Anti-war protesters rally at Bush’s Maine estate

Demonstrators opposed to the war in Afghanistan march along Ocean Avenue toward the Bush compound in Kennebunkport on Sat., Nov. 18, 2001.

By Rupert Cornwell

Kennebunkport, Maine, Nov. 18— In a scene reminiscent of the first Bush presidency, an estimated 300 anti-war protesters rallied Saturday in front of former President George Bush’s home.

The Maine Global Action Network said they organized the rally to protest the war in Afghanistan. They displayed banners, sang and beat drums.

“This is not about giving peace a chance,” said David Kubiak, an organizer for the network. “It’s about taking on the corporate powers that built this war and are profiteering from it.”

The protesters gathered at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, a half mile from the Bush compound on Ocean Avenue, and marched to his oceanside summer home. Bush was not there at the time.

Police Chief Robert Sullivan, who assigned extra officers for security, said the rally went off without incident. He said there were no arrests. “Their goal was to bring an awareness for global peace,” the chief said.

The protest, stemming from the current President Bush’s foreign policy, was similar to rallies that were held here during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. At that time, the senior Bush was in office and he summered here each year of his presidency.

The church where the march began Saturday is the church the Bush family attends during the summer. Built in 1887, the church is where Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker — the ex-president’s parents — were married in 1921.

The Bush family has had a home here since the turn of the century.

Source: Maine Sunday Telegram

Other countries could face US military action

Nov. 17— US vice-president Dick Cheney warned yesterday that after the Afghanistan campaign is over, America could use military action in a second wave of attacks directed against states which harbor terrorists. Cheney said that up to 50 states could be targeted for a range of action, from financial and diplomatic to military, on the grounds that they had al-Qaida networks operating there.

Somalia, the east African country which is a haven for al-Qaida supporters, would be high on any US list of targets, alongside Iraq.

Planners in Washington and London are considering the next steps. Hawks within the US administration are keen to extend military action, particularly against Iraq.

According to a Foreign Office source, “Thinking is going on about a second phase but no decision has been taken yet and we would never speculate on it.”

Cheney, in a rare public foray, said in an interview for the BBC’s Pashtu service yesterday morning: “There are a great many places round the world where there are cells of the al-Qaida organization — maybe as many as 40 or 50.

“We’re working with the services of other countries and other governments to try to wrap those organizations up.”

US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked the Pentagon to come up with post-Afghanistan options in which they were to think the unthinkable. The resulting general command papers were reported to have been dismissed by Rumsfeld for not being radical enough.

As yet, no specific military target outside Afghanistan has been agreed. That would change overnight if Osama bin Laden were to turn up in a country with close ties to al-Qaida, such as Somalia.

German forces have served in Somalia before. Recently, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported a plan for a joint US-German operation in which German troops would take Berbera, with the US taking the harbor and airport.

There has been much discussion in Washington about escalating assaults against Iraq. Britain, though cooperating with the US in bombing Iraq in southern and northern no-fly zones in the past decade, is opposed to extending the war to Iraq because of the lack of a firm link to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, which all reportedly have an al-Qaida presence within their borders, have agreed to combined operations.

The US, which has a good relationship with these countries, yesterday expressed a desire to participate in any such operations. It is especially close to the Philippines, and has offered it a generous military package, with an emphasis on counter-terrorism.

Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defense secretary, recently told the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review that he saw a clear need to confront al-Qaida in Indonesia: “Going after al-Qaida in Indonesia is not something that should wait until after al-Qaida has been uprooted from Afghanistan.”

Source: The Guardian (UK)

US policy towards Taliban influenced by oil?

By Julio Godoy

Paris, France, Nov. 15 (IPS)— Under the influence of US oil companies, the Bush administration initially blocked US secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book “Bin Laden, la verite interdite” (“Bin Laden, the forbidden truth”), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s deputy director John O’Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O’Neill told them that “the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.”

The two claim the US government’s main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the US government saw the Taliban regime “as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia,” from the rich oil fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, “the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that.”

But, confronted with Taliban’s refusal to accept US conditions, “this rationale of energy security changed into a military one”, the authors claim.

“At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’,” Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

According to the book, the Bush administration began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. US and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.

To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a US expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of US secret services. Her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The last meeting between US and Taliban representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, the analysts maintain.

On that occasion, Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for the US government, met the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan in Islamabad.

Brisard and Dasquie have long experience in intelligence analysis. Brisard was until the late 1990s, director of economic analysis and strategy for Vivendi, a French company. He also worked for French secret services, and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous al-Qaida network, headed by bin Laden.

Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy, available through the Internet.

Brisard and Dasquie draw a portrait of the closest aides to President Bush, linking them to oil business.

Bush’s family has a strong oil background. So do some of his top aides, including US vice president Dick Cheney and National Security Council director Condoleeza Rice.

Until the end of last year, Cheney was president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry.

Besides the secret negotiations held between Washington and Kabul and the importance of the oil industry, the book examines the role played by Saudi Arabia in fostering Islamic fundamentalism, the personality of bin Laden, and the networks that the Saudi dissident built to finance his activities.

Brisard and Dasquie refute the US government’s claim that it had been prosecuting bin Laden since 1998. “Actually,” Dasquie says, “the first state to officially prosecute bin Laden was Libya, on the charges of terrorism.”

“Bin Laden wanted settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but was hindered by the government of Muammar Qaddafi,” Dasquie claims. “Enraged by Libya’s refusal, bin Laden organized attacks inside Libya, including assassination attempts against Qaddafi.”

Dasquie singles out one group, the Islamic Fighting Group (IFG). Reputedly the most powerful Libyan dissident organization, the IFG is based in London, and directly linked with bin Laden.

“Qaddafi even demanded Western police institutions, such as Interpol, to pursue the IFG and bin Laden, but never obtained cooperation,” Dasquie says. “Until today, members of IFG openly live in London.”

The book confirms earlier reports that the US government worked closely with the United Nations during the negotiations with the Taliban.

“Several meetings took place this year, under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN secretary general Kofi Annan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan,” says the book.

“Representatives of the US government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present at these meetings,” it says. “Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.”

These meetings, also called “6+2” because of the number of states (six neighbors plus US and Russia) involved, have been confirmed by Naif Naik, former Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs.

In a French television news program two weeks ago, Naik said during a “6+2” meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around “the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid.”

“And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come,” he added.

Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the US representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan.

“Simons said, ‘either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option’. The words Simons used were ‘a military operation’,” Naik claimed.

Lawmakers demand hearings on Bush’s military tribunal order

By Jennifer Hoyt

Washington, DC, Nov. 16— Lawmakers are urging hearings into President Bush’s decision to try by military tribunals foreigners charged with acts of terror.

“They’re literally dismantling justice and the justice system as we know it,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said Friday. She suggested the effects could “spill over into domestic affairs.”

The Justice Department has refused to disclose identities or status of more than 1,100 people arrested or detained in the weeks since the Sept.11 attacks, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said their incarceration “smacks of racial profiling.”

Conservative Rep. Bob Barr, a Republican from Georgia, said he objected to the president acting without consulting with Congress or waiting to see whether recently expanded investigative powers are sufficient to fight terrorism. Barr, a former federal prosecutor, said he was disturbed by the “fundamental changes to federal law and procedure” in the order establishing procedures for detention and trial by military courts of foreign suspects.

“The scope of this executive order takes your breath away,” Barr said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Attorney General John Ashcroft on Friday to appear before the committee Nov. 28.

Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, said no decision had been made as of Friday whether to hold hearings.

Bush signed an executive order Tuesday approving the tribunals, which could bring terror suspects to trial faster and in more secrecy than normal criminal courts. His order did not require congressional approval.

Under the order, Bush would decide when to use a military court. It is unclear whether the government would have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but the right to appeal a conviction or sentence would be much more limited than in civilian courts.

Lawyers say the government likely would be able to use hearsay statements and evidence collected through normally unconstitutional searches or wiretaps. Conviction and sentencing would be by two-thirds of commission members present for the vote.

“These procedures belong in a Soviet state or a dictatorship, not in a free society,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who represents the Manhattan district where the World Trade Center was felled by terrorists.

Waters accused Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Ashcroft of “taking advantage of the American people.”

“It appears that because of this awful, tragic attack on the United States that has taken place, that the president and his administration are using this as an opportunity to get any and everything that they ever thought they wanted,” she said.

Source: Associated Press

Topless protesters ‘strip-tease for trees’

Eureka, California, Nov. 11— Nine bare-breasted women briefly halted logging work near California’s contested Headwaters Forest on Friday in a protest against what they said was unconscionable logging of redwood trees.

“These gorgeous young women were belly dancing. One logger actually got down on his knees and kissed the ground,’’ said Dona Nieto, a California activist who has staged several “Strip Tease for the Trees’’ protests.

Nieto — a poet who goes by the name “La Tigresa’’ — said the protest interrupted logging work for about two hours at a point known as the “Hole in the Headwaters,’’ an area of second-growth redwood trees left out of a 1999 deal between Pacific Lumber Inc. and state and federal officials aimed at preserving the Headwaters Forest about 250 miles north of San Francisco.

“To log the hole in the Headwaters is like raping a virgin, because the Headwaters Forest Preserve is supposed to be kept intact and virginal,’’ Nieto said.

The protesters, who gathered at around 5am, stripped off their shirts, sang, chanted and handed out chocolates to surprised loggers, tying up traffic for about two hours until police arrived to clear up the scene. There were no arrests.

“The loggers and the cops were absolutely stunned,’’ said Nieto, who launched her anti-logging protests last year with demonstrations of what she calls “Goddess-based, nude Buddhist guerrilla poetry’’ to a number of timber and logging sites in and around northern California.

Pacific Lumber spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkel said the protest occurred on a county road, not company property, and quickly dispersed once police appeared.

“They weren’t trespassing; they were on a county road. It didn’t cause too much of a delay,’’ she said.

One of the protesters, a 22-year-old who gave her name as “Maple,’’ said she was surprised at how agreeable the loggers were when confronted by topless women.

Source: Reuters

RTS activist gets three years

Nov. 16— Yesterday American eco-activist Rob “Ruckus” Middaugh was sentenced to three years imprisonment for his involvement in the Mayday 2001 “Reclaim The Streets” celebrations in Long Beach, California.

Rob was part of the “black bloc” which during the celebrations came into confrontation with the police.

Because Rob defended himself from the police he was charged with assault on a police officer, refusal to comply with a police officer, conspiracy to commit a crime, and rioting. Rob also faced charges for alleged probation violation. In all Rob was looking at possibly 16-17 years in jail if found guilty on all charges.

Then Rob was offered a plea bargain. Plead guilty and get a 3 year stretch or risk it in court and face 16-17 years inside. Just to “sweeten” the plea bargain, Judge Richard Romero told Rob he was guaranteed 3-4 years in prison for his probation violation, regardless of whether he was found guilty or not for the Mayday charges.

With no other option Rob took the plea bargain and admitted the assault charge and the probation violation. All other charges were dropped.

Rob was sentenced to 3 years for each charge, but the sentences are to run concurrently. He was also given “one strike” for his guilty plea and is now on his “second strike”. Under the “three strikes and you’re out rule” this means, upon his release, if Rob is convicted for another “strike” he faces a of minimum 25 years imprisonment.

Source: Oread Daily

Concern increases on anti-terror moves

By George Lardner, Jr.

Washington, DC, Nov. 16—  A growing chorus on the left and the right is accusing the Bush administration of ignoring civil liberties while leaving the courts and Congress out in the cold as it aggressively pursues the war on terrorism here and abroad.

Critics ranging from the solidly liberal People for the American Way Foundation to conservative Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.) are characterizing recently announced administration plans as ethnic profiling, power grabbing and overzealous law enforcement.

“Military tribunals, secret evidence, no numbers on how many people the government is detaining,” said Jim Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute. “We’re looking like a Third World country.”

The latest focus of the debate is an order signed by President Bush this week that empowers him to order military trials here and abroad for accused international terrorists and their collaborators.

But other complaints concern Attorney General John D. Ashcroft’s decision to monitor conversations between lawyers and some clients in federal custody if Ashcroft believes it is necessary to thwart future terrorism; the plan to question 5,000 foreign nationals who recently entered the country; and the FBI’s visits to hundreds of college campuses to check on the records of foreign students, mostly from Middle Eastern countries.        

No apologies

Under pressure from the Justice Department, the State Department also has agreed to slow temporarily the granting of visas to Arab and Muslim males, ages 16 to 45, from 25 countries so the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) can conduct security checks.

The administration has made no apologies, saying the nation is in the midst of an extraordinary emergency. “I think it’s important to understand that we are at war now,” Ashcroft said earlier this week in defending military tribunals.

Critics in Congress, legal scholars and spokesmen for the nation’s Arab American community have voiced misgivings about the new anti-terrorism laws, passed last month as the USA-Patriot Act. But they are far more vocal about what the administration has done since then.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he intends to hold hearings on the military tribunals directive and other recent steps that have been taken without consulting Congress. “Because there has been no consultation with Congress, we are left with more questions than answers about what the Administration has in mind in taking this step,” Leahy said in a recent press release. “We need to understand the international implications of the President’s order, which sends a message to the world that it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary executions, without the possibility of judicial review, at least when the defendant is a foreign national.”

House Judiciary Committee members have also called for hearings. Barr said the administration should have given the new anti-terrorist laws time to work, then gone back to Congress if they turned out to be insufficient.

“Instead, it seems their attitude is, ‘Well, that wasn’t enough so we’re going to take more,’” Barr told a reporter. “I’m not sure we can ever satisfy the federal government’s insatiable appetite for more power.”

‘Relentless assault’

Advocacy groups from both sides of the political spectrum have joined the debate. Ralph Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation, accused Ashcroft of “waging a relentless assault on civil liberties.” Among the most troubling actions, Neas said, was the order empowering Ashcroft to violate the attorney-client privilege without a court order.

The Justice Department said the order so far pertains only to 13 people in federal custody, none of them connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Terrorism isn’t the only threat to our way of life,” Neas said yesterday. “We need an attorney general who will stand up to terrorists, but we also need an attorney general who will stand up for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Zogby said the administration’s emergency measures are already undermining US credibility abroad, where thousands of Arab men, students, businessmen and, in some cases, royalty are having visa requests held up for security checks.

Just back from a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Zogby said the fear of US authorities there is widespread. “Forty percent of the students from the UAE who were in the United States . . . have already gone home,” Zogby said.

Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s project on criminal justice, said it appears that the president’s strong support in public opinion polls has fostered “an arrogance at the White House.” He said officials believe they can take presidential power “farther than it’s gone before.”

Lynch was especially critical of the order for military tribunals. They would be able to impose sentences as severe as death on a two-thirds vote, hold trials in secret and rely on evidence that would be rejected in a civil court.

“It undermines the courts, obviously,” Lynch said of the order, “and it undermines Congress because it is essentially legislating action by presidential edict.”

Issued by Bush as commander in chief, the military order directs the secretary of defense to detain indefinitely any non-citizen who Bush has “reason to believe” is a past or present member of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terror network, has engaged in international terrorism directed at US interests or has “knowingly harbored such individuals.”        

‘Foreign enemy belligerents’

Military tribunals, using whatever standard of proof Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld chooses, then would be able to try those individuals for “all offenses triable by military commission” — in other words, offenses under the laws of war.

“This is absolutely, totally constitutional,” an administration official conversant with the decree said yesterday. “The only ones to be tried will be foreign enemy belligerents.”

That could include an al-Qaida cell member planning more acts of violence, he said. “If they’re hiding and planning acts of violence,” he said, “they are in violation of the laws of war. The US Constitution doesn’t protect them.”

Bush’s order does not allow for judicial review. Several legal experts said a little-noticed provision at the end of the directive order also appears to be an effort by the president to suspend the right of habeas corpus, which prisoners can use to challenge their detention.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed such authority, without success, when he ordered a secret military trial of eight Nazi saboteurs during World War II.

Bush said that “any individual subject to this order shall not be privileged to seek any remedy . . . in any court of the United States, or any state thereof.”

“The word ‘privileged’ is the tip-off,” said Philip A. Lacovara, a former deputy US solicitor general. He said he was surprised by the provision even though he favors military tribunals as the best response to the attacks of Sept. 11.

“The Constitution sets out only two grounds for suspending the privilege of challenging one’s detention on a habeas corpus petition: one is invasion and the other is rebellion. Even in the Civil War, the courts were reluctant to allow President Lincoln to dispense with habeas corpus.”

Lacovara added: “It adds another level of controversy to the order.”

Dan Bartlett, the White House’s communications director, denied that the order forecloses habeas corpus petitions for non-citizens detained in the United States for military trials.        

Washington Post Staff writers Dan Eggen and Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report
Source: Washington Post, Office of Senator Patrick Leahy

None jailed appear linked to attacks

By Josh Meyer and Eric Lichtblau

Washington, DC, Nov. 16— Nine weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal authorities said Thursday that they have found no evidence indicating that any of the roughly 1,200 people arrested in the United States played a role in the suicide hijacking plot.

The FBI has conducted an exhaustive investigation into whether the 19 suspected hijackers were part of an organized underground of “sleeper” terrorist cells operating within the United States. While investigators continue to look for evidence of such a broad-based conspiracy, so far they have found none, according to several law enforcement officials.

In particular, said one senior law enforcement official, “no links have been established” between the hijackers and the four men believed to be the strongest terrorism suspects: two men from India arrested Sept. 12 on a train in Texas, a former Boston cabdriver arrested outside Chicago and a former flight school student who was arrested in Minnesota in August. Some authorities emphasize the possibility that investigators, whose efforts have been frustrated by uncooperative witnesses, might still uncover evidence linking the jailed suspects to the plots or other terrorist or criminal activities.

But others maintain that if such evidence existed, the exhaustive investigation by more than 4,000 federal agents would have found it. Agents here and abroad have compared the whereabouts of the suspects and the alleged hijackers, scrutinized all of their bank, credit card, Internet and phone records, and even tracked them back to their hometowns in a search for links, authorities say.

The criminal investigation into the attacks, the largest in US history, has netted about 1,200 detainees, and as many as half of them may still be behind bars on immigration violations or unrelated local, state or federal charges. But with these four central men all but eliminated as potential co-conspirators, the Justice Department has failed to build a case against a single prime US suspect in the terrorist attacks, authorities concede.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has emphasized that the key goal of the investigation is the prevention of other attacks. And, authorities say, though they have provided no evidence, the arrests may have thwarted other terrorist plots.

Meantime, investigators still are collecting bits of information on the hijackers and suspects arrested in the US. They have discovered, for instance, that the alleged hijacker who piloted the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field had been stopped for speeding in Maryland just two days before the hijackings.

But major domestic leads appear to have dried up. As a result, authorities say, they have shifted nearly all of their attention and resources overseas in the continuing hunt for co-conspirators and suspected terrorists.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Security panel to call for national identity cards

By Marc Humbert

Albany, New York, Nov. 14— A special anti-terrorism committee created in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center will call for creation of a national identification card system, its chairman said Wednesday.

State Sen. Roy Goodman, who created the panel on Oct. 10, said the recommendation would be one of 50 to be made public at a Thursday news conference in New York City.

The panel, which includes four former New York City police commissioners and other law enforcement officials, will also urge a federal takeover of airport security and a tightening of private aviation security, Goodman said.

Goodman, who is also chairman of the state Senate’s Investigations Committee, said the nation’s private aviation system represents a “gigantic loophole” in security planning.

“You can load anything you want onto them, totally unsupervised, and these are not all tiny Piper Cubs. They can be enormous passenger planes,” the Manhattan Republican said. “You load that with fuel and plow it into the UN building and goodbye UN building.”

Goodman’s panel includes former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who has just been tapped by New York City Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg to again become police commissioner.

The senator said the universal identification card system would utilize high-tech microchips storing digitized fingerprints, facial characteristics and retinal images.

Goodman said the panel had not yet decided if the ID card system should be mandatory or voluntary, but that in his opinion a mandatory system would “maximize safety and security.”

Goodman said the cards would be available to all residents and visitors to the United States. He said those that could afford it would be charged a fee for the cards. Goodman declined to provide an immediate cost estimate for the program or say how long it might take to implement. He said the ID card proposal could be self-financing.

The ID cards would provide Americans with “tremendous convenience” in getting through security checkpoints as well as “extensive security,” Goodman said.

Asked about civil liberty objections to national ID cards, Goodman said, “The Constitution does give the right to privacy, but not the right to anonymity.”

Goodman predicted the cards “would eliminate all racial profiling” by law enforcement officials.

“When you have a suspicion as to whether a guy is or is not a person who might cause you problems, you put his ID card in your little machine and it tells you if his record is clean,” Goodman said.

In addition to Kelly, the Goodman panel also includes former police commissioners Howard Safir, Robert McGuire and Richard Condon. Goodman’s vice chairman on the panel is Robert Strang, a former FBI and DEA agent who is president of a security firm.

Source: Associated Press

“Disappeared” in the USA

“We have Arab men disappearing from the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. No one hears from them. No one hears about them. They’re arrested and they disappear. Is it secret evidence? Whose secret is this? Why? What’s going on? We’d like to know.” —Samia Halaby, from Al-Awda (Palestinian Right to Return Coalition), at a New York City press conference for October 22nd National Day of Protest

“The secret detention of [hundreds of] people over the past few weeks is frighteningly close to the practice of ‘disappearing’ people in Latin America.”—Kate Martin, director of Center for National Security Studies

Nov. 10— A Middle Eastern man who voluntarily went to the FBI to answer questions didn’t come home. For two weeks his family didn’t know where he was. Finally he was able to make a phone call to let them know he was alive. He is still being held. A group of Pakistani immigrants spent three weeks in the Brooklyn federal prison before they were allowed to make a phone call. These are only a few of the people who have been caught in the net of massive arrests and detention by the US government in the aftermath of September 11. When many people hear the term “the disappeared,” they think of the reactionary regimes in Central and South American countries. Tens of thousands of people have been abducted by the troops and death squads of these US-backed regimes, and then never heard from again.

The stories of the “Mothers of the Disappeared” in Argentina have become known throughout the world. Now there are “disappeared” in the US -- people who have been snatched off the streets by agents of the US government, held incommunicado, put in solitary confinement, and denied lawyers.

As of November 3, the number of people who have been arrested by the federal government in its “investigation” of the September 11 attacks was reportedly about 1,150. The exact number is not known, since the government refuses to divulge that information. The government has refused to reveal the identities, nationalities, and whereabouts of the detained people, or what particular charges they are being held on. What little information is known about their situation has come mainly from family members, friends, attorneys, and some media reports. They have been moved from prison to prison. Bail has been denied, hearings have been held in secret, and court documents have been sealed. Many have been held for weeks without being charged.

According to the Boston Globe, which compiled a partial list of the detained by calling various embassies, most of the detained are Saudis and Egyptians. There are also detainees from United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Jordan, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Mauritania and El Salvador. As we go to press, the media is reporting government claims that many of those arrested since September 11 have been released. But since the government will not release information about the detained, it’s impossible to confirm the reports. And clearly, the government continues to round up more people. One of the biggest law enforcement operations in American history is shrouded by a veil of secrecy. Human rights and civil liberties organizations have tried without success to get information about those arrested. Lawyers have been subjected to “gag” orders that prevent them from discussing anything about their clients. Many lawyers have not been allowed to keep copies of confidential court records. Others have been unable to locate people they are trying to represent.

Law enforcement authorities justify all this by saying the mass arrests have “prevented further attacks “but they have provided no evidence to back his claim up.

Government officials say publicly that they oppose the targeting of Arab and Muslim people. But given the mass detentions and other repressive measures, racial profiling and collective punishment of Arab and Muslim people have effectively become government policy. And this in turn has created an ugly climate of racist attacks on Arabs, Muslims, and others. The government’s call for people to come forward with “tips” on “suspicious” people have led to immigrants being turned in to authorities by wanna-be FBI agents.

The government admits that only a small handful of those arrested are “material witnesses” people who allegedly have information about September 11. About 200 others were arrested on immigration violations. The rest were arrested for allegedly violating federal, state and local laws unrelated to September 11 — most on minor charges on which they normally would have been quickly released on bail.

Stories of “the disappeared”

Many of those arrested have been moved to federal prisons in the New York area. At Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), many immigrants have been held in solitary confinement with no access to phones, reading materials, or other prisoners. Attorney Randall Hamud told Time magazine that three of his clients at MCC were kept shackled and strip searched twice a day. There are reports that immigrants detained at MCC have been beaten by guards. A Saudi man who was arrested on minor immigration violations was kept in legirons. Guards kicked another prisoner’s door all night so he couldn’t sleep.

Muslim prisoners have been prevented from performing religious practices. One Saudi man, Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, was arrested, taken from his home in San Antonio, Texas, brought to the MCC, and held as a material witness for 13 days. FBI agents questioned him repeatedly, screamed at him, and kicked him in his back. He was unable to call his lawyer for six days. Eventually he was let go, with no explanation or apology. Al-Hazmi is a fourth-year radiology resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center, but he may be unable to return to work because media reports falsely claimed he was connected to the hijackers, and some people at his job have made it clear he is no longer welcome.

What made Al-Hazmi a “suspect”? He has the same last name as one of the hijackers, he made airline reservations for his family over the Internet, and he received a phone call from one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers (the bin Laden family broke ties with Osama bin Laden years ago).

Yazeed Al-Salmi, a 23-year-old student from Saudi Arabia, was arrested and questioned because he allegedly knew one of the hijackers. He was held for three weeks in solitary confinement at MCC. He said the guards at MCC refused to call him by name: “They call you a ‘fucking terrorist.’” After his release, Al-Salmi found he had been evicted from his apartment.

A new level of repression

As David Cole of the Center for Constitutional Rights points out, “This country has a long tradition of responding to fear by stifling dissent, punishing association, launching widespread political spying and seeking shortcuts around the Constitution. Few Americans opposed the imprisonment of anti-war dissenters during World War I, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or the anti-Communist laws of the McCarthy era.”

In the 1960s, the US government targeted political activists in the now infamous COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program)—which resulted in the murder of members of the Black Panther Party and other political activists as well as the unjust imprisonment of hundreds of people. In the late 1970s, the government launched a massive surveillance campaign against over 1,000 organizations that opposed US policy in Latin America.

The Rex 84 program, developed under the Reagan administration, planned to turn former army bases and other sites into concentration camps for the mass detention of immigrants crossing the Mexican border as well as anti-government forces in this country.

The US government is now putting into place and carrying out a new and highly intense level of repression against the people. So far, the repressive offensive has been especially focused at immigrants, Arab and Muslim people in particular. But dangerous precedents are being set for even broader and harsher assaults on the rights of the people. And the new “anti-terrorism law” (known officially as “The USA Patriot Act”) gives the government unprecedented powers to spy on and arrest people.

On October 29, a coalition of civil liberties, human rights and electronic privacy organizations filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the people who have been arrested in the government’s September 11 investigation. The 24 organizations included the ACLU, American Muslim Council, Amnesty International USA, Arab American Institute, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, Council on American Islamic Relations, the Federation of American Scientists, and Human Rights Watch. Over 150 organizations, 300 law professors and 40 computer scientists have signed a statement titled “In Defense of Freedom” that opposes targeting of Arab and Muslim people.

The US government is forging ahead with its repressive agenda and aiming to silence opposition to their plans. It is up to the people to make sure this does not happen.

Source: Revolutionary Worker Online: www.rwor.org