hashmi’s trial. The Justice Department says Babar is the “centerpiece” of its case against Hashmi. In return, under a plea bargain, Babar will likely get a reduced sentence.

If Hashmi is convicted, he could face up to 70 years behind bars.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51157

Here in New York City a young man is being held under conditions that are described in international law as severe torture. This prisoner, named Fahad Hashmi, has not been convicted of any crime and has no prior criminal record. Yet he has been held in almost total extended isolation for the past three years.

Hashmi is 29 years old, a U.S. citizen, a graduate of Brooklyn College, a Muslim and originally from Pakistan. He is being held on the flimsiest possible charges at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

Hashmi is scheduled to go on trial on April 28 at Federal Court. He is charged with two counts of providing material support and two counts of making a contribution of goods or services — to al Qaeda.

The government case and charges against Hashmi are surreal. Supposedly he allowed an acquaintance, who had waterproof socks and ponchos in a duffel bag, to stay at his apartment for two weeks. The government alleges that the acquaintance later delivered the socks and ponchos to a member of al Qaeda.

Blocks from the busiest, most densely occupied corner of Manhattan, blocks from Wall Street, Chinatown and major court buildings, this young man is being held in total pre-trial isolation in a small cell with 24-hour video surveillance.

According to the Special Administrative Measures imposed on him, he does not have a right to a lawyer of his choice, cannot write letters to friends, make calls or participate in group prayers. He must eat alone and cannot see or communicate with other prisoners. He cannot listen to the radio or even read a current newspaper.

Bill Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, writes that, “Once accused of connections with terrorism or al Qaeda, the U.S. Constitution and international human rights apparently do not apply. Torture by the U.S. is allowed. Pre-trial punishment is allowed. The presumption of innocence goes out the window. Counsel of choice is not allowed. Communication with news media is not allowed.”

Faisal Hashmi, Fahad’s brother, said regarding the charges: “My brother is facing 70 years for socks in someone’s luggage.”

A determined group of primarily students and young people called Theaters Against War — Thaw Act holds a bi-weekly vigil on Mondays from 6 to 7 p.m. in front of the MCC at 150 Park Row, where Hashmi is being held. At each vigil a rotating group of artists and actors gives a presentation. The next vigil is Monday, April 26 — two days before Hashmi’s trial is scheduled to begin.

The International Action Center is mobilizing to attend the trial starting on Wednesday, April 28, at the Federal Court Building at 500 Pearl St. and is urging solidarity with the Monday vigil in front of MCC prison on April 26.

For more information on Fahad Hashmi’s case, see www.freefahad.com.

For information on the bi-weekly Monday vigils, see www.thawaction.org.

________________________

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org

New Yorker Accused of Helping al-Qaida About to Go on Trial

by Farah Akbar
Apr 2010

New Yorker Syed “Fahad” Hashmi, an American citizen who has been held in solitary confinement for nearly two and half years at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, is finally set to go on trial April 28 in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. The 30-year-old New Yorker — the first terrorism suspect ever to be extradited from the United Kingdom to the U.S. — stands accused by the federal government on four counts of providing material support to al-Qaida.

Hashmi’s incarceration also has focused attention on the conditions under which some people suspected of terrorism are held in the United States. This extreme and extended form of solitary confinement, known as Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs, could come into wider use in New York if more people suspected of similar crimes are incarcerated in this area. In the meantime, Hashmi’s supports and other human rights advocates see the conditions of his confinement as violating his rights and jeopardizing his ability to defend his case in court.

To law enforcement, notably the New York City Police Department and the FBI, Hashmi, as described in the controversial 2007 New York Police Department report Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, epitomizes a seemingly ordinary young Muslim man turned extremist who allegedly went on to participate in terrorist activities. On the other hand, his former professors and other supporters who have rallied behind Hashmi view him as a peaceful, devout Muslim being punished for his political and religious beliefs.

The Case

The government alleges that around February 2004, while Hashmi was living in London, he allowed an acquaintance, Junaid Babar, another New Yorker featured in the New York police report, to stay at his London apartment for two weeks. Babar allegedly stored raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks there and then delivered them to the number three al-Qaida leader in Pakistan, Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, to be used against American, international and Northern Alliance forces. Hashmi also allegedly allowed Babar the use of his cell phone to make calls to other conspirators in terrorist plots.

On June 6, 2006, British police arrested Hashmi at Heathrow airport as he prepared to leave for Pakistan, reportedly with a substantial amount of cash. The police had a warrant issued by the U.S. government.

After his arrest, Hashmi spent one year in Britain’s Belmarsh prison, labeled “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay” by human rights activists, fighting extradition to the United States. Under the terms of a treaty enacted between the U.S. and Britain after Sept. 11, 2001, the British courts extradited Hashmi to the United States on May 25, 2007. If convicted, Hashmi faces up to 70 years in prison.

The FBI and the New York Police Department collaborated on the Hashmi case. In a press release issued the day after Hashmi arrived in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, “This arrest reinforces the fact that a terrorist may have roots in Queens and still betray us. Congratulations to the New York City detectives and FBI agents who understood this and kept Hashmi on our radar.”

“If we are engaged in a war against terror — and we most certainly are — then Syed Hashmi aided the enemy by supplying military gear to al Qaeda,” FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon said in the release.

Hashmi denies that he was part of any plot to help al-Qaida. In a motion to dismiss the indictment, Hashmi’s lawyer wrote, “Permitting a short-time visitor to keep possession of their own suitcase containing ordinary clothing items would not place a person of ordinary intelligence on notice that he or she could be ‘providing’ ‘material’ support or resources to a terrorist organization.”

The Babar Connection

Babar forms the “centerpiece” of the case against Hashmi. He is expected to testify against Hashmi and under a plea deal, to receive a reduced sentence in return for his cooperation.

Babar went to Pakistan shortly following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating Babar after a filmed interview in which he told a Canadian reporter, in November 2001: “Yes, I’m willing to kill the American soldiers if they enter into Afghanistan with their ground troops.”

In 2004, soon after he returned from Pakistan, Babar was arrested in Queens by a police sergeant, a detective and two agents, from the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force on his way to a taxi-driving school. He pleaded guilty to five counts of providing, and conspiring to provide, money and supplies to al-Qaida.

Babar has testified for the government in numerous other terrorism-related cases. In various news accounts, Babar is reported to have conspired in attempts to kill then Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff and said that he would have faced the death penalty in Pakistan if he had not agreed to collaborate with the FBI. According to news reports, Babar’s family has entered into the witness protection program.

Hashmi and Babar were both featured in the New York police report, which was released after their arrests. Kelly wrote that the report, aimed at helping policymakers and law enforcement officials counter terrorism, describes how seemingly “unremarkable” individuals, such as Hashmi and Babar, apparently fell victim to radicalization. Muslim American groups criticized the report for casting too wide a net and viewing all Muslims as potential terrorists.

The police departments quietly added a statement of clarification in 2009, which said that the report “should not be read to characterize Muslims as intrinsically dangerous or intrinsically linked to terrorism” and “was not policy prescriptive.” The portions on Hashmi and Babar, however, remained unchanged.

Out of Flushing

Hashmi’s family emigrated from Pakistan and settled in Flushing, Queens when he was three. His father worked for the city as an accountant, and his mother was a housewife. Hashmi graduated from Brooklyn College in 2003 with a degree in political science. He wrote his senior seminar paper on the treatment of Muslim groups in the United States, highlighting what he saw as violations of many groups’ civil rights and liberties.

Faisal Hashmi, his older brother, says that Fahad believed that many Muslims around the world were being oppressed and used to organize rallies around Muslim issues.

“What I always saw Fahad doing was reaching out to students of other ethnic backgrounds, and certainly other political beliefs. One of the sad things about this is that it’s precisely those qualities that are now bringing Fahad under suspicion,” Corey Robin, a former professor of Hashmi’s said in a short documentary film about Hashmi that can be seen on the Free Fahad website.

Hashmi then went to England and received a master’s degree in international relations from London Metropolitan University in 2006.

At some point, Hashmi became affiliated with a group called Al-Muhajiroun (The Emigrants). The group, which has reportedly disbanded, was banned by the British government in January 2010. Al-Muhajiroun, which was never outlawed here reportedly held meetings and study sessions in a mosque in Jackson Heights, Queens.

The group aimed to spread Islam and establish an Islamic Caliphate. Some of its leaders in Britain are infamously remembered for a conference at which the Sept. 11 hijackers were hailed as the “Magnificent 19.” While at an Al-Muhajiroun meeting at Brooklyn College in 2002, Hashmi said, according to CNN, “America is directly involved in exterminating Muslims. America is the biggest terrorist in the world.”

Babar also was a member of the group.

Supporters of Hashmi say that affiliations, words and beliefs are constitutionally protected. In a court hearing, Hashmi’s lawyer, Sean Maher, said Al-Muhajiroun did not engage in any criminal military behavior but gave out flyers, attended demonstrations and engaged people in debate about Islam.

“Are we a society that allows political discourse, or are we a society that is going to say if you say something outside of the spectrum of accepted speech, that you therefore have criminal intent,” Maher told the court.

Locked Away

In explaining their decision to keep Hashmi in solitary confinement, even though he has not been convicted of any crime, law enforcement officials cite his involvement with Al-Muhajiroun, as well as the charges linking him to al-Qaida. The government also says that the Special Administrative Measures are necessary due to Hashmi’s “proclivity to violence.” According to court documents, upon his arrest in London, Hashmi allegedly said that U.S. and British soldiers were going to be killed and that the arresting officers would “pay” for what they were doing to him. Hashmi has denied making these comments.

As of February 2009, according to an article in the New York Times, 46 federal inmates were being held under Special Administrative Measures and of those, 30 faced terrorism related charges. The Times article quoted a Justice Department spokesperson who said that six of the 46 were being held prior to trial, four of them on terrorism charges.

Although originally created in 1996, Special Administrative Measures were strengthened after the 2001 attacks. If the U.S. prison in Guantanamo is closed, experts have anticipated more terrorism suspects will be subjected to these procedures.

Oussama Kassir was kept under pre-trial SAMs before his trial in New York City in May 2009, where he was convicted of trying to help al-Qaida recruit members. The measures also have also been ordered on mobsters like Frank Calabrese, who was convicted of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included the murders of 18 people.

Hashmi has been under Special Administration Measures since Oct. 29, 2007 when they were put into effect by then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Since then, they have been renewed by current Attorney General Eric Holder.

‘Shoe of the Shoe’

In a court hearing, Hashmi’s lawyer said that a lieutenant from Metropolitan Correctional Center referred to the unit where Hashmi is held as “the shoe of the shoe,” the place where inmates who get into trouble while staying with the general prison population are sent. As part of the restrictive measures, he is under 24-hour surveillance — even when on the toilet or while he showers. He can exercise for only one hour a day in what his lawyer describes as a cage. He may not speak out loud and is not allowed to talk to other prisoners at any time. He may write one letter a week of no more than three pages to a family member and can read selected newspaper articles that are at least 30 days old.

Hashmi can meet only one immediate family member every two weeks and a glass wall divides them, but even this is subject to revocation based on his behavior, or, as Faisal Hashmi, his older brother, says, “bureaucratic hang ups.” Faisal says that his parents have been denied opportunities to visit their son for about a third of all of their allowed visits, one reason being that the government did not schedule interpreters for all the visits properly. In 2008, all of Hashmi’s visits were suspended for three months when prison officials accused him of practicing martial arts. The “Slave of Allah,” as Hashmi referred to himself in the incident report, said that he was merely exercising.

Over 500 academics including Henry Louis Gates and Noam Chomsky have signed a petition in Hashmi’s support, urging the government to lift SAMS, which they deem are “draconian.” In an affidavit regarding the likely effects of prolonged isolated confinement for Hashmi, Terry Kuper, a professor in the Graduate School of Psychology of the Wright Institute in Berkeley stated that prisoners isolated in this way tend to exhibit symptoms of “cognitive impairment, memory problems, an inability to concentrate, mounting rage, increasing paranoia and massive free floating anxiety. … Prolonged isolated confinement quite often and predictably results in a significant degree of incompetence to stand trial, whether or not the prisoner’s mental state deteriorates to the point where he or she exhibits chronic serious mental illness.”

In a posting on Truthdig, former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges wrote, “The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science.”

Hashmi’s lawyers have made 30 appeals related to his treatment under the Special Administrative Measures, with each one being rejected. Joshua Dratel, who has represented three defendants held under the measures, told the New York Times last year that the Southern District of New York applies the measures “reflexively” and judges seem reluctant to challenge them.

The Southern District Court has ruled that the restrictions do not infringe upon Hashmi’s constitutional rights.

As the trial date approaches, the Muslim Justice Initiative hopes to get 500 Hashmi supporters to show up at the federal courthouse on Pearl Street. “The level playing field was lost a long time ago due to the actions of the government. We are trying to salvage justice,” said Faisal Hashm

Guantánamo in New York City
Muslim-American Fahad Hashmi has been imprisoned in solitary confinement for over two years awaiting trial.

By Madeleine Dubus
April 7, 2010

“You’re twelve miles away knowing your brother is getting tortured and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Faisal Hashmi, of Flushing, Queens, tells me on March 8, 2010, the night of the 16th vigil for his younger brother, Fahad.

On the evening I speak to Faisal, the city is newly warm. Though the sun is long down by the end of the vigil, the 100-plus guests linger, breathing in the air of early spring. But despite the hopeful warmth, there is no mistaking the gravity of the evening.

Faisal and I stand together, rather appropriately, at the dead end of a street. To our right are two of Manhattan’s largest courthouses and to our left stands the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC), where Faisal’s brother Syed Fahad Hashmi, now 30, has lived in solitary confinement since May 2007.

Known to family and friends by his middle name, Fahad was born in Pakistan and raised in Flushing from the age of 2 when his family moved to America in 1983. Fahad eventually received his citizenship in 1991 and graduated from Brooklyn College in 2003 where he was an average student but outspoken in his advocacy for Muslim-American rights. According to his former professor, Jeanne Theoharris, Fahad wrote his senior seminar paper on “the treatment of Muslim groups within the United States and the violations of civil rights and liberties that many groups were facing.” That paper turned out to be an eerie foreshadowing of Fahad’s own fate.

Fahad is currently held in the MCC on two counts of providing material support and two counts of making a contribution of goods or services to Al Qaida. According to the indictment, when Fahad was studying for his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University in early 2004, he allowed an acquaintance, Junaid Babar, to stay in his London apartment.

Junaid was arrested later that year; he has been charged with and has plead guilty to five counts of providing material support to Al Qaida, which includes delivering a suitcase full of waterproof socks and rain ponchos to a member of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan, Pakistan. Junaid also allegedly used Fahad’s cell phone to call co-conspirators. Junaid currently faces 70 years in prison and has agreed to serve as a government witness in terror trials in Britain and Canada, as well as in Hashmi’s trial in return for a reduced sentence.

But while Junaid’s case may be concluded, Fahad’s is far from it. “My brother is facing 70 years for socks in someone’s luggage,” Faisal says.

In June 2006, Fahad was on his way to visit family in Pakistan when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on a warrant issued by the United States. He was held in Britain for 11 months, when he became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited under terrorism laws passed after 9/11.

The evidence against Fahad appears tenuous, and he hasn’t had the opportunity to stand trial. Yet at the time of this publication, Fahad will have been imprisoned for nearly 1,400 days in solitary confinement. He lives under extensive restriction due to the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) made legal and permanent in October 2007 by former Attorney General Albert Gonzales. The SAMs were initially interim rules created in October 2001. The Department of Justice describes the SAMs as:

“…regulations [that] authoriz[e]the Bureau of Prisons (Bureau), at the direction of the Attorney General, to impose special administrative measures with respect to specified inmates, based on information provided by senior intelligence or law enforcement officials, if determined necessary to prevent the dissemination of either classified information that could endanger the national security, or of other information that could lead to acts of violence and/or terrorism.”

Under SAMs, the Department of Justice can impose these regulations for any period of time designated by the director of the Prison Bureau up to one year. This period of time can easily be extended if the director feels the inmate continues to pose a threat to National Security. Furthermore, SAMs allow the prison where the terror suspect is held to restrict and monitor his or her attorney visits when, “the attorney general has certified that reasonable suspicion exists to believe that an inmate may use communications with attorneys (or agents traditionally covered by the attorney-client privilege) to further or facilitate acts of violence and/or terrorism.”

Essentially, SAMs are legal way for prison directors to restrict or eliminate civil and human rights of terror suspects, as long as they cite “reasonable suspicion.”

In January 2009, on his second day of office, President Barack Obama signed executive orders banning torture of terror suspects and shutting down Guantánamo within a year. The decision was meant to make strong statement about America’s principles, but ultimately it demonstrates failings. Solitary confinement is not classified by the United States as torture. In fact, there are an estimated 25,000 American prisoners currently held in extended solitary confinement. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies, which date back to the early 1960s when the Vietnam War inspired a surge of interest in solitary confinement by psychologists, consistently show that after only a week of solitary confinement a prisoner’s brain waves slow. After months, further brain abnormalities develop rendering a prisoner with symptoms as severe as someone who has suffered Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) which is caused by a serious blow to the head.

The psychological toll of solitary confinement is just as serious as the physical one. Senator John McCain, who famously lived in solitary confinement as a POW during the Vietnam War, describes it as worse than physical torture. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment,” he says. McCain was also brutally beaten on a regular basis and denied medical treatment during his imprisonment. McCain lived in solitary confinement for over two years, like Fahad Hashmi.

Fahad’s trial is currently set for April 28th, 2010. Fahad’s supporters believe that due to his treatment, Fahad may not be mentally capable of testifying on his own behalf in court. Since Fahad’s contact with the outside world is so limited, his current psychological and physical state is not clear.

Before we say goodnight, I ask Faisal if he has noticed a change in Fahad’s letters since his incarceration began. His face falls briefly. He turns to look up at the MCC, at the walls standing between him and his brother, and then declines to answer.

Madeleine Dubus is a writing fellow at The New School and a staff writer for Campus Progress.

Feel Safer Now?
By William Fisher [Formerly served State and Agency for International Development]

The Huffington Post

April 6, 2010

I write a lot of stories, news mostly. They’re carried by InterPress News Service. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, so I’m usually able to separate myself from what I’m writing about so I don’t get emotionally involved.

But there are those times when I find myself getting so angry over the subject of the story I’m writing that I can’t write it.

Usually, when that happens, I distract myself. I write another story. I watch a ballgame. I play some old standards on the piano. Something.

But this time, none of my usual distractions helped very much. I am still angry; in fact, I am furious. Furious enough to try to tell this story. Here goes:

This is a story about a fellow named Syed Fahad Hashmi. For the last close to three years, this guy has been living in solitary confinement in a federal lockup, awaiting a trial.

He is under 24-hour video and audio surveillance, even when he uses the toilet. He eats all his meals in his small cell. He is not allowed to communicate with other prisoners. He is a Muslim but is not allowed to participate in group prayer. He is not allowed to phone anyone but his lawyer. He did not even have his free choice of that lawyer and had to take one approved by the government.

The newspapers he receives have whole sections cut out of them by the government. They are always at least a month old. Once a day, for an hour, he is taken to another room where he remains in isolation. He cannot read any translated documents unless the translator is pre-approved by the government. Contact with the media is forbidden.

For one hour every other week, one member of his family can “visit” through a heavy screen. No touching or hugging is allowed or possible. Sometimes the government takes away his family visits as punishment. He once lost his visits for three months; he was seen shadow boxing in his cell and when asked what he was doing his response apparently failed to pass muster with the authorities.

Who is Syed Fahad Hashmi? Well, for starters, he’s an American citizen. He grew up in Queens and attended Brooklyn College. He is an outspoken Muslim activist. Does that mean he’s a terrorist? Only if you’re Steve King.

After Brooklyn College, where Hashmi’s profs remember him as a guy who loved to engage in debate, he moved to London where he earned a master’s degree in international relations. And that’s where his current troubles began.

An acquaintance from America phoned him at his London apartment and asked if he could stay with Hashmi. He brought a suitcase, later discovered to be filled with raincoats, ponchos and socks.

Now Hashmi was accused of being involved with al Qaeda because the government claims that the rain gear in the suitcase was “military gear” reportedly headed for Afghanistan. Hashmi also allowed his cell phone to be used, and whoever used it allegedly contacted some bad guys from al Qaeda.

Hashmi was arrested based on the testimony of Junaid Babar, an informant attempting to get a reduction in his own 70-year prison sentence. This was the guy who had briefly stayed in Hashmi’s apartment in London

So, because of a suitcase full of raingear, and a cellphone allegedly used by someone to contact some unsavory dudes, an American citizen is held in solitary confinement for almost three years?

The answer is yes – which will be totally counter-intuitive to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the U.S. Constitution. Fashmi is held under Justice Department rules known as SAMs – Special Administrative Measures. He is held so he won’t escape. He is held so he can’t contact any Al Qaeda operatives.

Now, I have no idea whether Hashmi is guilty or not. That’s why we have trials.

But what about the Constitution? What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? What about the Constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial? And an attorney of our choice?

Those rules are evidently abandoned the instant someone utters the words Al Qaeda.

And how about the proscription against cruel and unusual punishment? Does three years in solitary sound “cruel” and “unusual?”

Well, the medical testimony presented in this case concluded that “after 60 days in solitary people’s mental state begins to break down.” According to Bill Quigley of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “That means a person will start to experience panic, anxiety, confusion, headaches, heart palpitations, sleep problems, withdrawal, anger, depression, despair, and over-sensitivity. Over time this can lead to severe psychiatric trauma and harms like psychosis, distortion of reality, hallucinations, mass anxiety and acute confusion. Essentially, the mind disintegrates.”

That’s why extended isolation is banned by international treaties as a form of torture. Just ask John McCain whether his life in solitary confinement affected his mind.

Meanwhile, Hashmi’s case has become something of a cause celebre. His supporters have staged demonstrations outside his jail, launched a website (www.freefahad.com) and worked to alert the public to his plight. And prominent figures such as Nat Hentoff, Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges and his old Brooklyn College professor, Jeanne Theoharris, have all written articles about Hashmi and his vanishing Constitutional guarantees.

Now, finally, Hashmi has a trial date — April 28. He will be tried for conspiring to send money and military gear — socks and rainproof ponchos — to al Qaeda associates in Pakistan.

And my lawyer friends tell me that the way the “material support” statute is written, you could convict a ham sandwich of supporting al Qaeda.

If this case didn’t make you angry, you need to take a refresher course in American History or Civics 101.

And you need to do it right away! Before the Constitution disappears altogether.