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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Time to clamp down on 'counter-terror'
By Lamis AndoniIn the wake of the recent shootings at a Jewish Cultural Centre in Los Angeles, California, many, mostly Jewish voices, have demanded that the United States government crack down on the racist groups that, they say, appear to be gaining ground across the country. Naturally, the response has been that such a crackdown would undermine democratic and legal processes, underscoring the dilemma of a democratic society that wants to protect its citizens without jeopardising the rule of the law. A blanket crackdown would, commentators have argued, be against freedoms of belief and expression that are dear to liberal societies, and could lead to human-rights violations.
However the debate sparked by the LA shootings, which left five American Jews wounded and a Filipino American dead, overlooks the fact that the same legal and democratic process has already been badly compromised by the 1996 US 'immigration laws', which were themselves enacted in a sweeping 'counter-terror' campaign. And the reason for this is depressingly simple. The 1996 laws, as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has repeatedly noted, almost exclusively target Muslim and Arab residents of the United States and Arab or Muslim immigrants. Moreover, there are currently Arab nationals in US jails held on inadequate, or even fabricated charges, which are a result of the application of these laws.
The most notorious part of the 1996 legal package is that which allows the US government to detain, to refuse bail to, to deport or to deny citizenship to immigrants and legal residents based on 'secret evidence'. It has been used to detain Arabs, none of whom have been charged with acts of violence, much less for plotting a shooting rampage. Currently, at least nine Arabs are known to be languishing in US jails on undisclosed charges, their detention justified by the 'secret evidence' available to the government.
Of these nine, all of whom are Iraqis, six are known to have worked for the CIA in northern Iraq, and were airlifted to the US when an attempt to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed in 1996. The other three are either presumed guilty by association, targeted for their community activism, or for their refusal to work as FBI informants. Accusations made against the men range from affiliation with Palestinian leftist groups, to a presumed affiliation with the radical Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, with Islamic Jihad, or with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman,who is currently serving a prison sentence for 'masterminding' the 1995 World Trade Centre bombing in New York.
In two of the cases, however, a judge has found the information provided by the government inadequate and too flimsy to justify the charges.
In a similar case, an American judge last month dismissed charges brought against Nasser Ahmed, an Egyptian national, who had been accused of helping Sheikh Abdel-Rahman plot terrorist attacks from his prison cell. However Ahmed remains in jail while the US government appeals against the ruling. Ahmed, who had earlier been appointed by the court to translate for the sheikh, said that the charges were fabricated after he refused recruitment as an informer by the FBI and by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS). The two agencies, according to Ahmed, threatened to deport him if he did not collaborate. When he refused, he was arrested and accused of various crimes, which ranged from attempting to obtain a bomb-making manual with the intention of sending this abroad, to smuggling out a letter from Sheikh Abdel-Rahman that allegedly caused a subsequent massacre in Egypt.
These charges fell apart at subsequent judicial hearings, the judge declaring that the government's 'secret evidence' was not admissible. The 'bomb-making manual', it was revealed, consisted of documents that Ahmed had been asked to translate, while the alleged letter contained neither instructions nor instigation, but complaints by Sheikh Abdel-Rahman about his prison conditions. The ACLU, which is representing Ahmed, states that the case "demonstrates that secret evidence is generally synonymous with weak evidence", while the judge warned strongly of the abuses that such procedures are open to.
The use of such evidence, in fact, has not stood up to serious scrutiny in any of the cases brought against Arabs or Arab-Americans in which it has been used. Deportation orders made against Emad Hamad, who had been accused of supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organisation accused by the US of supporting terror, and Hani Khaireddin, were dropped once this evidence was made available to the judge.
In another case, Mazen Najjar, a Palestinian professor at a university in Florida, has been in jail for three years on unstated charges, again as a result of secret government accusations and evidence levelled against him. Najjar was detained by the US authorities following the broadcast of a television documentary, Jihad in America, in which he was accused of contributing to Islamic Jihad. The documentary however, has itself been widely condemned, and was produced by the American journalist Steve Emerson, who is well known for his prejudice against Muslims and Palestinians.
Despite legal successes, Ahmed, Khaireddin and the nine Iraqis remain in jail, while the government appeals against the judicial rulings that should have set them free. According to Hussein Ebiesh, communications director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), only the repeal of the section of the 1996 laws that allows law-enforcers to behave in this way will stop the blatant targeting of Arabs.
Hopes now rest on the success of the 1999 Secret Evidence Repeal Act introduced by Congressmen David Benoir (Democrat-Michigan) and Tom Campbell (Republican-California). And just last week 30 US congressmen signed a petition against the most notorious 'secret evidence' section of the 1996 laws. This is undoubtedly an encouraging sign, given the atmosphere of exclusion and intimidation that all too often envelops the Muslim and Arab communities in the United States. But the ACLU and the ADC are not leaving anything to chance, and both have launched nationwide campaigns to pressure Congress to repeal all the 1996 immigration laws.
The ACLU considers the annulment of these laws crucial for preserving liberty and human rights in America. As George Nojeim, the ACLU legislative officer, recently said in a statement, "The use of secret evidence is a feature of totalitarian governments. It goes against everything our country stands for. People here whose liberty is at stake have the right to know the evidence against them and to be given an opportunity to rebut it."
In the wake of the debate over the recent LA shootings, it is important that Americans are reminded that the legal and democratic process in the United States is already seriously compromised.
