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.

Burma Adopts “Tea Party” Tactics

In November, 2012, President Obama became the first US president to visit Burma since 1955. Human Rights activists felt this goodwill gesture was premature, given the very recent government abuses concerning the Muslim minority in addition to other things, but Obama is anxious to make an Asian friend who might create a counter-balance against China’s influence in the region. Burma has very recently dissolved military rule of the country and is transitioning over to “democracy.” Unfortunately, Burma has embraced some of the uglier aspects of majority rule, namely the genocide of the minority Muslims. 

The campaign against Myanmar Muslims by the Buddhists is very different than the Israeli campaign against the Palestinians. It is much more personal and gory, involving rape and mutilation of corpses, even hanging of children in their own homes. The Israelis prefer to just bulldoze a family under the rubble or fry them from the sky rather than cut off their sexual parts. The Buddhists of Burma have taken the word “monster” to an entirely new level. Nevertheless, it comes as no big surprise that the Israelis have been providing weapons to Burma to help ethnically cleanse the Muslim population from the region.

The politics have taken on the familiar tone of the Tea Party rhetoric against Mexican immigrants to the US. Burma’s Muslims, who have been there for generations and centuries, all of a sudden are being accused of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The Buddhist government and mainstream majority want the Muslims to be killed or expelled from the country. However, Bangladesh is only willing to take on a limited number of refugees.

Muslims whose homes have been destroyed have been rounded up into concentration camps, with very little aid. They cannot leave the camps to buy groceries because Buddhist monks have declared a boycott against selling to Muslims. 

The BBC reports that Buddhist complaints against Muslims have been primarily focused on concerns about population growth and not any kind of group level of criminality. Like the Christian Orthodox in Serbia complained about the Bosnians, the Buddhists feel “threatened” by the feeling that they are surrounded by increasing numbers of Muslims, who lead different lifestyles than themselves.

In truth, there is not that much difference between a Buddhist and a Muslim. They both wake up pre-dawn to perform prayer and prostrations; the only difference is that Buddhists pray towards a statue while Muslims pray to a direction determined by a GPS. Both cultures value compassion, chastity, self-denial and generosity.

As has been the case with India, it is reasonable to assume that Zionist propagandists are working hand in hand with the genocidalists to create a media war against the Muslims to facilitate their demonization, marginalization, murder and expulsion from the region.

The communal rioting has been invigorated by the internet distribution of photos of corpses, with both enraged Buddhists and Muslims claiming the dead as their own. However, there really are not two sides to the “story.” Muslims are being forced from their homes by the hundreds of thousands and Burma’s government is participating.

It is more than possible that Obama’s interest in Burma friendliness has to do with replacing the world heroin supply in the event of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

“Indeed the pending departure of the US from Afghanistan and the return of the Indigenous Taliban to power will mean a repeat of the Taliban destruction of the Afghan opium industry in 2000-2001 and the consequent need for Neocon America to boost opium production in SE Asia for profit and continued, evil, opiate-based destabilization of Iran, Russia, Central Asia, African America, Latin America and China,” writes Gideon Polya.

Myanmar Muslims have been targeted for ethnic cleansing based on the assumption that the Muslims might join with a global political Islamist movement and seek foreign aid in order to get their issues addressed. Until this point, the Myanmar Muslims have not engaged themselves in political alliances or violence. However, the attacks on their population have created an unavoidable need for foreign aid and interference. 

American Muslims are in a primary position to lend a voice to this awful situation. Obama has stated that he wants Burma to be a friend of the US, and that he is trusting Burma to go forward with reforms on human rights issues. Unfortunately, the US is taking the usual “blame both sides” approach to genocide, thereby taking zero responsibility for the outcome. Nevertheless, US Muslims are now in a position to act as American ambassadors to promote a win-win solution in the region, if they choose to do so.

Since nobody actually has a plan, whoever comes up with one and seeks to implement it will be at an advantage. Basically, Muslims in Burma are asking to be treated as human equals and to be granted citizenship in Burma, a right they had previously enjoyed. The situation is similar in Greater Israel, where many Palestinians live without any citizenship. 

Americans are in a unique and wonderful position at this time in history, to apply the lessons learned from our civil rights movement in order to solve political problems in the world. The basic solution for most communal violence situations remains that the oppressed group should be given equal rights and citizenship, the right to vote, and they should be integrated in society. 

There really is no other way. Breaking up the world into smaller and smaller pieces of land where the people there agree with each other or share DNA just is not reasonable nowadays.