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Inter Press Service - August 24, 2004

When the FBI Comes Knocking

By Marty Logan

Sarah Bardwell did not get the names of the four FBI agents and two police officers who questioned her and her roommates late on the afternoon of Jul. 22 on the front porch of their house in Denver. ''We asked them for their names and they said they wouldn't give us their names because we wouldn't give them ours.''

''They told us they were doing pre-emptive investigations into possible – I think their exact words were 'terrorists, anarchists and murderers'. Then they specified (it was about people) that may be planning actions for the RNC or the DNC,'' she says in a telephone interview from her house.

The Republican National Convention (RNC) will be held later this month to officially nominate U.S. President George W Bush as candidate for November's presidential election. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) took place in July, nominating Senator John Kerry.

After about 25 minutes of a mixture of aggressive and then chummy questioning of Bardwell and her roommates, the six officers left, after warning the group that they would be making ''more intrusive efforts'' to find the information they were seeking.

According to media reports this week, Bardwell is one of possibly dozens of protesters that FBI agents have questioned in recent weeks, an act that has provoked peals of protest country-wide from those who say the visits violate the freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

They also raise the question of whether the Bush administration is creating a ''climate of fear'' that is seeping beyond the Muslim and Arab communities that were scrutinised by security agencies after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Yes, says the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). ''I think (visiting protesters) definitely contributes to a climate of fear and intimidation,'' says Emily Whitfield, the New York-based group's director of media relations.

News of the interrogations come weeks before the Republican Party is slated to officially nominate Bush at the RNC in New York City, an event that protesters have been planning for months to disrupt. Authorities have been plotting their security response for just as long, with the New York Police Department, for example, working with the Secret Service for the past 18 months.

On Tuesday, three members of Congress wrote to the Justice Department asking it to probe the FBI visits, calling them ''systematic political harassment and intimidation of legitimate anti-war protests,'' reported the 'New York Times'.

In a statement, FBI Assistant Director Cassandra M Chandler responded that the agency ''is not monitoring groups or interviewing individuals unless we receive intelligence that such individuals or groups may be planning violent and disruptive criminal activity or have knowledge of such activity.'' ''The F.B.I. conducted interviews, within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, in order to determine the validity of the threat information,'' she added.

But Bardwell, an intern at the American Friends Service Committee who calls herself a social justice activist says neither she nor her roommates were planning to attend either convention. In February 2003, Bardwell helped organize local anti-war protests. ''We hadn't even been following it; I didn't even know when it was going to happen. I think (the FBI is) basically just justifying violating people's first amendment rights (of freedom of religion, speech and assembly),'' she adds.

The ACLU warned of a climate of fear following the 9/11 attacks after the FBI in 2001 and 2002 questioned 8,000 Muslims and Arabs in the United States. ''All public accounts indicate that the questioning did not yield apprehension of a single terrorist,'' said the group in a statement.

Two weeks ago, the ACLU said it was joining up with lawyers around the country to provide free legal advice to any Muslim or Arab-Americans caught up in a new round of questioning by the FBI, announced earlier this year. ''These types of FBI tactics are counterproductive. They produce fear and resentment, not results,'' said Dalia Hashad, the ACLU's Arab, Muslim and South Asian advocate…..

The ACLU launched another challenge Thursday, arguing the administration should not be able to use secret evidence to defend against a suit from a number of groups that oppose the Patriot Act's powers to access private records and to use ''national security letters'' to obtain personal information from Internet service providers and other businesses without judicial oversight…..

Whitfield says the public is joining ACLU's fight against the administration's squeezing of civil liberties since 9/11. While the number of new members to the group increased by fewer than 1,000 people from 1999 to 2000, it soared by more than 14,000 from 2000 to 2001, by more than 19,000 the following year and by more than 52,000 from 2002 to 2003…..

 http://www.alternet.org/story/19634/

Chicago Tribune - August 24, 2004

Sting of mistrust haunts Muslims
Community is wary of spotlight

By Deborah Horan
 
The knock on his neighbor's door upset Niaz Hussain the most. More than the invasive questions about which mosque he attends and his level of religious observance, the FBI's accidental visit to the house next door left the Pakistani native feeling the sting of humiliation.

"They look at me very, very funny any time I'm walking by," Hussain said of the family that lives next to him in Berwyn. "They look at me like, `Why is the FBI after me?' The whole neighborhood looks at me funny."

In the spotlight again amid heightened terror alerts, revelations of government efforts to track them and high-profile arrests, Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. are feeling the pinch of negative publicity and wondering if they will ever stop feeling like they are under a microscope.

In the last few weeks, police have arrested several Muslims in separate alleged terror-related incidents. The most recent high-profile arrest came Friday in Chicago, when Muhammad Salah, 51, of Bridgeview was charged, along with two other men, with helping to raise money for Hamas, a militant Islamist Palestinian group based in the Gaza Strip.

And the FBI has intensified voluntary interviews of Arabs and Muslims in advance of the November elections.

Even more troubling to activists, the U.S. Census Bureau twice gave demographic information about Arabs--including ZIP codes and nations of origin--to the Department of Homeland Security, officials acknowledged in July. The revelation sent shivers up spines in a community already fearful of being rounded up like Japanese-Americans were during World War II.

"People feel very vulnerable," said Ali Abu Nimah, an activist with the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based advocacy group. "I don't think that most people think their door is about to be broken down. But it creates an air of uncertainty."….

Arab and Muslim groups in the United States were outraged recently when they discovered that the Census Bureau had passed data to the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and 2003 detailing concentrations of Arabs by ZIP code and divulging their countries of origin.

The government wanted the information to make Arabic language signs at international airport hubs, said officers at the Customs and Border Protection office of the Department of Homeland Security. But to some, the request signaled the first step in a possible nightmare in which the government rounds them up.

"The rationales that this particular administration gives for some of these draconian and unconstitutional measures they've taken are just laughable," said Junaid Afeef, a Chicago lawyer on the board of the Muslim Bar Association.

Afeef has represented several Muslim and Arab clients questioned by the FBI, which has stepped up interviews based on ongoing investigations and not as a result of a new round of questioning, an FBI spokeswoman said. Afeef said his clients have fared well during questioning that centered on such things as the content of sermons at mosques and rumors about future terrorist attacks.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0408240277aug24,1,7753669.story?coll=chi-news-hed