Saturday March 27th 6-9 pm

With keynote speaker:
Mohammad Siddiqui
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s brother)

Also Featuring:

Mohammad ElShinawy
(Renowned Islamic Lecturer)

Ammar AlShukry
(Renowned Islamic Lecturer)

$100 per person

Muslim Center of New York
137-58 Geranium Avenue.
Flushing NY, 11355

To RSVP:
Email: info@muslimsforjustice.org
or call: 917.720.4127

Manhattan Vigil for Muslim Held Prisoner for Three Years

Sharmila Devi, Foreign Correspondent
The National
* Last Updated: March 10. 2010 7:50PM UAE / March 10. 2010 3:50PM GMT

NEW YORK // Far from Guantanamo Bay or anywhere else the United States might hold prisoners, a Muslim-American man has been held for almost three years in solitary confinement in a Manhattan jail. But he is not forgotten.

About 100 supporters gathered on Monday night outside the federal facility where Syed Fahad Hashmi awaits trial. They were marking the 1,371st day since he was incarcerated and the 871st day since the implementation of the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) under which he has been held in pretrial, 23-hour lockdown.

Mr Hashmi has not been tried on charges of helping al Q’aeda. Citing security needs, the prosecution has kept the details of its case vague and even withheld evidence from Mr Hashmi, said his brother, Faisal Hashmi.

He was believed to be one of only five defendants held under SAMs before trial. Usually such measures, aimed at preventing prisoners from ordering violence or harming other inmates and expanded after September 11, are imposed after conviction.

“This is our 16th vigil and every time I feel elated that so many people come to support us in our time of need,” Faisal Hashmi said.

Syed Fahad Hashmi’s much-delayed trial is scheduled to start next month. “We face an uphill struggle. The trial will be about trying to salvage justice,” his brother said.

Mr Hashmi, 30, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of up to 70 years in prison. Accusations against him include helping Junaid Babar, a London friend, who has testified at terrorism trials in Britain and Canada since pleading guilty in 2004 to supporting al Qa’eda.

Babar was expected to testify at next month’s trial and say Mr Hashmi held military clothes for him knowing they would be passed on to al Qa’eda in Afghanistan. Prosecutors say Mr Hashmi also gave his phone to Babar to call a convicted bombing conspirator and lent Babar money for a plane ticket to Pakistan to transport the clothing.

Mr Hashmi was arrested by the British authorities at Heathrow airport, Lonon in June 2006 before being extradited to New York a year later.

Born in Pakistan, Mr Hashmi moved to the United States from Pakistan when he was three and he became a US citizen. His brother, a software consultant, said they were a professional family and their father was an accountant for New York City authorities before he retired. A graduate of City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, he received a master’s degree in international relations from London Metropolitan University in the UK.

Civil-rights activists and prominent academics have been outraged by the terms of his imprisonment. The vigils are organised by a number of groups including the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, and Theatres Against War, a network of artists against what the previous White House had called its “war on terror”.

Meanwhile, a petition signed by hundreds of academics, including Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, called Mr Hashmi’s detention “draconian”.

Mr Hashmi is held under 24-hour surveillance at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in downtown Manhattan, close to where the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11. Should the accused of those attacks ever be moved from Guantanamo to face trial in the United States, they could face a similar experience to Mr Hashmi’s.

He cannot participate in group prayer, communicate with other prisoners or the news media, or listen to or watch any news programmes. He may be visited by one family member every two weeks and those visits may not exceed 90 minutes or involve physical contact.

He can write only one letter to one family member a week, using no more than three sheets of paper.

Jeanne Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College, remembered her former student as a lively and outspoken young man, passionate about politics and what he viewed as the growing harassment of Muslims. She said he wrote a paper on American Muslims and civil rights in the post-September 11 era.

“Ms Theoharis, one of the organisers behind his support campaign, said: “Whether he’s innocent or not is not the main issue. We’re supposed to have a system of rights and due process and the fact is we’re standing here in New York, not in Afghanistan or Cuba, and he’s a US citizen,.

“All Americans need to be concerned about this and not say it’s got nothing to do with me. If it happens to one person, it can happen to anyone.”

sdevi@thenational.ae

MJI FUNDRAISING DINNER

The Muslim Justice Initiative cordially invites you and your loved ones to attend “Justice for All,” a fundraising dinner to benefit the Free Fahad Fund.

Saturday March 27th 6-9 pm

With keynote speaker:
Mohammad Siddiqui
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s brother)

Also Featuring:

Mohammad ElShinawy
(Renowned Islamic Lecturer)

Ammar AlShukry
(Renowned Islamic Lecturer)

$100 per person

Muslim Center of New York
137-58 Geranium Avenue.
Flushing NY, 11355

To RSVP:
Email: info@muslimsforjustice.org
or call: 917.720.4127

FACT vs. FICTION: THE CASE OF DR. AAFIA SIDDIQUI

:: * W O R L D W I D E * W e b i n a r ::

(Friday, 4/2/10 8:00 pm EST)

INCLUDING MESSAGES FROM:

MOHAMMED SIDDIQUI
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s brother)

FAWZIA SIDDIQUI
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s Sister)

YVONNE RIDLEY
(Renowned British Journalist)

TINA FOSTER
(Executive Director of the International Justice Network)

Online at http://muslimsforjustice.org/aafia.html

*This is an online event. The webinar can be accessed internationally via net and phone*

The recent guilty verdict in the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has shocked and outraged masses across the globe. This controversial and complex case of Dr. Siddiqui has left several people with unanswered questions. Come and attend our webinar and hear from the family members of Dr. Aafia Siddqui, international journalist Yvonne Ridley, and other supporters. Log-on and listen to eye-witness accounts of Dr. Siddiqui’s three-week trial, which was held in New York City. Join our online webinar on Friday April 2, 2010 at 8pm (EST) and learn what you can do to protect yourselves and how you can help!

Log on to: http://muslimsforjustice.org

For more info, contact: info@muslimsforjustice.org

OFFICIAL TRIAL FOR SYED “FAHAD” HASHMI

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28TH, 2010
@TBA
500 Pearl St,
Manhattan, NY

*Please note: Court dates are subject to change at the government’s discretion. Please check the website before leaving to attend court hearings.

If you are interested in hosting an event at a masjid or university, please contact us at info @ muslimsforjustice.org

Past Events

FACT vs. FICTION: THE CASE OF DR. AAFIA SIDDIQUI

:: * W O R L D W I D E *  W e b i n a r ::

(Friday, 4/2/10 8:00 pm EST)

INCLUDING MESSAGES FROM:

MOHAMMED SIDDIQUI
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s brother)

FAWZIA SIDDIQUI
(Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s Sister)

YVONNE RIDLEY
(Renowned British Journalist)

TINA FOSTER
(Executive Director of the International Justice Network)

Online at http://muslimsforjustice.org/aafia.html

*This is an online event. The webinar can be accessed internationally via net and phone*

The recent guilty verdict in the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has shocked and outraged masses across the globe. This controversial and complex case of Dr. Siddiqui has left several people with unanswered questions. Come and attend our webinar and hear from the family members of Dr. Aafia Siddqui, international journalist Yvonne Ridley, and other supporters. Log-on and listen to eye-witness accounts of Dr. Siddiqui’s three-week trial, which was held in New York City. Join our online webinar on Friday April 2, 2010 at 8pm (EST) and learn what you can do to protect yourselves and how you can help!

Log on to: http://muslimsforjustice.org

For more info, contact: info@muslimsforjustice.org

By Jeanne Theoharis, March 1, 2010

A U.S. citizen has spent his last three birthdays in solitary confinement awaiting trial.

Not in Iran.

Not in North Korea.

But in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

His name is Fahad Hashmi. He turned 30 last week.

But there was no celebration with family and friends, though they are but a few miles away. He grew up in Queens, N.Y., where his family still lives, and he received his bachelor’s from Brooklyn College.

Hashmi is awaiting trial on four charges of material support to al-Qaida.

Under special administrative measures imposed by the U.S. attorney general, Hashmi is not allowed contact with anyone — outside his lawyers and highly restricted visits every two weeks with his parents (which in December were suspended without explanation).

His cell is electronically monitored inside and out, 24 hours a day. He is allowed only one hour out of his cell a day and is forced to exercise in a solitary cage. Because much of the evidence in the case is classified, he has not been allowed to review it.

The “centerpiece” of the U.S. government’s material support charges against him, it claims, is the testimony of a cooperating witness, Junaid Babar.

Babar, an acquaintance of Hashmi’s who came to London in 2004 when Hashmi was doing his graduate study there, asked to stay with him for two weeks. The government claims that Babar had luggage containing raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment, and that later Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of al-Qaida in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone, who then allegedly called other conspirators in terrorist plots. Babar was subsequently arrested and has agreed to testify in a number of cases in exchange for a much-reduced sentence.

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the issue of these material support laws, hearing arguments in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. Brought by the Humanitarian Law Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights, the case challenges certain aspects of the material support provisions introduced under President Clinton’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and expanded under the Patriot Act. The law defines and bans 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 challengers argue that aspects of the ban — and its definition of material support — are overly vague and violate the First and Fifth Amendments by inhibiting a range of protected activities.

Material support laws are the black box of domestic terrorism prosecutions, a shape-shifting space into which all sorts of constitutionally protected activities can be thrown and classified as suspect, if not criminal. Their vagueness is key. They criminalize guilt by association and often use political and religious beliefs to demonstrate intent and state of mind.

Hashmi, for instance, had drawn the attention of authorities years earlier as an outspoken activist in the Muslim community and member of the New York political group al-Muhajiroun while he was a student at Brooklyn College. He faces charges of material support without being accused of being a member of al-Qaida, of trying to help al-Qaida commit any act of terrorism or any crime, or of even having any direct contact with al-Qaida.

This is the new McCarthyism, under the guise of “material support” for terrorism but bearing a stark resemblance in practice to the criminalization of belief and association a half century ago.

And so Fahad Hashmi sits in isolation, still awaiting trial, in a legal black hole in New York City. Let us hope the current Supreme Court heeds former Chief Justice’s Earl Warren’s caution: “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of … those liberties … which makes the defense of this nation worthwhile.”

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science and endowed chair in women’s studies at Brooklyn College of CUNY. She is the author of numerous books on civil rights and is the co-founder of Educators for Civil Liberties. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

Commentary
Even after the guilty verdict, Aafia Siddiqui will just not go away
By Ridwan Sheikh
Online Journal Guest Writer

Feb 26, 2010, 00:42

While Aafia Siddiqui awaits sentencing on May 6, with the prospect of facing a maximum of 20-year term in prison, the case that rattled the US is far from closed.

Although, the Pakistani government paid $2 million dollars to Aafia Siddiqui’s legal defence team, behind the scenes it’s a different matter. The truth is the joint involvement of the Pakistani, US and Afghan governments have yet to answer some simple questions. How did she end up in the police compound in Afghanistan? Who knew about it? And who is responsible for her missing children?

Following the guilty verdict, one of Aafia Siddiqui’s defense attorneys, Elaine Sharp, broke her silence, “Aafia Siddiqui told us that she was picked up by Pakistani men in two black cars. These were people of Pakistani intelligence. ‘You know’ she said ‘ISI.’”

However, Abdul Basit, a spokesman for the Pakistani foreign ministry, insisted it has the welfare of Aafia Siddiqui at heart and the “ultimate objective is to get her back to Pakistan and we will do everything possible and we’ll apply all possible tools in this regard.”

But at a press conference in Karachi, given by, Fauzia, the sister of Aafia Siddiqui, boldly confirmed what many had feared.

“This is a pack of lies; everybody knows that she was kidnapped by the Pakistani intelligence agencies at the behest of General Pervez Musharraf. He [Musharraf] later handed her over to Americans, who took her to Afghanistan, where she was detained and tortured for many months.”

In a recent statement written to the Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, Fauzia Siddiqui lifted the lid on what really happened: “At first, the government had shown its complete ignorance regarding Aafia’s abduction but in the background meetings with members of her family, top Pakistani leaders and the then interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, gave assurances for her early recovery on the condition that there would be no protest against the government and then president Pervez Musharraf.

“The PM told me if the US did not accept the government’s demand to release Aafia, his government would say ‘no’ to the US aid until Aafia returned home,” Fouzia Siddiqui said.

In a separate development, the Pakistani daily, The News, reported on 04 February that a new legal proceeding was underway in Karachi. But many suspect due to the critical comments against the Pakistan government, it wanted to shift the blame to the US government and thereby wash its hands in the whole affair.

An investigating officer, Shahid Qureshi, submitted a report to the judicial magistrate on charges related to the 2003 kidnapping of Aafia Siddiqui and her children, stating that it was carried out “by FBI intelligence agents without any warrants or notice.”

It is not unusual for Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), agency, to collaborate in forcibly abducting its citizens from Pakistan to secret US prisons, where unspeakable torture awaits them, all under the guise of the US government’s ‘war on terror,’ in exchange for cash from the FBI.

The truth is Aafia Siddiqui’s tragic ordeal didn’t begin in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan. Human rights groups believe in March 2003 Aafia Siddiqui and her three children were on their way to Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, to board a flight heading to Islamabad, when Pakistani intelligence agents cut short their car journey and nabbed the family. They later handed the family to Afghan officials, where under the noses of FBI and US military officials, Aafia Siddiqui, was secretly abducted to the US Bagram air base in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she was held for more than five years and subjected to torture and unspeakable abuse.

The family’s ordeal didn’t stop there. Mohammed, her eldest son, was eventually released into the care of Siddiqui’s sister, Fauzia, on condition that he kept his mouth shut about the details of his abduction and arrest. However, the fate of the other two children, her daughter, Maryam, and her infant son Suleman, remains shrouded in mystery. Pakistan’s ISI, US officials and the Afghan authorities amazingly deny all knowledge of the whereabouts of the children. Their disappearance has stunned Pakistan.

The ISI’s secretly run role in kidnapping and abduction is nothing new. In fact, it’s something human rights groups have been voicing for some time. The ISI denies any wrong doing but recent reports have cast serious doubts on ISI’s claim.

Indeed, in December 2009, the Asian Human Rights commission called for Colonel Hamza of the ISI to be prosecuted for the abduction, illegal detention and torture of young men from Pakistani Kashmir, held in Bala Hisar fort near Peshawar, Pakistan.

It is believed Colonel Hamza and other officials in his charge, physically abused these men and warned them not to tell anyone about their illegal detention otherwise they would face serious consequences.

In recent months, a stinging 226-page UN report, entitled Cruel Britannia, researched by the New York-based NGO, Human Rights Watch, focused primarily on US policies and its partners towards its ‘war on terror’ facilities and practices.

The report written by the UN investigators, Manfred Nowak and Martin Scheinin, details the practices, of how secret US detention facilities were set up and run in the previous nine years.

The study includes interviews of government officials, former intelligence officers and 33 interviews with former detainees, their lawyers and families over the course of a year.

It said after the September 11, 2001, attacks, former US President George W. Bush used “black sites,” such as the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, in its “war on terror” so that they would be outside the jurisdiction of US civilian courts.

The intention was to create a “free license” to continue illegal activities in secret locations outside the US.

The report mentioned a number of secret prisons in Afghanistan — in particular, the “Dark Prison,” the “Salt Pit” and a secret facility within Bagram airbase.

“Victims and their families deserve compensation and those responsible should be prosecuted,” said the four independent investigators.”

The report also revealed from interviews with several Pakistani Intelligence agents that they, allegedly, had tortured British terrorism suspects on the orders of key eastern European and Western governments, including the U.K.

It makes you wonder, that If the ISI can abduct British and US nationals and residents to secret locations in Afghanistan and torture them, with the knowledge of Western governments, then the ISI wouldn’t have any trouble in widening their license to subject their own citizens to the same treatment. .

What is clear is the US government refuses to acknowledge or discuss highly questionable practices in secret detention sites, such as rendition, torture and widespread abuse. But it is the fate of hundreds of prisoners that has left a deep imprint on the US government and serves as a symbol of distrust to the rest of the world.

In such detention sites the guilt and innocence of a human being is deemed irrelevant, something which the Obama administration tried to block in the US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, in September 2009, in its unsuccessful attempt to deny habeas corpus rights to detainees held in Bagram.
Since US media outlets, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, ran exposes in November 2009 of illegal activities in Bagram, the rest of the media are pretty much silent, instead preferring to churn out puff pieces on the lifestyle of the US president and his family. But what about Aafia Siddiqui’s family and the mystery surrounding her missing children? Isn’t this considered news? Then again, to Western eyes at least, it’s not ‘glamorous’ enough.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor

Commentary
Texas’ Debra Medina, the Fahad Hashmi case: Grounds for hope and despair
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 19, 2010, 00:16

 My February 16 column, A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs, received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate.

Yahoo News gave this account: “In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system ‘dysfunctional,’ riddled with ‘brain-dead partisanship’ and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a ‘shock’ to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.”

In short, Senator Bayh got tired of being a whore for the corporate lobbyists who rule the U.S.

As Shamus Cooke noted the same day, in the last election voters gave the Democrats a super majority in the mistaken belief that Democrats would remove U.S. policy from the corporate/neocon grip only to find that the result was a surge in America’s wars of aggression.

There are grounds for hope in the fact that some of the Tea Party people understand that Americans have been betrayed and abandoned by both parties.

An unusual candidate has emerged for governor of Texas. Debra Medina is doing well with popular support without machine politics. She has an intriguing idea to abolish the property tax in Texas.

Medina makes the valid point that the property tax is a permanent government lien on a person’s home. A person never owns his home even after the mortgage is paid off, because he has to continue paying government for the right to live in his home.

Many elderly people have found that a lifetime of inflation and rising real estate assessments have pushed up the tax on their homes so much that it accounts for a large percentage of their retirement incomes. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the local government has a program by which the elderly can avoid property tax in exchange for letting the government inherit the property. It is the heirs who are dispossessed.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation studied Medina’s proposal and concluded that a rise in the Texas sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.8 percent would allow the property tax to be abolished as long as some untaxed services, such as mining services, drilling services, legal services, and limousine services were brought into the tax base.

If Medina is a real representative of the people, she comprises a threat to the oligarchy. The oligarchy will go after her with every known dirty trick. Will Texans stand by her?

Grounds for hope are not easily come by, but plentiful are the grounds for despair. My recent article, It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State, also received confirmation on February 16 with the appearance of Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges interview with Russia Today on Information Clearing House. [Video]

Asked about the Fahad Hashmi case, Hedges pointed out that Hashmi is a U.S. citizen whose every constitutional right has been violated just as if he were an “enemy combatant,” a designation used to justify holding non-Americans in indefinite detention. Moreover, Hedges reported that Hashmi is not being prosecuted for committing or planning an act of terror. He is being prosecuted “for what he believes,” or to be more precise Hashmi is being prosecuted for expressing dissent. The government’s evidence against him is tape recordings of speeches he made at Brooklyn College as a student activist denouncing U.S. policies.

These tapes will be played to a patriotic jury likely to convict him for being a Muslim and an anti-American.

As Hedges emphasizes, Hashmi’s conviction would make expression of dissent an indictable offense. If expressing dissent is a crime, then thinking it will also be a crime. The government will produce manuals for its police on how to read body language and facial expressions as indicators of thought crimes.

The rapidity with which the U.S. is being transformed into a police state is astonishing. It has occurred under the guise of “the war on terror,” itself a product of 9/11. Americans were told that the police state regime was only for terrorists, but like RICO’s asset freezes, which were only for the Mafia, and the war on drugs’ asset forfeitures, which were only for drug lords, the suspension of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties now extends to all.

Americans regard such warnings as hyperbole. They think they are safe as long as they are not doing anything wrong. In other words, they think that anyone the government picks up must be guilty.

This view shows a remarkable ignorance of the 20th century. Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag were full of people who had done nothing wrong. Many were people demonized for being of the wrong race and class. Others were people reported by envious neighbors or by someone settling a score. The system didn’t care, because it existed independently of any concerns about justice or security.

In the 1990s, I saw a Russian movie about the Stalin era. The main character was a Soviet war hero, personally praised by Stalin. In his home area he had enormous authority and could order off Soviet military maneuvers that impinged on the collective farm’s crops. One day a KGB agent shows up who wants the war hero’s beautiful wife. The war hero is amused that a mere KGB agent thinks he has power over him. “Wait until Stalin hears about this,” he says as he comes out in his military uniform with his medals and confidently drives away with the agent to be beaten and disappeared into the gulag. Even if Stalin would have cared, he would never have known.

Police states remove accountability from those in authority. One result is to remove constraints on behavior. Even when there are constraints, some spouses abuse one another and some parents abuse children. Some people abuse animals. Even many Americans have abusive tendencies as Abu Ghraib makes completely clear.

It starts with little things and works its way up. Tens of thousands of people have experienced unsatisfactory encounters with the Transportation Safety Administration, otherwise known as the airport police. In a recent case, a police officer and his wife were taking their 4-year-old son to Disney World for his birthday. The child has to wear leg braces due to problems associated with his premature birth. The TSA screener ordered the braces removed before the boy could walk through the detector. But, of course, the boy could not walk without the braces. The police officer and his wife were stunned to find that TSA cannot tell the difference between an American police officer and his disabled child and a terrorist threat.

A police state has no need to differentiate. Those Americans who don’t care what happens to Fahad Hashmi, Aafia Siddiqui, Omar Khadr, and countless others are opening themselves to similar treatment and the rest of us along with them.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Analysis
It is Now Official: The U.S. is a Police State
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Feb 11, 2010, 00:18

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for terrorists. Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorist” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice [sic] to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children, one an 8-month-old baby, were with her at the time she was abducted. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach, resulting in her near death.

On Feb. 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: “The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers.”

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of “justice” that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on Feb. 3, Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home — Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s “defined policy” is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him. The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shoot-out.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans whom it deems a “threat.”

What defines “threat”? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens whom it regards as a threat.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

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Fahad Hashmi’s case characterizes overreaching powers that came about due to War on Terror
By Udai Malhotra

We must consider cases such as Fahad Hashmi’s, which illustrates the overreaching powers that have come to characterize the Federal Government, the intelligence community, and the American justice system through the War on Terror.

Keywords: Analysis, Bronx, Government, Human Rights, Law, Security, Police & Prisons, Repression,

In the eight years since President Bush began the War on Terror, a number of Muslim charities, human rights groups, and community based organizations have been under intense scrutiny and surveillance by the US Federal Government. Muslim Americans have had their phones tapped, their financial assets frozen, and their places of worship infiltrated. The American intelligence community has been slowly bringing home many of the intelligence gathering tactics used abroad to now monitor and detain its own citizens. In this climate of profiling, and eroding civil liberties at home, we must consider cases such as the one of the American, Syed Fahad Hashmi, which illustrates the overreaching powers that have come to characterize the Federal Government, the intelligence community, and the American justice system through the War on Terror.

The Global War on Terror is conducted mainly through intelligence gathering as opposed to evidence gathering. For intelligence gathering agencies, association with blacklisted individuals is all that is needed to raise a red flag and invite the scrutiny of the state. Independent journalist Petra Bartosiewicz comments in “The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes It’s Enemies Dissapear” in Harper’s Magazine, “What most of us understand as human relationships, infinitely varied and poignant with ambiguity, criminal investigators understand simply as a series of associations.” This approach is problematic. Coupled with the coercive tactics used in the interrogation of detainees, inaccurate intelligence becomes actionable, and individuals may be punished simply for their association . Imposing guilt by association, and doling out punishment for the actions of others does not provide any guidance about what kinds of actions are prohibited by the government and it punishes innocent assistance to, or association with, blacklisted individuals. The prosecution of individuals for their association is a tactic that has been used by states to suppress dissent and criticism.

Fahad Hashmi emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1983 from Karachi, Pakistan, at the age of three. He grew up in the vibrant and diverse community of Flushing, Queens and studied Political Science at Brooklyn College. On campus, he was outspoken in his views of American foreign policy and the oppression of Muslims post 9-11. In 2002, he was mentioned in a Time Magazine article as a student activist. The article quoted him saying, “America is directly involved in exterminating Muslims,” and that “America is the biggest terrorist in the world.” Jeanne Theoharis, one of Fahad’s professors at Brooklyn College, and a campaigner for his release has stated that Fahad wrote his senior seminar paper on the treatment of Muslim groups within the United States and the violations of civil rights taking place.

In 2003, Fahad moved to London to pursue a Masters degree in International Relations from London’s Metropolitan University, which he completed in 2005. There he came in contact with an individual blacklisted by the American government, Junaid Babar, an acquaintance from New York, who stayed in his London apartment for two weeks. Babar has since been convicted of providing material support to Al Qaeda and will be a witness against Fahad in his future trial.

On June 6, 2006, Fahad was arrested by British Police at Heathrow Airport while preparing to board a plane to Pakistan. He pleaded not guilty to charges in the U.S. of “providing material support to Al-Qaeda” and was held for eleven months in Britain’s Belmarsh prison as part of the regular prison population while he fought his extradition. On May 25, 2007, under pressure from the American government, he was extradited from the U.K. Upon his arrival in the US, Fahad was placed in pre-trial solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Lower Manhattan, where he has remained for almost three years. Subject to Special Administrative Measures (SAM’s), he is kept in his cell for 23 hours a day and allowed a single hour in a cage for recreation. He is currently under extreme mobility restrictions and remains under constant video surveillance. He may not interact with anyone other than prison officials, his lawyers, and approved members of his family, and is not allowed to speak out loud, or gesture, under threat of having even more restraints placed on him. Solitary confinement to a lesser extent than what has been imposed is considered torture as permany international standards, and Fahad has been kept in this extreme situation for almost three years now. Over 30 appeals have been made by his lawyers pertaining to his treatment under SAM’s with each one thus far being denied.

Fahad’s charge of providing “material support” to Al Qaeda, does not accuse him of giving money, weapons, or information to the terrorist organization as originally reported. Rather, he is being accused of allowing an acquaintance, Junaid Babar, to stay in his home in London while carrying raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in his suitcase. According to the government, these items were later delivered by Babar to a third ranking member of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. During his stay, the government also alleged that Fahad allowed Babar to use his cell phone to speak to other individuals associated with terrorist groups. As a cooperating witness, Babar has already been convicted of five counts of material support himself and faces 70 years in prison. The case built against Fahad will be based upon the testimony of Babar who has already been used by the government to testify in numerous other terrorism related cases. Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist writes in One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists, “Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial”. It is expected that the US government will also be introducing tapes showcasing Fahad’s political and activist background to demonstrate intent. The implication being that there is no real evidence connecting Fahad to terrorism other than his constitutionally protected religious and dissident political speech.

Under U.S. Law, Fahad is currently presumed innocent while in custody. He has no criminal record or history of violence and there is no precedent for the SAM’s in place against him. SAM’s were first introduced under President Clinton and were meant to be used to disable and severely limit ones contact with the outside world. They were created specifically for dealing with the most violent and unrestrainable of criminals like mob leaders whose criminal activity and leadership could not be halted while present in the regular prison population. Fahad’s “proclivity for violence”, cited to justify such harsh restrictions placed on him are based only upon his religious and political beliefs as he has no past history of violence. SAM’s were expanded in wake of 9/11, with the regulations loosened, and the standards for renewal relaxed. They have allowed for Fahad to be kept in a state of administrative limbo, isolated and flagrantly denied his right to a speedy trial, to confront the evidence against him, and to be given the opportunity to defend himself. Apart from the restraints on Fahad as part of SAM’s, there are also numerous limitations on his lawyers. They are restricted in what they can and cannot say to the media about their contact with him, and have had to go through extensive and time consuming background checks to be given the required clearance to see the classified “secret evidence” against him. They are however barred from discussing this evidence with Fahad himself or the media. A full cover story in the Village Voice by Nat Hentoff in 2007 regarded Hashmi’s case as a “Bush “dark side” legacy”. A year into Obama’s presidency we have seen Attorney General Holder reissue Fahad’s SAM’s in November of 2009.

Regardless of Fahad’s ultimate guilt or innocence – something only a fair trial can establish – placing someone in prolonged solitary confinement with such extreme restrictions before being given a chance to defend themselves is deplorable irrespective of the charges, and amounts to torture. For activists rallying around this case, it is an attempt to salvage some justice that has so far uniformly been denied. Fahad’s treatment should be of concern to all Americans who value their right to political, religious speech, and the inalienable rights guaranteed under the constitution. The right to a fair defense is beyond controversy, and community organizations have been mobilizing around Fahad’s case with Theaters Against War holding regular vigils outside the Metropolitan Detention Center at 500 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan. More information about Fahad’s case can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org. Fahad’s trial is presently set to begin on April 28th , 2010 in the courtroom of Judge Loretta Preska.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2010/02/109497.shtml