Extraordinary Rendition and Citizenship Stripping

TMO 

Friends of Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen man murdered in his Orlando home by the FBI, told the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that FBI agents asked them to spy on Orlando-area mosques, threatening arrest if they failed to comply. CAIR “has received several corroborating reports from friends of Todashev that FBI agents have threatened to wrongfully arrest them if they do not work with the agency to spy on local mosques, Muslim restaurants and hookah lounges.”

But a similar case involving a young Somalian man has flown under the public radar. It was only because of his month long hunger strike inside a Brooklyn, New York prison (MCC) that this author heard about the extraordinary rendition of Mahdi Hashi.

Falguni Sheth reports that Hashi, a British citizen of Somali descent “was continually pressured by M15 (the British equivalent of the CIA) to cooperate with them and spy on fellow Somalis.” His friend, Nur Mohamed, said a British intelligence officer told him, “If you do not work for us we will tell any foreign country you try to travel to that you are a suspected terrorist.”

When Hashi refused to become an informant, he became a target of government harassment. The reason for suspicion seems to be his interest in studying Arabic language abroad. When he was 16, he was arrested in Egypt and held for 11 days for a visa violation, even though his visa was not expired. During that time he was interrogated and pressured to confess something he knew nothing about.

“Egyptian authorities are saying that you have links to Al-Qaida and other terror networks, specifically the Chechen mujahedeen and also the mujahedeen in Caucasus.”

“I didn’t know what ‘Caucasus’ was,” Hashi told Cageprisoners. “They said that you’ve actually trained as well, you done training with them, extremist training.”

After being deported back to the UK, he decided to go to Syria to continue his studies. Upon his return, he was interrogated and fingerprinted at Heathrow airport and told he was on a Terrorism Database. Hashi was told that his ‘suspect’ status and travel restrictions would be lifted only if he agreed to co-operate with M15. Hashi complained to his Member of Parliament, Frank Dobson and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body which oversees M15, that he was being harassed by security officers because he had refused to work as a spy in his North London Muslim community.

Soon later, his grandmother became ill so he decided to fly back to Somalia for a visit. He was stopped at Gatwick airport and a man from M15 warned him not to get on the plane, saying, “Whatever happens to you outside the UK is not our responsibility.” Hashmi got on the plane anyway.

When he landed, he was immediately arrested by police in Djibouti who told him, “We don’t know why you’re here but we’ve been told to keep you here. It’s coming from the government and its coming from your government.” He was deported back to the UK.

Finally, in 2012, Hashi returned to Somalia where he married and had a child.

Shortly thereafter, British Home Secretary Theresa May sent him a letter in the mail which stripped him of his UK citizenship. “The reason for this decision is that the Security Service assess that you have been involved in Islamicist (sic) extremism and present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom due to your extremist activities,” wrote May, even though Hashi had never been accused of any crime.

A few weeks later, he disappeared from Mogadishu. “Worried, his family appealed to the British government, who informed them that their hands were tied, because—alas—he was no longer a citizen,” reports Falguni Sheth in Salon. Hashi had been kidnapped and secretly rendered to The US drone base at Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti. His family learned of his whereabouts from someone who had recently been released from the prison in Djibouti that Mahdi had been detained alongside him.

“Hashi was detained, abused, and interrogated in Djibouti for several months before being handed over for more interrogations to the Americans. After several months, he suddenly appeared in handcuffs in a Brooklyn Federal Court right before Christmas of 2012, along with 2 Swedish men of Somali descent,” reports Sheth. He is being held in solitary confinement under special administrative measures (SAMs), which restrict his communication with attorneys.

Saghir Hussain, the attorney for Hashi’s family, said they learned of his hunger strike through a phone call with Hashi, which was interrupted “after about 60 seconds or so.”

CBS news reported that a letter, written by US Attorney Loretta Lynch, has suddenly appeared in Hashmi’s file, alleging without providing any evidence, that Hashi and two other Somalis, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohammed Yusuf “had substantial knowledge that al-Qaida was building a chemical weapons factory, and that they had substantial countersurveillance expertise.”

Tom Foot writes in the Camden New Journal, “According to the FBI, Mr Hashi was ‘deployed in combat operations to support al-Shabaab action in Somalia.’” Further details of the case against him have not been made available to the defense team. Mr Hashi has not been told of what he is accused. Campaigners fear that his rights will be denied to him in what they describe as a “secret court” set-up. They are calling for him to face charges in Britain and for his citizenship to be restored.

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, a prominent human rights barrister told the Daily Mail, UK: “The increase in orders under this Government of depriving British people of their citizenship on non-conducive grounds is a matter of concern because it is always very difficult to challenge fairly. It means people are being deprived of their rights as a British citizen on the say-so of security officials who can’t be challenged in court.”

Several other Britons have had their citizenship stripped as soon as they left the country. Bilal al-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr of London were stripped of their UK citizenship and were then killed by two US drone strikes in Somalia.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian man Lawal Babafemi, 33, has also been targeted by the same US Attorney Loretta Lynch in Brooklyn. Babafemi, who pled Not Guilty on September 27, 2013, was detained in Nigeria in 2011 and then transferred to the US, for working on the online magazine “Inspire,” whose publisher, Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen. 

Hashi is taking liquids but no food. So far he is not being force-fed.

Boston Bombing Mystery: Leaked Photos Prove Police Lied

 TMO 

It is deeply offensive and un-American to slander someone as a bomber or terrorist without any evidence, long before the trial. Assuming someone guilty before proven innocent threatens the Constitutional rights of all Americans who at some point might be accused of a crime.

It is naive to assume good will on the part of government prosecutors, especially in these fake “Islamic terror” cases, knowing how much foul play has gone on in courtrooms especially over the past few years that involved the FBI and high ups in the government misrepresenting evidence and engaging in illegitimate smear campaigns. It appears that the government’s purpose for putting a Muslim on trial in America is rarely to establish the facts of the case but to create deliberately misleading narrative for the purpose of bolstering a political agenda that most Americans would not agree with if they knew the facts.

At this point there is zero proof being offered that the Tsarnaevs were responsible for the Boston marathon bombings, and even less convincing evidence that if they did, that their motivation was religion. That’s all part of a stereotypical, false narrative-with-an-agenda the media promotes, similar to Nazi journalism about Jews in the 1940s. While the agenda is unclear here in the US, the narrative is spectacular.

We have countless unverified statements made by FBI and Boston police to the media. These media claims are then used as evidence in court. This is standard operating procedure for a frame up. Many of these claims are obviously implausible, like the “confession letter” that mysteriously appeared inside the boat nearly 3 months after the suspect’s capture. The entire world is laughing their heads off about that one.

Now we have photographic proof that a member of the Boston police brazenly lied on TV saying Tsarnaev had a throat wound. Leaked photos of his capture on April 19 clearly show that the young man had a head injury and his hand was badly mangled but his larynx was fine – there was no blood dripping down his neck.

Photos leaked to the internet that were taken at the hospital clearly show a straight slash about 5 inches long down the side of his neck near the ear, but his larynx is just fine. Why was the public told he could not speak? And what happened to him afterwards?

At the court hearing on July 10, “his eye was almost completely swollen shut, his cheek was very swollen – I’m pretty sure these were on the left side of his face- and one side of his mouth was droopy.. His mouth kind of reminded me of when someone has a stroke… the swelling wasn’t bruised from what I could see,” an onlooker told TMO.

There are many questions remaining. The marathon bombing took place April 15, 2013. On April 21, government prosecutors submitted a motion to the court to seal Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case. The judge granted the motion. On the same day they submitted their criminal complaint under seal. This all took place on a Sunday, oddly enough. On April 22, Tsarnaev was handed over to US Marshals by the FBI and was charged with using a “weapon of mass destruction” and property damage resulting in death. He nodded in response to the judge a couple of times, then he said “No” once. The case was then unsealed, but many files are missing from the docket.

A probable cause hearing was scheduled for May 30, but on April 20, it was rescheduled to July by agreement of both parties “in view of the complex factual and legal issues present in this case and the need for adequate time to obtain and review evidence.” The Federal Grand Jury indicted the suspect on June 28, so the probable cause hearing never happened.

What is bizarre is that the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier was added to the multiple grave charges, even though Cambridge police never claimed the murder was related to the bombing suspects. Why was the cop-killing charge thrown in later?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends and family all describe him as a friendly, laid back guy and without exception, they are universally confused by government accusations that he bombed the Boston marathon. The predatory media could not find one person to say a bad thing about him. Meanwhile, on June 9, police found someone who actually fits the profile of a psycho killer.

27-year-old Daniel Morley “had all the materials needed to build a pressure-cooker bomb before this kind of weapon was used in the Boston Marathon attack in April,” according to comments made by the man’s own mother in a recently unsealed police affidavit.

“Police also said they found a shoe box with the head of a decapitated bird, dismantled cell phones, flex cuff restraints, black gun powder, and a burnt green stuffed animal that had been stabbed repeatedly,” wrote Tim McLaughlin for Reuters. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force said it is investigating. But the only investigation that has been reported is whether or not the man has any ties to the Tsarnaevs.

All we know for sure about the Tsarnaevs is that they were fleeing from the police, shortly after their faces appeared on TV. Lightly armed, Tamerlan engaged in a shootout with police, which was filmed from a window. The brothers appeared vulnerable and crouched behind a car on the side of the street. Then, there were some loud explosions and smoke filled the air. But there was no property damage, no shrapnel, nor any reported injury from these explosions, just some marks on the pavement on the opposite side of the street – not where the Tsarnaevs were crouched. When the smoke cleared, Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar was on the run.

It will be interesting to see if government prosecutor Carmen Ortiz will provide proof that Dzhokar Tsarnaev bombed the marathon, or if she will resort to the cheap tactic of using “secret evidence” against the accused. Other than wild media stories about the manhunt that resulted in the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown being shut down under martial law, all the public has to go on is surveillance camera footage showing Dzhokhar and Tamerlan walking peacefully through the crowd at the Boston marathon wearing light backpacks. The criminal complaint is based solely on the affidavit of one FBI agent, Daniel Genck, who, based on video footage that no one else has seen, claims that the men were carrying large heavy backpacks and that they set their backpacks down prior to the explosions.

The public should demand to see a real investigation of all the actors in this drama, not just the accused. The FBI should not be simultaneously investigating a case and framing a case for the prosecution. That’s a conflict of interest.

Jon Roland of the Constitution Society wrote, “The Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with multiple federal offenses, but none of them are authorized by the U.S. Constitution… If the federal courts were constitutionally compliant, they would be compelled to dismiss them all, and let the State of Massachusetts prosecute him under its laws.”

CMU Prisoner Shifa Sadequee’s Sister Speaks to TMO

As a little boy, Sharmin’s brother often reminded her to not to step on bugs. As a young man, he worked with his sister Sonali at Raksha, an Atlanta-based organization dedicated to the eradication of violence against women. The US-born Bangladeshi, who had attended a private Islamic high school in Canada, used his knowledge of classical Arabic to translate ancient Islamic texts into English for the former Tibyan Institute website. (The current website appears to be run by US government agents.) Some of the religious opinions that he translated he agreed with, and some he did not agree with. Some of the scholarly work he translated analyzed the concept of ‘jihad.’

Shifa engaged in frank and sometimes wild chat discussions with his online friends. The teenagers who connected through this website discussed Freemasonry and the New World Order as well as their obligations as Muslim men.

Shifa’s mother, Shirin Sadequee said her son was just “talking” about jihad and exploring ideas with other youth.

Shifa Sadequee’s sister Sharmin told TMO that the online chats “consisted of teenagers discussing religious and spiritual matters and opinions of scholars on various issues, political comments, wars abroad, etc.” The mostly South Asian teenagers “used cultural idioms, slang terms that a lot of second generation immigrant youths use in their conversations, but the government interpreted a lot of those phrases and conversations as ‘code’ words.”

“He was not at all planning to join Taliban. He was living in Bangladesh in 2001, when the war in Afghanistan broke out. He emailed some websites wanting to know how he could help the Muslims in Afghanistan. Which the government interpreted as ‘joining’ the Taliban.”

In August 2005, Shifa was detained and questioned at Kennedy International Airport in New York on his way to Bangladesh to get married.

On April 17, 2006, twelve days after his wedding, Shifa was disappeared by Bangladeshi authorities. At a press conference in Bangladesh, his father begged for help from the public in finding his missing son. The Bangladeshi government kept silent.

The FBI brought him to New York aboard a “secret” CIA rendition aircraft via Alaska, stripping off his clothes and wrapping him in clear plastic wrap. FBI agent Michael Sherck requested the warrant for Shifa’s arrest.

In New York, Shifa was charged with making a “false statement” to the FBI but the case was later dropped. In August, 2006, the US government transferred Shifa to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on “terrorism” related charges. No government agencies communicated about his arrest to his father and wife in Bangladesh or to his family in Atlanta. Shifa was held for three years in solitary confinement without trial, during which time he was pressured to testify against his friends in exchange for a plea bargain. He refused.

Sharmin told TMO, “When my brother was arrested, Atlanta Muslim community leaders and members, when they went to talk with the US Attorneys to learn more about the case, the US Attorneys acknowledged that my brother and his friend did not do anything, but that they really needed to prosecute someone to let others know not to talk or do things like these youth.”

Shifa was targeted due to online association with FBI targets including the Toronto 12. Tarek Mehanna was translating for the same online publication and they knew each other from online. There is no evidence that there was any plan to do anything illegal.

Sadequee was charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a group struggling to liberate Muslim-dominated Kashmir from India––although LET was not designated as a terrorist organization in the U.S. in 2005 and did not even exist as an organization then.

““The LET… one of the terrorist organizations that they’re accusing him of beginning to intend to start becoming a part of, didn’t even exist at the time and also was not registered in the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization until two weeks after Shifa was arrested,” stated Atlanta activist Stephanie Guilloud.

He was also accused of sending videos of tourist sites in Washington, D.C. to his online friends, who supposedly were in contact with LET. However, the government could not demonstrate a single conversation or sentence from the online chats about plans or plots for attacking these sites.

Evan Kohlmann testified as an “expert” witness at Sadequee’s trial. Kohlmann, who is connected with Steve Emerson and Israel lobbies, has a history of giving false testimony about Muslim political groups – at Yassin Aref’s trial he absurdly claimed that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and Kurdish separatists were working together.

The religious debates of teenagers were taken out of context by the government to paint them as terrorists and to preemptively prosecute them. Yet the actual chats remained classified as “secret evidence” and were not presented to the jury.

FBI agents testified that online chat conversations by Sadequee discussed robbing people at ATMs and selling marijuana to raise travel money. Sadequee cross examined FBI Agent James Allen regarding the conversations, pointing out that the term “LOL” (laugh out loud) indicated that the conversations were not serious. The judge allowed Allen to interpret evidence which he, as a fact witness, should not have done.

“When ethnocentrism guides in the making and application of the law, jurors and courts/judges as products of culture and bound by culture and politics will always find certain groups ‘guilty.’” said Sharmin.

Shifa was convicted on August 13th, 2009 and sentenced to 17 years. He was also sentenced to an additional 30 years probation, during which time he cannot access the Internet. He spent some time at the CMU in Marion, Illinois before being moved to the CMU in Terre Haute, Indiana in May 2012.

“Within 24 hours of my brother’s conviction, the Director of the US Attorney Office in GA, David Nahmias, was promoted as a Judge to the Georgia Supreme Court– it was headline news in the local media the morning after my brother’s verdict.  And a few years later the lead US Attorney in the case was also placed as a judge in the Fulton County System. Not sure what kind of promotion the FBI agents received,” Sharmin told TMO.

Community organizing played a large role in Shifa’s relatively light sentencing, who was faced with up to 60 years and defended himself without help of a lawyer. 2,900 people wrote letters to the judge asking for leniency. Sharmin explains:

“From the very beginning it was the progressive non-Muslim community and the queer community who stood by us. And, communities that were active around Imam Jamil Al Amin’s case and campaign were very supportive and understood how my brother was targeted for his spiritual and political beliefs and how the case against him was an attack on his First Amendment Rights because he was brown and Muslim.

“This attack was not only on Shifa who is a critical thinker, or on our family, but it was also a violence on the whole community and our ability to think critically about our beliefs, practices, politics, and the way of the world. So, our community-based cross-racial and interfaith alliance helped us to create collective resiliency to respond to the violence of the War on Terror.

“Of course this case was in 2006, and a lot of Muslims in America then believed only the ‘bad’ Muslims are under surveillance and get targeted but now we know this is not true. Things are improving, however. I think more people are realizing keeping quiet is not going to take them anywhere.”

Malcolm X’s Grandson Gone at 28

28 year old Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson and only male descendant of Malcolm X, who reportedly embraced Shia Islam recently and was becoming known as a political activist engaged with and serving to unite many different causes and communities, was murdered in Mexico on May 9, 2013.

“As the son of Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm Shabazz was apparently in the process of putting his life on a positive and productive path, attending the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and writing his memoirs. But now the family has to deal with yet another devastating setback,” writes Herb Boyd in the Daily Beast.

Shabazz had made recent headlines in March 2013 when he was arrested after applying for a visa to travel to Iran to be a participant of the International Fajr Film Festival, in order to give a lecture addressing the issues of Hollywood and violence; in particular he was to address the use of film to promote modern violence & terrorism, and provoking clashes between religions & populations. He had already been featured from January 15th through 18th, 2013 as a featured interviewee for the Press TV documentary “The Façade of the American Dream.”

Soon after his arrest, he appeared live on Iran’s Press TV reporting from New York under a headline reading, “They drew guns on my mother and me.” He also issued a public statement to former US Representative and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney that she posted on her Facebook page:

“Given the storm of lies, and half-truths that come with being associated with being the descendant of El Hajj Malik el Shabazz, also known as Minister Malcolm X, any and everything that I do; great or small, good or not so good, real or imagined is subject to controversy. However, in this missive I will take this opportunity to properly & fully disclose what transpired. In the beginning of 2012 I had been informed that I was under investigation by the F.B.I.’s Counter Terrorism Task Force Unit located in Goshen, N.Y.”

Shabazz goes on to describe various incidents of police harassment that had transpired recently, including the questioning of his neighbors. “They seek to neutralize my networking abilities… The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then deemed justifiable,” he wrote to McKinney last March. He also had this to say:

“I was not arrested by federal agents. I was taken in by a squad from the City of Middletown, N.Y.’s Police Department. I was not being held in an “undisclosed location” so to speak. I was actually being held in the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y. However, from the time that I was booked at the precinct, to standing before a Judge the next day who told me to come back in 7 more, to being processed at the Orange County Jail and up until 7 days later I was not permitted to make any calls to notify anyone of my status; as though I had just been kidnapped from of the street.”

Dave Zirin writes in the Nation: “Malcolm Shabazz had everything going for him. He was 28 years old, handsome as hell and a remarkably charismatic public speaker. He was an activist, an organizer and a proud father… He wanted to wield Malcolm’s memory to fight for a better world.”

Malcolm Shabazz was the guest of a Mexican labor organizer, Miguel Suarez, who had recently been deported from the US, when he was reportedly thrown off the roof of the Palace Bar in Mexico while resisting robbery at 3am. Speculation abounds, about whether this Suarez, who was allegedly affiliated with narcotics trafficking, had lured him into a trap, or if he was just a new friend with a very stupid idea of fun.

Herb Boyd writes in the Daily Beast: “With the confirmation of Malcolm Lateef Shabazz’s death, it marks the third generation in which the family has lost a member violently. Malcolm X’s father, Earl Little, was killed by the Black Legion or the Ku Klux Klan in 1931. As Malcolm X recalled in his autobiography, “Negroes in Lansing have always whispered that he was attacked, and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half.” Three of his father’s brothers were also killed by white men in Georgia, which prompted his father to leave the state. Malcolm Sr. was shot by assassins on February 21, 1965, as he prepared to address an audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Along with the tragic deaths in the family’s patrilineal line, Betty Shabazz was killed in 1997 by a fire in which her grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, was accused and convicted of setting.”

His grandmother, Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, was killed in a fire he started 11 years ago. He was 12 years old. He had been shuttled in and out of correctional institutions until his release from Attica Prison in February 2007. Malcolm Shabazz at age 24 declared to media that he was on a mission: to clear his name, stay out of jail and rise from the ashes of his past. In an extensive interview with NewsOne in 2004, Shabazz explained the terrible event that led to his imprisonment as a youth.

“I didn’t mean for my grandmother to get hurt. I wasn’t thinking anything like that would happen. [I thought] she would go to the fire escape [but] she walked through the fire to get to me. I didn’t think she would walk through a fire for me.”

The death of Malcolm Shabazz at 28 makes him the youngest in the family to have his life end so violently. His grandfather was 39, still in the prime of his life, and on the road to even greater success after meaningful contacts with world leaders in Africa and the Middle East.

Boston: Questions Grow

Flowers lie at the site of the first explosion on Boylston Street after the street reopened to the public for the first time since the Boston Marathon bombings in Boston, Massachusetts April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

Flags continue to fly at half mast in Boston, Massachusetts after the mysterious bombing at the Boston Marathon. On Tuesday, April 16, over 1500 neighbors attended a candlelight vigil for the Richard family of Dorchester, who lost 8 year boy Martin, while his sister lost a leg and his mother’s eyes were seriously injured. The clock at Peabody Square has been stopped at 2:50, “the time on Monday when our world stopped,” writes Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter. The fence around the clock, draped with black cloth, contains a memorial for little Martin, filled with bouquets of flowers, balloons, teddy bears, and prayers written by children. It is nearly impossible to walk by without becoming choked up by tears. Local elementary schools held a moment of silence at 2:50pm on the first Monday back to school after the worst April vacation ever. The people of Dorchester are definitely taking the attack very personally.

“Martin was only 8 and he still held his mother’s hand last Friday when they walked to the Tedeschi’s for a gallon of milk. Martin wasn’t a saint and he shouldn’t be made a martyr or a symbol. He was a little boy who got killed because someone – some unknown person or group – has perceived grievance against us. Our world has stopped… The day will come when justice is done for Martin. We will wait – all of us together – for that day,” writes Forry.

Boston, Cambridge and Watertown residents were all told by the Massachusetts governor to stay inside their homes on Friday, and not to allow anyone in but police SWAT teams, who scoured the area for a missing suspect, entered homes without warrants and pointed guns at residents’ heads while ordering them out of their homes. After the lockdown order was lifted a Watertown resident wandered into his yard, then the 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was located and shot several times by police, then taken into custody with wounds to the throat that will forever prevent him from speaking. His brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already killed in a previous firefight with police, in which an explosive was detonated, leaving a hole in the street. The facts of the case are extremely confusing, with conflicting eyewitness reports, and huge amounts of photography circulating online.

Curiously, the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston including the local police totally ignored the citywide lockdown. People were warmer than usual, walking around in the sunshine or painting their houses in pleasant non-compliance with the citywide order to stay inside. All businesses except for government buildings were open. It seems that a lot of people have made the intention to connect more deeply with their local community. There is widespread belief that the two suspects, who emigrated to the US about a decade ago, are indeed guilty of the Boston bombings. There is among the local community also almost blind faith in the authorities’ version of events, though the surviving suspect was not provided with a lawyer and all we know is what we have been told on TV, which keeps changing. Meanwhile the world community reacts with massive skepticism.

Probably the most plausible explanation is that the two brothers were set up by the FBI. 17 out of 20 of the last “terror arrests” since 9/11 were actually FBI frame-ups, according to Fox News. The two suspects definitely fit the profile of the emotionally vulnerable pot-smoking, drunken loners who lacked any community support from their local religious community; foreign students with divorced parents who live overseas. No one was able to protect or guide them or notice what they were up to.

Justin Raimondo reports on antiwar.com that the brothers’ mother Zubeidat, speaking from her home in Russia, claimed the FBI had been keeping watch on her eldest boy for up to five years. She said: “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to. They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him.”

Were the two just terror patsies who received money for agreeing to bomb something? Indeed, the car they drove and the clothes they wore did not seem to correspond with their actual life status as poor students working minimum wage jobs on the side. The police response to their crime was like nothing Boston has ever seen. Even people who believe the suspects to be guilty were shocked by the liquidation of rule of law as well as the police’s brutality, either killing or permanently silencing the suspects, so that we can never hear their side of the story.

One of the most bizarre events of Friday’s lockdown was the police decision to raze the home in which the suspects reportedly lived in Cambridge. Official reports claim that explosives were found in the house, and therefore the entire house needed to be exploded to ensure that no explosives went off unintentionally. Friends in Cambridge reported that all the neighbors came out of their homes to watch the home demolition. With the the suspects’ home exploded, we lose any evidence about their motives. What if there were diaries, books, personal letters, or official documents in there that would give us some information? Everything that the police has done has led to more questions, rather than answers.

What we do know is that neither son was a leader of any religious or political organization. The tweets publicized online seem to imply that he had almost zero personal opinions.

Cops Say Marathon Bombers Amateurs

One day after the Boston Marathon was interrupted by two bomb blasts, speculation abounds regarding the perpetrator(s), possible motives, and whether or not the government had foreknowledge. 

“The pattern is becoming too, too familiar. So, Boston cops were having a bomb squad drill the same day as the Boston bombing, just like the attacks on Sept. 11 in New York and the 7/7 attack in London,” Cynthia McKinney, former US Congresswoman said.

The Boston Marathon has been held on Patriot's Day, the third Monday of April, since 1897. The state holiday commemorates Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolution. The marathon race from Hopkinton, Massachusetts to Boston's Copley Square attracts about a half-million spectators every year.

The first bomb exploded around 2:50 pm at the Fairmont Hotel along Boylston Street. The second bomb detonated approximately 10 seconds later near to the bleachers close to the finish line.

Tracy Munro of Cambridge, Massachusetts posted on Facebook, “I was a couple doors from the explosion at the finish line. The bomb exploded suddenly while we cheered on runners. Clanking cowbells. Holding up signs of support. Boom. Boom. Everyone started to run for safety. It was hysteria. I stopped myself suddenly and I went back to help and found a young child laying in the street, who was badly injured. Her leg was blown off. I held her head and talked to her until help came while others tied off her leg to stop the bleeding. Her name is Jane. And she held on to me while we carried her to the ambulance. Jane's brother, Martin, did not survive. I'm horrified, but we are safe. It took a long while to track down my family and friends but all are safe and accounted for. I am horrified and in true shock. I appreciate all the love and support. I am not a hero. I am a mother who would hope someone would come to Stella's aid in this situation if I couldn't. She was just a baby, she was so strong and brave. I'm going to try and find the family. Somehow. Life is precious. Stop complaining. I love you all. And. I hope they find who did this and burn them alive.”

A rumor started by the New York Post, that a foreign student from Saudi Arabia who was injured in the bombing was being questioned, has led many to fear an anti-Muslim backlash. The Huffington Post reported, “Security officials at Boston's largest mosque requested police to guard its campus in the wake of Monday's deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon, a sobering reminder that Muslims in the U.S. often face threats after alleged terrorist attacks.”

President Obama intervened on national TV to calm the public saying, “We still don't know who did this or why they did this.” White House officials stated that “a thorough investigation will have to determine whether it was planned and carried out by a terrorist group, foreign or domestic.”

The date of the April 15 attack corresponds with Israeli Independence Day, Tax Day, and Patriots Day. Most political analysts suspect right wingers or Muslims. The bombers are believed to be amateurs. 

No one has taken responsibility for the bombing. The Pakistani Taliban and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have denied any role. A home in Revere, Massachusetts was raided by the FBI but no further information has been made available. Police are searching for an unknown person who was filmed standing on a rooftop watching the pandemonium below without emotional reaction. 

What we do know about the explosions that killed three and injured 170, is that they were caused by two small homemade pipe bombs filled with BB pellets or ball bearings and nails, which were hidden inside two trash cans. Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital removed 20 to 40 pieces of shrapnel from some of the wounded. Terror experts said devices like the ones used in Boston could be made for $100 with instructions found on YouTube. This style of homemade pipe bomb is typical of teenagers who are experimenting with explosives for laughs.

One of the more disturbing aspects about the bombing is that it could have been inspired by a recent episode of Family Guy, which aired on March 17, 2013. In this prime time TV cartoon, the main character Peter is shown driving his car through the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Peter is shown smiling in his blood-drenched car, raising a clenched fist as he crosses the finish line past many dead bodies. Peter then becomes interested in converting to Islam, as a result of a new friend, Mahmoud, who gives him a cell phone. Wearing Islamic clothing, Peter dials the phone and an explosion is heard outside. He dials the phone a second time and another explosion is heard, and people screaming. The first explosion followed by quiet (most people did not know what happened) and the second explosion a few seconds later followed by screaming, as depicted in the cartoon episode, corresponds eerily with the real event.

State and local officials told CNN's John King that there was no known credible threat prior to the explosions, though there are reports of heightened security and bomb squads present even before the race. University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach, who was near the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a series of explosions went off, told local news he thought it was odd there were bomb sniffing dogs at the start and finish lines. Stevenson said he saw law enforcement spotters on the roofs at the start of the race. He's been in plenty of marathons in Chicago, D.C., Chicago, London and other major metropolitan areas but has never seen that level of security before. "They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it's just a training exercise," Coach Ali Stevenson told Local 15.

David Jesser, a teacher at Joseph Lee School, who ran the marathon to raise money for the local elementary school, said: “Nothing seemed atypical to me in terms of security. There's always a large police presence and there's always some military lining the course as well as some running the race. It seemed pretty normal to me, although I could not see the area of the explosion and don't know if security looked any different in that area. But for 25.8 miles it seemed pretty normal... I guess there were about 4500 runners that didn't finish and we were right up at the front of those runners. I think around 23,000 ran yesterday.”

Opium Market Closed to Americans

The other day while waiting in line at CVS, I overheard an elderly man arguing about the cost of his prescription medication, which was well over $100. “Won’t my insurance cover it?” he protested. The pharmacist explained to him that the actual price of the drug was over $300 so yes, the insurance company was covering it, after the cost of the deductible. The old man did not have the money and walked away muttering under his breath. Access to medicine becomes a real problem when the supply is restricted and you are in immediate need.


I had my own CVS drama not that long ago myself. After a certain medical procedure, I was given a prescription for Oxycodine; however I was in so much pain that I could hardly stand up. Naturally, there were about eight people ahead of me in line. Luckily there was a folding chair nearby, so I grabbed it to stop from collapsing as I shook uncontrollably with waterfalls of sweat pouring down my face despite the chilly air conditioning. Finally I got to the head of the line. I sat on the folding chair and gasped out my prescription request. As soon as they gave me the pills I ripped open the package and swallowed one without even moving out of line. No one seemed at all shocked or even disturbed by my behavior – which makes me have to assume that they see this kind of thing a lot. When you are in pain, you can’t think about anything else except getting that pain to stop!

As our population ages, these types of problems will increase. Angela, a retired secretary in Boston admitted to me that she became addicted to Oxycontin, the painkiller her doctor gave her after hip replacement surgery. She also suffers residual pain from a neck fracture. If she cannot get her pain pills in time she becomes terribly sick, which has resulted in late night visits from a shady drug dealer. For as long as I’ve known her she’s been trying to wean herself off the pills, and earlier this year she actually became clean. However, this experience reminded her why she was taking the pills in the first place. She was in pain. She could not function! So, she started to take the pills again. The next problem that arose was that her doctor informed her that the continued use of her pain medication, especially coupled with her moderate but regular drinking habits, was destroying her liver. The doctor warned her that she might end up in the hospital soon from liver poisoning.

It makes me so sad that someone should have to choose between dying of liver disease and living with intense pain. It makes me so sad, and indeed outraged, that Americans like Angela and that old man at CVS are being put in desperate situations in want of pain medicine more than twenty years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to corner the market on narcotic poppy flowers. Why aren’t the marines bringing back that sweet sticky sap for their elders to mix with their tobacco? During the Reagan era, white and purple opium resin sold on the streets alongside hashish and marijuana. Opium, a traditional favorite of poets and artists, would make a smoker feel way too happy for his own good, but it was unlikely to cause sudden death. Heroin, a powdered derivative of opium, can easily kill a person overnight. It’s a similar situation with cocaine. South American villagers can chew coca leaves all day while they work the fields, and it gives them some kind of lift like we get from drinking coffee. But when you turn the coca leaves into cocaine, that’s when you have pharmaceutical grade drugs that could kill you overnight, especially if it’s injected or smoked as crack.

Why is it that Americans are suffering from a lack of medicine? How can this be possible, after we have invaded country after country, directly and indirectly, for control over their drugs? The rich have their pills while the poor have their heroin and crack, but why is it that in the United States of America my friend Angela, who is already a cigarette smoker, has never been given the opportunity to see if smoking opium might control her pain in a way that is less poisonous than pills and alcohol? Why are Angela’s friends calling her on the phone crying and begging her to share her painkillers? There are so many people living in pain. Why is pure opium not available to the American public?

Eric Margolis reported in his book, “War at the Top of the World” that during the Reagan administration, opium was transported to Pakistan for processing into heroin, and then was brought through Kosova into Europe for distribution. He mentions shootouts between the FBI and CIA since the FBI was over there to combat drugs while the CIA was there to make money to fund their wars. Then the Taliban took over, outlawing the growing of poppies. It was a huge change. They ran their politics by the force of faith. The Afghan farmers were so convinced that Mullah Omar was their Amir by the will of Allah that they pledged to obey his leadership even if their own children starved to death. According to UN reports, under Taliban rule, the growth of opium poppies was largely reduced. This made America angry. As soon as the US invaded Afghanistan under Clinton, the first thing we did was build local heroin processing plants. So now, once again, we have Afghan farmers growing opium for the world heroin supply, but for some reason the raw opium is only locally available. If an Afghan woman who doesn’t even have food has access to opium to help her baby sleep, why can’t my friend who is going to die if she doesn’t stop taking painkiller pills have some of it? There are people in our neighborhood injecting heroin and leaving needles in the alleyways, exposing people to AIDS, but Angela can’t kill her pain by smoking opium. Why are some drugs legal and some illegal? Why are some drugs available and others unavailable?

Tarek Mehanna Gives Rousing Speech at Sentencing

On April 12, 2010 Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to over 17 years in prison. It was a sad moment for his supporters, who packed the Boston courthouse, but they were rewarded with an historical, moving speech, as Mehanna described how he came to view it as his duty to defend the oppressed.

“I couldn’t see these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral... [T]his trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians,” stated Mehanna, who compared Muslim fighters overseas to American Revolutionary Minutemen fighting invading British occupation soldiers.

 

Mehanna's speech was on point and delivered very well. He gave a detailed analysis of his youthful intellectual processes, as he learned about American history and painful current events. One news report was particularly shocking to the young teenager: 

“I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses.”

I'm sure most of us have gone through a similar educational process when we were young, realizing at some point that the world can be a violent and unfair place. Last night, my five-year-old daughter saw a nature show on TV where whales were eating fish swimming under the sea. She was so horrified that she cried, “I'll never eat fish again!” Imagine how she will feel when she learns about Abeer al-Janabi. 

 

True leadership inspires people to transcend fear and to make sacrifices for the sake of others. This author recalls that when I was in fifth grade, a documentary about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired me to pray to God right then and there at my school desk to make me among the martyrs. I asked Him to purify me, to fortify me, and to make me worthy.

Mehanna spoke of the examples of true leadership that inspired him to commit the “crime” of translating online Arabic documents related to jihad:

 

“When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm - Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.”

Mehanna listed among his heroes Paul Revere, Tom Paine, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Ho Chi Minh, and Nelson Mandela. He said he still has all his notes from history class! Malcolm X in particular made him dig deeper into his Islamic roots, to read the Quran and to learn about the Prophet Mohammed (s).

Mehanna testified, “the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim...”

He continued: “I wasn't tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me - not because they needed to, but simply because they could...

“In your eyes, I'm a terrorist, and it's perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I'm the one going to prison for 'conspiring to kill and maim' in those countries - because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a 'terrorist,' yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the 'terrorists' are, she sure wouldn't be pointing at me,” Mehanna declared.

“It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to "kill Americans" at shopping malls or whatever the story was...

"The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with 'killing Americans.' But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.”

Mehanna's appeal process has already been set in motion. His defense will take this to appellate and Supreme Court if necessary.

You can read Mehanna's entire sentencing statement at http://freetarek.wordpress.com/

Myths and Facts about al-Qaeda

The media myth of a global Islamic conspiracy never got much traction in America before 2001 because the minority Muslim American population simply did not seem like much of a threat, because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States are loyal US allies, and because Americans generally have a positive attitude toward wealthy investors. After 9/11 pro-Israel propagandists exploited public ignorance and created a nightmarish fantasy of al-Qaeda in order to put the US and allies into conflict with the entire Islamic world. What is al-Qaeda? What do they believe? What do they actually do?

Osama bin Laden first used the term “al-Qaeda” in an interview in 1998, probably in reference to a 1988 article written by Palestinian activist Abdullah Azzam entitled “al-Qa`ida al-Sulba” (the Solid Foundation). In it, Azzam elaborates upon the ideas of the Egyptian scholar Sayed Qutb to explain modern jihadi principles. Qutb, author of Social Justice in Islam, is viewed as the founder of modern Arab-Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men of exceptional integrity and honor.

While Qutb was visiting the USA in 1949, he and several friends were turned away from a movie theater because the owner thought they were black. ‘But we’re Egyptians,’ one of the group explained. The owner apologized and offered to let them in, but Qutb refused, galled by the fact that black Egyptians could be admitted but black Americans could not,” recounts Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower. Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of Arab socialist politics.

Azzam similarly rejected secular Palestinian nationalist politics as an impediment to moral virtue. He opposed terrorist attacks on civilians and had strong reservations about ideas like offensive jihad, or preventive war. He also hesitated to designate any Muslim leader as an apostate and preferred to allow God to make such judgments. Inspired by the courage and piety of Afghan Muslims struggling against the Soviets, Azzam reinterpreted Qutb’s concept of individual and collective obligation of Muslims in his fatwa entitled “Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Iman (Faith).” Qutb would have prioritized the struggle of Egyptian Muslims to transform Egypt into a virtuous Islamic state while Azzam argued that every individual Muslim had an obligation to come to the aid of oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Afghan, Kosovar, Bosnian, Thai, Filipino, or Chechen.

John Calvert of Creighton University writes, “This ideology… would soon energize the most significant jihad movement of modern times.”

At Azzam’s call, Arabs from many countries joined America’s fight against Communism in Afghanistan. No Arab jihadi attack was considered terrorism when Azzam led the group, or later when bin Laden ran the group. Because the global Islamic movement overlapped with the goals of the US government, Arab jihadis worked and traveled frictionlessly throughout the world between Asia, Arabia and America. Azzam was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, but legends of the courageous sacrifices of the noble Arab Afghans energized the whole Islamic world.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan, bin Laden relocated to Sudan in 1992. At the time he was probably undisputed commander of nothing more than a small group, which became even smaller after he lost practically all his money on Sudan investments. He returned to Afghanistan in 1996, where the younger Afghans, the Taliban welcomed him on account of his reputation as a veteran war hero.

There is no real evidence that bin Laden or al-Qaeda had any connection to the Ugandan and Tanzanian embassy attacks or any of the numerous attacks for which they have been blamed. Pro-Israel propagandists like Daniel Pipes or Matthew Levitt needed an enemy for their war against Muslim influence on American culture more than random explosions in various places needed a central commander. By the time the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Arab fighters surrounding Osama bin Laden were just a dwindling remnant living on past glories of Afghanistan’s struggle against Communism. Al-Qaeda has never been and certainly is not today an immensely powerful terror organization controlling Islamic banks and charities throughout the world.

Al-Qaeda maintained training camps in Afghanistan like Camp Faruq, where Muslims could receive basic training just as American Jews go to Israel for military training with the IDF. There they learned to disassemble, clean and reassemble weapons, and got to associate with old warriors, who engaged in great heroism against the Soviets but did not do much since. Many al-Qaeda trainees went on to serve US interests in Central Asia (e.g. Xinjiang) in the 1990s but from recent descriptions the camps seem to currently provide a form of adventure tourism with no future enlistment obligations.

Although western media treats al-Qaeda as synonymous with Absolute Evil, much of the world reveres the Arab Afghans as martyr saints. Hundreds of pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the graves of those massacred in the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan possess miraculous healing powers.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

Of Conspiracies and Plots

Many blame Ashcroft, Cheney, and Bush for ongoing campaigns against activists, politicians and organizations that try to help Arabs and Muslims.

Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, a long time Palestinian rights advocate, told supporters that he believes former US Attorney General John Ashcroft personally orchestrated a sting operation to remove him from office. As in previous cases, strategic “media update sessions” put the media into a predatory frenzy before the accused even went to trial. Media accusations often do not even coincide with the actual charges.

Riad Hamad, founder of Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund in Texas, believed George Bush was after him. When Hamad died mysteriously and violently after a vicious media campaign libeling him as a terrorism supporter, police and FBI refused to investigate. Clearly, there was a conspiracy involving media and law enforcement. Yet for Bush personally to take such an interest in local politics is probably beyond plausibility.

This pattern of political persecutions from Turner to Chas Freeman can be best understood with a bottom-up approach.

As Jewish wealth, power, and influence have increased so has its ability to punish those offending the organized Jewish community in some way. While the Jewish power elite seems to enjoy legal immunity, Americans and US residents targeted by these powerful political economic oligarchs suffer media and governmental abuse. This is particularly true in the Boston area, which is now a major command and control center for transnational Jewish politics and Zionist lobbying.

Not only do many such organizations that long ago should have lost 501(c)(3) tax deductible status continue to incite racism effectively with US government subsidization, but financial predation has to be truly awesome before discussion of their financial wrongdoing becomes even slightly possible, and to this day a Boston-area fraudster like longtime Madoff-associate Robert Jaffe has yet to face criminal charges.

Americans should wonder whether the studious obliviousness of US Attorney to federal criminal violations, including all the ongoing bribery of US public officials with trips to Israel, indicates that Zionist power has trumped Constitutional loyalty.

Although the pattern of abuse of power extends well beyond the Boston area, much if not most of Zionist social, political, economic, and academic misbehavior links back to the Boston-area Jewish community or educational institutions where young Jews often first hook up with vast corrupt Jewish social networks. As a major American and world education center, Boston provides the most efficient and excellent means for the Jewish power elite to influence the USA and the world. No one should be surprised US Senator from Israel Joseph Lieberman and Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse are co-in-laws.

Although the presence of extremist Zionists like Rahm Emanuel or Dennis Ross near the president is disturbing, lower rank staffers like Treasury Department official Stuart Levey or pro-Israel propagandist Matthew Levitt are far more threatening to US democracy. While serving the government, Boston-bred Levitt constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies trying to explain the refusal of Muslims to acknowledge that it was just to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

In Levitt's delusions, to which other lesser ranking government officials like Daniel Pipes and Rachel Ehrenfeld contributed, Islamic finance and Islamic charity serve as a many-headed hydra of evil. Through vast numbers of meetings and internal dissemination of documents Levitt and Levey spread Zionist doctrine throughout government bureaucracy until practically every official from Ashcroft down could on cue reflexively repeat the whole litany of the sins that Levitt had fabricated about each charity or financial entity that was targeted for demonization.

Roots of the conspiracy involving Pipes, Levitt, and Levey lead back to the Boston area, where the Israel Lobby is deeply embedded in the region's educational institutions.

Aafia Siddique, who was a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at Boston area Brandeis University, was demonized as a terrorist to punish her Muslim activism at the Jewish institution. The case constructed against Siddiqui has the flavor of psychotic paranoia so common in Matthew Levitt’s anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic fantasies.

During the Bush administration Levitt, who manipulated the US government into putting a lot of good people in jail, was a close associate of both Ashcroft and Levey, who continues in the Obama administration as an American Jewish Committee covert operative.

Understanding the centrality of Boston Jewish power in the USA requires a critical look at The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt incorrectly claim the Israel Lobby is just another lobby even though the Israel Lobby is really the public face of an international criminal web, which has rendered the USA a dependent intimidated client state within the Zionist imperial system.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

SPLC vs. Karin Friedemann

My response follows. -Karin
Demand for immediate retraction and publication of correction
Saturday, May 16, 2009 1:13 PM
From: "Mark Potok" mark.potok@splcenter.org


This is for Karen Friedemann and regards your May 16 "Letter From America"article in the Khaleej Times Online entitled "Americans Divided by HateCrimes Bill." http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2009/May/opinion_May80.xml&section=opinion&col=


You make the following claim in your article:

"The ADL, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is alreadyheavily involved in Homeland Security's locally based 'fusion centres,'which collect personal data for intelligence databases that synchronise national intelligence collection with local police. ADL and SPLC have arecord of illegally spying on American citizens and providing falseinformation to law enforcement officials."

The statements about the SPLC -- that we have a record of "illegally spying"on Americans and "providing false information" to authorities -- are both materially false and also libelous and defamatory. Both statements containno shred of truth -- apparently, you've attributed the ADL's problems in the Roy Bullock case to the SPLC. We have never been charged or convicted oreven accused of these things.

As I noted above, these statements arelibelous and false. As a result, I write to demand that you immediatelywithdraw these statements from wherever they have been published, including the Khaleej Times, and publish a correction making clear that SPLC has not done the things you falsely accuse us of. I have written a similar note to the editor of the Khaleej Times and expect action to be taken by this Monday afternoon at the latest.

Mark Potok
Director, Intelligence Project
Editor, Intelligence Report/Hatewatch
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104

===

Response to Mark Potok
Karin Friedemann


The US Department of Justice released FBI documents indicating that the Southern Poverty Law Center engaged in undercover surveillance of Oklahoma militia groups in 1995 before and after the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The local FBI team, which should have obtained a warrant to dispatch real FBI agents, criminally conspired with SPLC agents to get around Attorney General Janet Reno’s legal limitations on domestic spying. Because the conspiracy was criminal, the espionage was illegal.

In “The Watchdogs: A close look at Anti-Racist ‘Watchdog’ Groups,” Laird Wilcox documents the SPLC’s extensive intelligence networks monitoring editorials, observing meetings, and compiling files on people they consider offensive. Wilcox told WorldNetDaily: “By alleging ‘dangerousness’ on the basis of mere assumed values, opinions and beliefs, they put entirely innocent citizens at risk from law enforcement error and misconduct.”

Mark Potok himself admits the SPLC criminally spied on the Animal Rights 2001 Conference by secretly recording attendees. “We were at that conference, we collected the quote ourselves, in person and on a videotape to boot,” he wrote in response to complaints from Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral about misleading SPLC characterizations of her organization.

In an article libeling Muslim clerics, the online SPLC Intelligence Report links videos apparently made in violation of federal wiretapping and eavesdropping statutes.

Many organizations and individuals accuse SPLC of publishing false and misleading information and manipulating crime data and terminology. Federal law enforcement agencies and Homeland Security Fusion Centers were issued a warning against relying upon faulty and politicized SPLC research reports.

The Turkish American Legal Defense Fund is currently suing the SPLC for defaming an 85-year-old emeritus professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts.

Harper's Magazine accused the SPLC of scare mongering to fund relatively lavish lifestyles for the organization's directors.