A Tampa Bay Victim of America's Totalitarian Little
Secret, The FISA Court, An All-American "Star Chamber..."
"Detainee "in a Government "Gulag" -- Guilty
Until Proven Innocent?
"We did not all come over on the same
ship, but we are all in the same boat."
Bernard M. Baruch, 1870-1965; stock broker,
presidential adviser
America's Top Secret
"FISA" Court
by John F. Sugg
8.28.97
(update: 5.28.99)
This is a story about Jews and Arabs, political prisoners and terrorists
-- and I may lose some friends in the telling. I am neither an Arab nor
a Jew, although I love the cultures of both. My feelings on the Mideast
range from emotional confusion to professional detachment.
Yet, what I'm writing about deals with the heart of America's principles
of justice. It calls for more than the dispassionate voice.
So, to understand the emotions of the people I'm telling about, I've
sat down for supper with Palestinians, local examples of the diaspora of
5 million people. I've attended their Islamic worship services. And, I'll
recount feelings I have that parallel theirs -- the fire of Irish patriotism
that some in my family have embraced.
This is a plea for justice for a man who is a schoolteacher, scholar,
a devoted and deeply religious husband and father to three lovely young
daughters, a man who has contributed to the Tampa community.
He is Mazen Al-Najjar, and, yes, you can tell by his name that he is
different. He is a Muslim, a Palestinian, and his case makes a strong statement
one's faith can be a crime in America.
Al-Najjar, a U.S. resident since 1981, has sat in a federal lock-up
in Bradenton for more than three months. The government says he is a risk
to national security. FBI and immigration agents say he is "mid level"
operative at a front for terrorist activity.
No charges have been brought against him, however, and the government
won't even tell Al-Najjar or his lawyer what evidence exists, who his accusers
are or when he can expect a resolution to his case.
Al-Najjar may be a terrorist, but if he is the government certainly
has not disclosed one shred of proof. What the government has shown is
arrogance. Al-Najjar says agents have offered to free him and resolve his
immigration status -- if he will finger other members of the Islamic community,
particularly his brother-in-law, University of South Florida computer engineering
professor Sami Al-Arian. Local Muslims say that dozens of members of their
community have been subjected to intimidating visits by federal cops. Can
you imagine the outrage that would erupt if leaders of the Catholic,
Protestant or Jewish faiths were similarly leaned on by the feds?
The best the government has offered for proof against Al-Najjar and
Al-Arian are items such as phone records that show calls were made to Muslims
who years before knew people who later were involved in terrorist acts.
This isn't even good guilt by association.
Or, the authorities make much of the fact that Al-Arian financially
helped his own family. This is a crime?
FBI agent Barry Carmody said the government doesn't need to show evidence
or reveal who is accusing Al-Najjar. "That's
the law," he said, referring to glaringly unconstitutional provisions of
the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act. The law, ignited by the 1995
bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, was fueled by thinly concealed
anti-Arab prejudice -- despite the fact that it was an American-as-apple-pie
ex-soldier who committed the atrocity.
"Change the law, write your congressman if you don't like it," Carmody
huffed.
I'm sorry, that answer just doesn't cut it. This is America, and I
expect my government to guard, not trample, rights. We don't -- or shouldn't
-- have Star Chambers or guilt by anonymous whisper. The Inquisition's
Torquemada would have loved the government's position. And Eichmann
might well have told the Jews, Gypsies and Slavs, "Hey, change the law"
-- as he packed them in to cattle cars.
If the government has real evidence of real terrorist activities, then
by all means bring charges, have a trial and, if a jury convicts, punish
the guilty. But the government shouldn't destroy the moral and ethical
foundations of this nation by imprisoning people because of their religion,
national origin, or their peaceful advocacy of a cause.
Al-Najjar certainly supports his people in his homeland. He believes
the Palestinian uprising is just. He has hosted conferences, and he aids
activities such as orphanages for children whose parents have died in the
uprising.
But, from his jail cell last week he said: "I
am not a terrorist. I don't support terrorism."
His wife Fedaa is allowed to see him for a few minutes each week. The
scene is straight out of prison movie. She sits on one side of bulletproof
glass in an aging Manatee County jail, while Al-Najjar sits on the other
side. They talk via telephones. No contact. He can't see, much less hold
his daughters. Although a scholar, he is allowed only three books in his
cell. A prolific writer, he is given only two pencils, no pens.
Al-Najjar is anguished for his daughters, Yara, 8, Sarah, 6, and Safa,
2. "The youngest is very close to me, and I have never been away for more
than two or three days before," he said. "And Sarah, she has lots of thoughts,
and she can't even speak them to me."
Despite an incarceration that has more in common with the tyrannies
in Cuba, Latin American Banana Republics, China or Iraq, Al-Najjar has
kind words for the country he would adopt.
"I believe the American people have achieved the greatest contribution
to a fair and accountable system of justice," Al-Najjar said last week.
"Despite exceptions such as with me."
This exception is unsettling.
As a journalist, the Mideast tragedy is something that periodically
I've fielded in detached manner. Palestinians slaughter Israelis. Israelis
massacre Arabs. An old and repetitious story. Write it, edit it, run it
and then check out what O.J. or Princess Di is doing.
But the Mideast has also nagged the back of my mind for years. Talking
with Al-Najjar, visiting Tampa's Islamic Education Center, listening to
members of the Muslim community -- a dusty memory surfaced. I first found
myself in a heated debate over the Mideast 25 years ago, and, oddly enough,
it began on St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, where I had gone to soak up
some of my family's Celtic heritage.
Exhausted from walking about the city, I sat on the steps of a statue.
An old man came up and shook his cane at me. "Aye, and do you know whose
statue it is you're sitting on?" I asked him who would own such a thing.
"No, no, young man. I mean, do you know that that is the statue of Wolfe
Tone?"
The day wore on, and as I paid for many a pint of Guinness for the
elderly gentleman, he regaled me with stories of Theobald Wolfe Tone, a
pal of Napoleon's -- and a Protestant, no less -- who had led a rising
against the English in 1796. Captured, condemned to the gallows, Tone slit
his own throat. Another in the endless line of Irish patriots martyred
for The Cause.
To the British, Tone was a terrorist, as were the bold Irish Republican
boys Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Eamon De Valera, who led the Easter
Rebellion of 1916. Now they are heroes -- De Valera, like the terrorist
Menachem Begin in Israel, would later be his nation's prime minister.
My aged friend claimed to have fought in the 1916 revolt, and to have
held the wounded Connolly's head in the hospital before the great leader
was carted off in an ambulance, tied to a chair and dispatched by an English
firing squad. Israel similarly reveres its leaders who founded the nation
in 1948; perhaps some day Palestinians will be able to build statues to
their martyrs.
I happen to remember the date of this Dublin encounter -- May 30, 1972
-- because gunmen hired by Palestinian guerrillas shot up Lod Airport in
Tel Aviv, killing 24 people and wounding 76. It was the big story of the
day.
I had known little of Irish history, but that night in a Dublin pub,
I heard a lot from the elderly man about 800 years of English state terrorism
-- the attempted enslavement of a people and the near-successful destruction
of a grand culture. The old patriot departed, and then with young friends
of several European nationalities, the discussion turned to the day's massacre
in Israel.
The Europeans almost unanimously sided with the Palestinians, and this
astounded me. But, then, I understood even less of Mideast history than
that of Eire's.
What I knew about Israel/Palestine was largely the product of the childhood
reading of Leon Uris' novel Exodus and later seeing the movie.
You may recall the popular depiction: Arabs were basically sneaky and bad
(true, there were some exceptions, just like there were a few good Indians
in John Wayne movies) and they spent much of their time killing Israeli
children living on kibbutzim.
They were … different. On the other hand, Israelis were pretty much like
us, and they were owed a homeland after the Holocaust. Good guys, bad guys,
and it was easy to tell them apart because the villains wore dish towel
sort of things on their heads.
My friends thought my opinions were a hoot. For the first time, I heard
the phrase: "The winner's propaganda becomes the loser's history." I recall
an angry French woman scorning my naiveté, saying: "If one people
robs another of its homes, of course there will be war."
Ever since, I -- probably like most people who don't have an ethnic/religious
stake in the Mideast -- have been uneasy, confused and disturbed by events
there. What is happening to the Palestinians seems unjust, but we hear
"Arab terrorists" repeated over and over on the tube. Thanks to media that
tilt decidedly toward Israel, those two words have been irrevocably twisted
together, ingrained in our consciousness. You don't have an Arab
unless you have a terrorist.
"We Palestinians have but one choice," Sami Al-Arian said last week.
"Either we can be subservient and accept our lot as cheap labor for the
Israeli and not protest the taking of land for Jewish settlements, or the
Israeli government will brand us as terrorists."
I certainly don't have an answer to the unholy
conflict in the Holy Lands. Although, it seems to me that the Israelis
can never expect to have peace as long as they insist on seizing land from
Palestinians for Jewish settlers, and as long as Muslims are denied full
rights in a multi-cultural state.
Nor can the Palestinians expect peace as long as extremist factions
wage their unrelenting jihad, however justified their
struggle against discrimination as evil as apartheid. Suicide bombers will
never be mistaken for doves of peace.
The whole issue of what is a terrorist is perplexing. A half century
ago, Begin, who would become Israeli prime minister in 1977, led the terrorist
Irgun, which massacred hundreds of Arab women and children in the village
of Deir Yassin. Fleeing from that tragedy, Al-Najjar's grandfather was
murdered, and that began the long odyssey that would eventually bring the
family to Tampa.
Until two years ago, the events were thousands of miles away and Mideast
worries were largely academic. Then, literally, the subject really was
academic and right here in Tampa. Based on a television documentary by
Steve Emerson -- a journalist whose credentials include The Washington
Post but a guy critics call a shill for Israeli intelligence agencies
-- The Tampa Tribune began a probe of a think tank, World
and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), at the University of South Florida.
The reports targeted Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, Al-Arian. In some
respects, these "investigations" were almost humorous. Emerson's television
documentary shows Al-Arian making a speech in Arabic, and the translator
says Al-Arian is promising to send weapons to Palestinians. But the Arabic
word for weapons is "selah," while "salah" means prayers. "I said
we would send our prayers to our Palestinian brothers," Al-Arian said.
Emerson, it should be noted, has made a cottage industry out of depicting
hidden Arab conspiracies. After the Oklahoma City bombing, he was quick
to grab the nation's microphones and blame the event on … you guessed it
… "Arab terrorists."
The Trib's articles, which I have defended, never hit
their target, Al-Arian. However, the issue took on an explosive dimension
in October 1995 when a former WISE member, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, surfaced
as the new leader of Islamic Jihad. And, it is true that Al-Najjar, as
WISE's administrator, wrote checks to Shallah and to another WISE member,
Basheer Nafi, who is also accused of being in the Islamic Jihad.
There was no wrongdoing by USF or by WISE's top leaders, according
to an investigation conducted by a nationally prominent Tampa lawyer, William
Reese Smith. Al-Najjar claims he did not know of Shallah's and Nafi's Islamic
Jihad ties.
But the press reports inspired the federal authorities to launch their
own probe. A federal grand jury is investigating, the FBI has seized records
-- but no charges have been brought.
Nonetheless, early on May 19, as Mazen Al-Najjar was eating his breakfast
eggs with his family, federal agents came to arrest him for an expired
visa -- a largely technical issue he was seeking to remedy. A confidential
witness is said to have told agents that during a visit to WISE offices,
Al-Najjar, apparently in a sudden attack of total imbecility, boasted to
this stranger that the organization was a front for terrorists.
Based on such secret "evidence," the government
has kept Al-Najjar locked up with no bail and no end in sight.
The First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments
to the U.S. Constitution have been declared null and void by the FBI and
immigration officials. Freedom of speech and association, the guarantee
of due process, the right to be informed of charges and to confront accusers
-- the United States says these don't exist when it comes to Mazen Al-Najjar.
You might be next
on their list, because as Bernard Baruch said, ultimately we are
all in the same boat.
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