[Marxism] Innocent victims of the war on terror

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, June 5, 2005
One Muslim's Odyssey to Guantánamo
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

BREMEN, Germany - About two months after the attacks on the World Trade 
Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the Pakistani police picked up 
Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Muslim from Germany who was traveling by bus 
near the city of Peshawar.
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Murat Kurnaz, in a photo supplied by his family and taken before the Sept. 
11 attacks and his departure for Pakistan, held the reins while his little 
brother posed on horseback at his circumcision ceremony in Bremen.
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The police turned Mr. Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany, over to 
the American military in Pakistan, who in turn transferred him to 
Afghanistan, and he was held as a terrorist suspect.

Mr. Kurnaz, it seemed, had chosen a poor time to go to Pakistan, just as 
the American war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban was getting started. 
Could he have been a Muslim fighter, recruited to help the enemy? The fact 
that he was a religious young Muslim from this city in northern Germany, 
only an hour's train ride from Hamburg, where the main plotters of the 
Sept. 11 attacks had lived, apparently supported the American suspicions 
that he was.

Indeed, Mr. Kurnaz's lawyer in the United States said that interrogators in 
Afghanistan seemed convinced that he was an associate of Mohamed Atta, who 
is believed to have piloted one of the hijacked planes flown into the World 
Trade Center.

Though no link to Mr. Atta was ever found, Mr. Kurnaz was sent to the 
American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held for 
about three years now as an enemy combatant, specifically accused of being 
a member or ally of Al Qaeda or its terrorist network. The evidence against 
him is that, while he was traveling in Pakistan, he was the guest of a 
militant Islamic group said to have supported terrorist acts against the 
United States.

In addition, Mr. Kurnaz was known to have intended to travel to Pakistan 
with a close friend, Selcuk Bilgin, another Turkish citizen from Bremen. 
And Mr. Bilgin, according to an American military tribunal's findings on 
Mr. Kurnaz, later carried out a suicide bombing.

But in recent months, as details of the charges against Mr. Kurnaz have 
come to be known, German officials here in Bremen who have investigated 
both Mr. Kurnaz and Mr. Bilgin have reacted to the American conclusions 
about Mr. Kurnaz with astonished incredulity.

The most striking element in the picture is that, contrary to the American 
assumption about Mr. Bilgin having carried out a suicide bombing, the 
Germans say that claim is demonstrably false.

"He lives here," Uwe Picard, the Bremen criminal prosecutor who carried out 
the German investigation into Mr. Bilgin, said in an interview in his 
office here. "He is still alive."

Moreover, even American documents indicated that much of the evidence on 
Mr. Kurnaz actually seemed more to exonerate him than to incriminate him. 
The decision of the three-member Guantánamo tribunal that found Mr. Kurnaz 
to be an enemy combatant last September refers to classified material in 
his file and indicates that that is where the reputed links to Al Qaeda 
would be documented.

But a Federal District Court judge, Joyce Hens Green, in reviewing Mr. 
Kurnaz's case early this year, found that there was only a single document, 
called R-19, that incriminates Mr. Kurnaz as a member of Al Qaeda. About 
this material she concludes, "Not only is the document rife with hearsay 
and lacking in detailed support for its conclusions, but it is also in 
direct conflict with classified exculpatory documents."

Judge Green's summary of the classified file was briefly unclassified 
earlier this year and reported on by The Washington Post in March. It 
contained several intelligence reports that exonerated Mr. Kurnaz of the 
very charges the Guantánamo tribunal made against him.

There is one report by the Command Intelligence Task Force, the 
intelligence unit of the Southern Command whose responsibility includes 
Guantánamo, that said, "CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee 
having an association with Al Qaeda or making any specific threat against 
the United States."

Yet, Mr. Kurnaz remains in detention in Guantánamo, and the three-member 
Combatant Status Review Tribunal that heard his case last year concluded, 
"By a preponderance of the evidence, Mr. Kurnaz meets the criteria to be 
designated as an enemy combatant." It is a designation that means in theory 
that Mr. Kurnaz can be kept in prison until President Bush declares that 
the campaign against terrorism is over.

Asked the reasons for the determination in the Kurnaz case, a Pentagon 
spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico, said, "The bottom line is that we have 
a Combatant Status Review Tribunal to review all this information, and they 
have come to the conclusion that he is an enemy combatant, and they are 
certainly in a better position to judge than you and I are."

But an investigation of Mr. Kurnaz's case reveals no evidence that he ever 
fought against the United States or planned to.

Though Mr. Kurnaz was born in Bremen he has remained a Turkish citizen 
because his parents, who came to Germany as guest workers from Turkey more 
than three decades ago, never became German citizens.

He grew up in Bremen in a largely secular Muslim family. But when he became 
17 or 18, Mr. Kurnaz became more religiously observant, his mother, Rubiye 
Kurnaz, said in an interview in his lawyer's office in Bremen. He grew a 
beard, she said, and began going to a largely Arab mosque, rather than the 
Turkish mosque that his family attended. He also began to criticize other 
members of his family for what he saw as their lack of piety.

Three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Kurnaz decided to go to 
Pakistan. The purpose of his trip, according to his German lawyer, Bernard 
Docke, was to deepen his knowledge of Islam. Mr. Bilgin intended to 
accompany him on this trip.

As things turned out, Mr. Bilgin was stopped from leaving Germany by the 
border police because he had failed to pay a fine for an unrelated 
misdemeanor. According to Mr. Picard, the prosecutor, when the police 
called Mr. Bilgin's family to see if the fine could be paid so Mr. Bilgin 
could leave, one of the family members said that they did not want him 
going to Pakistan for fear that he would join a Muslim group there fighting 
against the United States.

It was this comment that prompted Mr. Picard's investigation into Mr. 
Bilgin and the Abu Bakr mosque that he and Mr. Kurnaz attended.

"Of course, we were concerned with the possibility that Murat Kurnaz had 
been radicalized by a preacher at the mosque," Mr. Picard said. According 
to some officials, German intelligence has identified one member of the Abu 
Bakr mosque as having recruited fighters for pro-Qaeda groups, which would 
seem to justify an effort to find out if Mr. Kurnaz was one of them.

But Mr. Picard said his investigation of the mosque, which included 
interrogations of the suspected recruiter and a search of his home, 
produced no evidence of terrorist connections or of any attempts to recruit 
Muslims there to fight against the United States.

"We get rumors sometimes that they preach hatred there," Mr. Picard said of 
the Abu Bakr mosque. "But there is no proof."

Though Mr. Bilgin was prevented from leaving Germany, Mr. Kurnaz did go to 
Pakistan on Oct. 3, 2001. About three weeks later, he was arrested by the 
Pakistani police in a routine check of a passenger bus near the northern 
city of Peshawar. According to Mr. Docke, the Pakistani police held Mr. 
Kurnaz for about a week and then turned him over to the American military 
in Pakistan. From there, Mr. Kurnaz was taken to Bagram Air Base in 
Afghanistan and eventually transferred to Guantánamo, where he has been since.

"For us what is very important," Mr. Docke said, "is that he had no weapons 
when he was arrested, that he was arrested in Pakistan, not on the 
battlefield in Afghanistan, and he was arrested by the Pakistani police 
during a routine check of a bus."

But his very presence in Pakistan raised suspicions among American military 
interrogators, and so did the fact that, by his own account, he was the 
guest in Pakistan of an Islamic group, Tablighi Jamaat. The group, which is 
based mostly in Pakistan and Bangladesh and keeps up an energetic 
fundamentalist missionary drive in many European countries, was described 
by the Guantánamo tribunal as a supporter of terrorism. That link, and Mr. 
Kurnaz's association with Mr. Bilgin, are the two unclassified charges made 
against him to support the tribunal's conclusion that he is an "enemy 
combatant."

Furthermore, the tribunal's findings listed no particulars of how Tablighi 
Jamaat is thought to have supported terrorism against the United States. 
Some experts say it has no record of supporting terrorism or Islamic 
militancy, but others have said it supported the mujahedeen fighting 
Russians in Afghanistan and aids Muslim separatists in Kashmir. The 
tribunal's decision on Mr. Kurnaz only refers to the fact that he received 
free food, lodging and schooling from the group.

As for Mr. Kurnaz's travels from mosque to mosque in Pakistan, some people 
who make such trips come into contact with more militant schools of Islam, 
and counterterrorism experts have noted that some of those who are 
attracted to the group move on to more militant groups.

But one expert on Tablighi, Jamal J. Elias, a professor of religion at 
Amherst College, wrote in a letter that Mr. Kurnaz's travels were exactly 
the sort of activity that the group undertakes in its efforts to encourage 
greater Muslim piety and that nothing he was reported to have done with the 
group indicated that he was being recruited as a terrorist.

===

NY Times, June 5, 2005
From Advocacy to Terrorism, a Line Blurs
Gary Bogdon for The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

TAMPA, Fla., June 2 - Three Israelis had just been killed in a suicide 
bombing in the Gaza Strip one November day in 1994 when Sami Al-Arian, then 
a computer engineering professor and Muslim leader here at the University 
of South Florida, faxed a note to an associate.

The Kuwaiti-born professor conveyed his pride in the attack, according to 
the federal authorities who were monitoring his communications, and he 
asked that God bless the Palestinian jihad movement and "accept its 
martyrs." He closed by urging members of the resistance to "be cautious and 
alert," the authorities said.

An impassioned advocate for Palestinian independence, Mr. Al-Arian never 
made any secret of his disdain for the Israeli occupation. But whether his 
work crossed the line from outspoken advocacy to terrorism is now a central 
question as he and three co-defendants go on trial in federal court in 
Tampa on Monday on terrorism and racketeering charges.

The case, a decade in the making, represents one of the government's most 
significant prosecutions since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And it has 
served as a flashpoint for debates over the limits of academic freedom, the 
role of American Muslims in supporting the Palestinian intifada, the 
government's expanded powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act, 
and its strategy in terror investigations before and after the Sept. 11 
attacks.

"This case has drawn such intense scrutiny partly because Sami has been so 
outspoken," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who 
represented Mr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law in an earlier deportation case 
that also gained wide exposure. "The government has built a very broad 
conspiracy case, and the question is whether this will be a trial of Sami 
Al-Arian and what he actually did or didn't do over the years, or a trial 
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad itself and guilt by association."

Prosecutors charge that Mr. Al-Arian was, in fact, a terrorist. They 
maintain that he not only spoke out against the Israelis, but that he also 
helped coordinate attacks against them for many years and funneled money 
and strategic advice from central Florida as a clandestine American leader 
of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group designated by the United States 
as a terrorist organization in 1995.

His many supporters, however, say they regard him as a political martyr who 
is being wrongly prosecuted for his strong beliefs and is the victim of a 
campaign of years of government harassment.

"If, God forbid, he is convicted, I will never believe in the American 
justice system again - go and bury it," said Ziad Taha, a friend of Mr. 
Al-Arian's who runs the mosque in Tampa where he was once a leader. "It's 
all lies by the government."

Supporters question why, if Mr. Al-Arian is as dangerous as federal 
authorities make him out to be, they did not lock him up until 2003 after 
wiretapping him for years and watching him meet with senior Republicans and 
Democrats. Mr. Al-Arian campaigned for President Bush in 2000, was 
photographed with him at a campaign stop, and took part in a White House 
briefing with Karl Rove in 2001, one of many political contacts that his 
defense lawyers indicate they may raise as evidence of his solid credentials.

The case, which became a major issue in last year's Senate campaign in 
Florida, has left divided camps of friends and foes from Tampa to 
Washington, with even some one-time supporters of Mr. Al-Arian now 
questioning his activities. In February 2003, John Ashcroft, who was then 
attorney general, personally announced the indictment of Mr. Al-Arian, 
identifying him as the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 
Mr. Ashcroft said the group was responsible for the murders of many dozens 
of people, and he pointed to the prosecution of Mr. Al-Arian as a prime 
example of the government's efforts to "choke off terrorist resources and 
financing."

Justice Department officials credit changes under the Patriot Act that 
allowed intelligence agents and criminal prosecutors to share information 
more easily for bringing the case to prosecution. Although the F.B.I. had 
been monitoring Mr. Al-Arian since the early 1990's as part of a foreign 
intelligence investigation, officials said the results were slow to reach 
prosecutors because of legal impediments and turf battles.

Unlike defendants in other prominent prosecutions since Sept. 11 who are 
accused of being low-level operatives, including Zacarias Moussaoui and 
John Walker Lindh, Mr. Al-Arian is accused of being a leading figure in 
financing and organizing terror attacks. Prosecutors say he played a major 
role in raising and funneling money for the survivors of those who killed 
themselves in suicide attacks and in making political and organizational 
decisions about the future of the militant group, before it was officially 
banned by the United States in 1995 and afterward. And they say he used his 
university position as cover to recruit like-minded militants from overseas.

Preparations for the trial speak to its significance. The government has 
collected more than 20,000 hours of taped phone conversations through 
wiretaps. Its witness lists number in the hundreds, including many bombing 
victims and relatives being flown from Israel to testify. The trial is 
expected to last at least six months, and courthouse officials have stepped 
up security to head off possible disruptions in a case that has routinely 
drawn demonstrations from local Muslims over Mr. Al-Arian's treatment.

"We're hopeful that if we get a fair shake, if a jury is willing to presume 
his innocence, then we have a very good chance," said William Moffitt, a 
prominent Washington lawyer who is defending Mr. Al-Arian and who sought 
unsuccessfully to have the case moved out of Tampa because of the extensive 
local publicity. "The concern is whether or not we can in fact get a fair 
shake."

Indeed, Mr. Al-Arian has been such a fixture in the Florida news that "more 
people in Tampa probably know Sami's name than the mayor's," said Ahmed 
Bedier, who runs the Tampa branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Unfortunately," Mr. Bedier added, "it's largely a very negative 
perception, and the whole case has brought a lot of unwanted scrutiny and 
unwanted labels on many Muslims in the area."

News coverage of Mr. Al-Arian and his associates, first in a PBS 
documentary in 1994 and then in The Tampa Tribune, helped make him a 
controversial figure in Florida and led some critics to label the 
University of South Florida as "Jihad U." The deportation of his 
brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, a fellow University of South Florida 
instructor who was jailed for more than four years beginning in 1997 based 
on secret evidence linking him to terrorism, kept Mr. Al-Arian in the news.

And a 2001 appearance on Fox News just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, in 
which the host Bill O'Reilly confronted him with his past statements about 
"Death to Israel," led to his suspension from the state-financed 
university, where he had taught since 1986.

But it was not until Mr. Al-Arian was indicted 15 months ago that the 
university fired him. A 157-page, superseding indictment last year did not 
link Mr. Al-Arian directly to the execution of suicide bombings against 
Israel, but it did provide substantial circumstantial evidence concerning 
discussions about attacks and financial payments. Prosecutors also accused 
him of making numerous incendiary statements about Israel, comparing Jews 
to "monkeys and swine" and saying they were "damned" by Allah.

For critics of Mr. Al-Arian, the charges confirmed their long-held 
suspicions. "This is a man who infiltrated the University of South Florida 
and the United States to serve his own terrorist agenda," said Rita Katz, 
who runs a terror research group called the SITE Institute and has tracked 
Mr. Al-Arian for years.

Even among some university colleagues who supported Mr. Al-Arian as he 
fought to keep his job, the charges have prompted a re-assessment.

Arthur L. Lowerie, who taught international studies at U.S.F. and worked 
with Mr. Al-Arian in promoting a dialogue on Middle Eastern issues, said he 
felt personally betrayed upon reading the detailed accusations against his 
former colleague.

"The courts will have to decide whether Sami Al-Arian did anything 
illegal," Mr. Lowerie said, "but I'm convinced that he deceived me and my 
colleagues, he used the university, and he badly damaged its reputation. 
And my own credibility has been badly hurt, too, because I was among those 
publicly backing him."


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