- WASHINGTON - Hundreds of
Pakistanis remain detained all over the US in a ruthless manhunt not seen
in the US since World War II. Of the 1,100 detained by the US authorities
since September 11, at least one third are Pakistanis, say Pakistani
community
workers. Pakistani Americans plan to take out a protest demonstration at
the arrival of President Musharraf against the "non-cooperation and
callous indifference" of the Pakistani Consulate.
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- The biggest group of detained people is from New York
where nearly 200 Pakistanis are unaccounted for, says Huma Ali, a colleague
who has been following their trail. In most cases, nobody knows where these
people are being kept or if their detention is lawful. "It's like
Nazi camps," said Huma. He said the US agencies "raid the
residences
of Pakistanis without any notice, search their houses and take them away.
For days, you can't tell where these people are," said Huma, who plans
to lead the protest demonstration.
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- There have been incidents when the New York Police raided
the central Mosque in Coney Island, where most Pakistanis live. What irks
the community leaders is that Pakistanis are being racially profiled. Most
of these people have been arrested on the charges of illegal stay.
"But
why just Pakistanis," asks Huma Ali, a former Lahore Press Club
president,
who has taken up the issue with local authorities as well as community
leaders.
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- He claims that 30 per cent people in New York are living
illegally. The city administration has always turned a blind eye to these
illegal residents as it suited the local economy. "But why ain't
people
from Latin America or Eastern Europe being arrested." Huma believes
that Pakistanis are the third largest group after Saudis and Egyptians
who are being profiled. Virtually all are men in their twenties and
thirties.
Most people complain about the non-cooperation of the Pakistani consulate,
saying that they are keeping their hands off.
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- The situation is so grave that former interior minister
Chaudhary Shujaat called from Pakistan to register the grievances of many
people from his constituency in Gujrat. In a telephonic conversation, he
said he received at least five calls a day about the people from Gujrat
being arrested without any charges.
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- He said he was writing a letter to President Musharraf
to talk to President Bush about the issue during his visit in New York.
The detentions are so unjust that even the local mainstream media has been
forced to take notice. The Washington Post had its lead story on what it
called the biggest manhunt in decades. It mentioned an incident where a
Pakistani was arrested just because he was in the same queue where one
of the hijackers Mohammad Atta got his licence from.
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- Mohammad Mubeen's mistake was that he got his license
23 minutes before Mohamed Atta acquired a Florida driver's license. The
28-year-old Pakistani gas station attendant got his license renewed at
the same motor vehicles' branch. For that reason, he stays behind bars.
He confessed that he was illegal but knew nothing about Atta.
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- Still, reports the Post, the government attorney in the
Miami courtroom easily persuaded the judge to hold Mubeen without bond.
The lawyer presented a striking legal document that offers insight into
both the strategy behind the detentions and a novel way to keep people
in custody on the most slender suspicion.
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- None of the detainees has been charged in the plot or
with other acts of terrorism. Many believe the campaign is a massive act
of racial profiling similar to the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans
at the start of World War II. The greatest concentrations were arrested
in several states with large Islamic populations in Texas, New Jersey,
California, New York, Michigan and Florida. The government's determination
to employ every legal tool at its disposal - to hold detainees as long
as possible - can be seen in cases across the country.
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- Recently, A Pakistan Rafiq Butt died in government
custody
in New York. Butt wanted to return to Pakistan but was kept without
notification
to his relative nor to the Pakistan embassy. In another case, Osama Elfar
was arrested at the end of a night shift at his job as an aviation mechanic
for Trans States Airlines.
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- The reason for his arrest was that, one, he worked at
the airport but mostly because he had a memorable first name. In an even
more ephemeral connection, an Egyptian antiques dealer Hady Omar remains
detained because he made a plane reservation from the same computer at
a Kinko's store in South Florida as one of the hijackers. Others in the
second layer have been linked to men at the investigation's hot center,
rather than to hijackers. One of those is Mohammad Aslam Pervez, a
Pakistani
who shared an apartment with the two men arrested with box-cutter knives
on the train to Texas.
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- The report says the FBI was using a seven-page document,
which has not been previously disclosed, to haul people who may not be
even remotely connected to the incidents. The newspapers conducted a
detailed
survey saying that the US government has adopted a deliberate strategy
of disruption - locking up large numbers of Muslims using whatever legal
tools they can.
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- The result has been confusion over exactly who is being
counted in the government's official tally of 1,147 detainees and who is
still being held. Of the 1,147, justice officials have specifically singled
out only 185 detainees who are being held on immigration charges, says
the report. The Post survey reveals that three-fifths of the detainees
are, like Mubeen, being held on immigration charges. Only a small number
are being held on "material witness" warrants and another 10
are believed to be directly connected to the terrorist investigation.
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