Civil Liberties, Freedom of Speech Questions Arise in Post 9/11 Environment

By Eloise Davis-Chopin

As the post-Sept. 11 investigation continues in Florida, complaints are growing of racial and religious profiling against people of Middle Eastern origin. Because many of the 9/11 hijackers had connections to Florida, federal and local officials are combing the state for terrorist ties.

On Christmas day, scores of people demonstrated outside the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Krome Service Center south of Miami, where more than 50 asylum seekers from the Middle East are being held. The service center, which looks like a cross between a jail and an elementary school, has served as a temporary detention center for refugees, most notably for thousands of Cubans and Haitians seeking asylum in the 1980s and 1990s.

The American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), which organized the demonstration, wants the INS to release those detained because of visa expirations for a 30- to 60- day period to get their papers in order, retain counsel, possibly get rid of their assets in this country, and prepare for their extradition hearings.

It is difficult for the detainees to prepare for their asylum hearings when they are incarcerated, pointed out AMANA director Sofian Abdulaziz. “I don’t feel that it’s humane or right or civilized to throw them in a prison and make them live like criminals,” he added.

Abdulaziz received a letter in Arabic from a detainee claiming that more than 72 people of many different nationalities—including Sudanese, Palestinians, Saudi Arabians, Syrians and others—are being housed in one “pod” at Krome. The previous week, Abdulaziz said, he received two calls from women trying to renew their drivers’ licenses in Fort Lauderdale who were told to remove their head scarves for their photos. The AMANA director said he also got a letter from a woman detainee whose head scarf was taken by guards who said they did not want her to hang herself.

Charu Al-Sahli, detention advocacy coordinator of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said she has confirmed that more than 50 Middle Eastern asylum-seekers are being held at Krome, in addition to an unknown number of others who are being questioned in the post-9/11 investigation. The latter include Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians and some recently detained Jordanians. Because of the recent INS crackdown on illegal aliens in this country, Al-Sahli said, Krome is very crowded with people from other countries, especially Haiti. Three women also are being held at Miami’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, she noted.

Neither the Justice Department nor the INS has released the number of asylum-seekers being held at either facility. This reporter’s attempt to confirm the conditions and status of those held at Krome firsthand and to take photos was met by armed guards ordering me to “leave immediately,” with no explanation, and warning that they had the authority to take my camera if I photographed the facility.

Sofian Abdulaziz also has been turned away at the gate when he has tried to check on detainees at Krome and bring them halal (Islamically approved) food. Many people in Florida’s Arab and Muslim communities, he said, feel the post-9/11 investigation has turned into a witch-hunt for anyone of Middle Eastern origin.

“Law-abiding Middle Eastern men and women are scared to even go to the airport now,” Abdulaziz explained, for fear of being detained, arrested, questioned or harassed.

If they’re in West Palm Beach, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says those fears may be well-grounded. That’s because Palm Beach International Airport has become the first airport in the country to begin testing much-debated face-recognition cameras and software on the general public.

The biometric scanning machine compares the pictures it takes with FBI photos of terrorism suspects. The cameras, which snap up to 15 photos of each person as he or she walks through metal detectors, were scheduled to be up and running by late-January and will be tested for 90 days. According to a recent ACLU report, however, the system was a failure when it was used on Tampa streets last summer. The report says the face-recognition system never correctly identified any suspects in the Tampa Police Department database, and made many false matches, including matching female and male subjects and people of different ages or weight.

The growing complaints of racial and religious profiling in Florida has become such a concern that the state chapters of the ACLU and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has launched a 24-hour toll-free hotline (1-888-597-4909, ext. 17) to provide legal assistance to those contacted by law enforcement agencies for questioning about the 9/11 attacks.

“We hope anyone who has information about the horrific events of Sept. 11th would cooperate fully with authorities,“ said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “Our concern, however, is that this dragnet investigation involves questioning by police of individuals who federal officials acknowledge are not suspected of any wrongdoing. We are urging anyone contacted by the FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement]or other law enforcement agencies to seek legal help before consenting to any interviews so that they do not become innocent victims caught up in a massive government investigation.”

The Florida ACLU also is providing pamphlets in Arabic, English and Spanish entitled, Know Your Rights: What to Do if You’re Stopped by the Police, the FBI, the INS or the Customs Service. These can be obtained by writing to Alessandra Soler, Public Education Director, ACLU of Florida, 4500 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 340, Miami, Florida 33137.

A few hundred miles from Krome, at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first of what may be hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters began arriving at their new temporary holding facility. The Pentagon says that because their status is that of “unlawful combatants,” these detainees are not entitled to the same humanitarian rights and conditions afforded POWs, since they were neither in uniform nor carrying weapons openly. Representatives from the International Red Cross are preparing to begin humanitarian observation of the detainees.

Al-Najjar’s Future Uncertain

One person who knows well the horrors of being indefinitely detained is Mazen Al-Najjar. Al-Najjar was rearrested in November after being released less than a year earlier from three and a half years of detention on “secret evidence.” He currently is being held in solitary confinement in a jail north of Tampa awaiting his next hearing.

His lead lawyer in the case, David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center, argued that Al-Najjar’s detention violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution. Although some news organizations reported that Al-Najjar can be detained only for 90 days, Cole said that because his client’s deportation case began before April 1997, when that law went into effect, the INS, if it decides he poses a threat to national security or a risk of flight, actually could detain Al-Najjar for up to six months without bond while it seeks to deport him.

Instead of holding him on secret evidence, the government is charging that Al-Najjar poses a security threat because he raised money for two groups it claims are fronts for the Islamic Jihad. “Those allegations about front groups and fund-raising were all made by INS last year and were fully aired in an immigration hearing, at the close of which the judge found no evidence to support the claim that they were front groups, and said they were legitimate,” Cole responded. “They [the government] are [repeating] assertions which were found to be entirely unsupported by the evidence and rearresting him after he was found not to be a threat to national security.”

In a country founded by immigrants fleeing political and religious persecution, Cole said, “The Al-Najjar case is an example of an unfortunate feature of American life, which is that we have often acted out of fear and prejudice against those whom we don’t understand.” He and his client are still weighing whether to sue the government over Al-Najjar’s detention, he said.

Meanwhile, Al-Najjar’s brother-in-law, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, was fired by the University of South Florida, where he was a tenured professor of computer science, after the school’s board of trustees held an emergency meeting. Saying there was no legitimate reason for his firing, the United Faculty of Florida, the school’s faculty union, voted to provide full legal and financial support to Al-Arian if he decides to sue the university (see box).

Alleged Plot to Assassinate Gov. Jeb Bush

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officials announced on Jan. 10 that a prisoner in a Broward County jail had written a letter to Gov. Jeb Bush in December outlining a plot by four reportedly Arab men to drive a truck filled with explosives to the state capital, Tallahassee, on Jan. 11 and blow up the governor. South Florida newspapers widely reported that Amjad Hammad, a 28-year-old convenience store owner and native of Palestine who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades, was questioned at the North Miami FBI headquarters, and now is asking for an apology and a statement from the FBI clearing his name and acknowledging his cooperation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not release any names or details of the investigation, because, it said, “the individuals involved may very well be innocent of these particular allegations.”

Eloise Davis-Chopin is a writer and editor based in South Florida.

SIDEBAR

Al-Arian Support by Faculty Laudable

The following editorial appeared in the Jan. 14 edition of the University of South Florida’s Oracle.

Last Wednesday and Thursday, the faculty of USF sent President Judy Genshaft and others working for the university system the message that the silencing of free speech will not be tolerated. The Faculty Senate voted Wednesday not to support the firing of Professor Sami Al-Arian, and Thursday, the faculty union voted to fully support Al-Arian should he decide to file legal action against the university. The faculty should be applauded for their willingness to speak out for a fellow professor and to protect their rights to academic freedom.

The professors of USF understand and support the value of freedom of speech and different ideas. After Al-Arian appeared on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” in late September, he was placed on paid leave for what Genshaft said was his and his students’ safety. However, the reasons for firing Al-Arian were even more ridiculous and unsupported.

The faculty union does not think Genshaft and the Board of Trustees were justified in the firing of Al-Arian and will seek to support Al-Arian in any way they can to show Genshaft that academic freedom is worth a great deal.

Al-Arian’s firing sent the message to tenured professors that they could be fired at any time for saying something with which either Genshaft, the Board of Trustees or any number of interested parties disagreed.

Instead, this generates an environment of fear and intimidation, which goes against everything a university should stand for. It is a poorly masked form of censorship that should not be condoned.

The faculty has done the university a favor by exemplifying the enterprise of education by showing students it involves both popular and unpopular ideas and the free exchange of those ideas.

In doing so, they have also shown students how to be courageous and to stand for what they believe in, just as good teachers and mentors are meant to do.