- "One cannot level ones moral lance at every evil
in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something,
and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything."
-- Daniel Berrigan
-
- "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truthâ¤.
Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for
liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes,
see not, and having ears, hear not..? For my part, whatever anguish of
spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know.. it
" now." --Patrick Henry
-
- Since the events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Government
has pursued its "war on terror" on two fronts. The obvious one
is the military front, which has taken American soldiers to battle in places
like Afghanistan and Iraq; less obvious is the financial front. The government
has instituted a strategy of tracking and freezing money internationally
as a way to stem the flow of the "terror-dollar" which it sees
as the "lifeblood" of terrorist operations.1
-
- Thomas Naylor, a McGill University professor and author
of Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation in the War on Terror,
accuses the U.S. government of fueling the myth of "coordinated global
terror" by providing local groups across the world with an "Al
Qa'idah brand name" that gives these groups a global significance
they don't deserve.2 He challenges the idea of "great terror treasuries"
and "huge sums of terror-dollars" washing through global financial
systems.3 Using the 1993 World Trade Center attack as an example, Naylor
shows that enormous sums of money are not required to commit horrendous
acts. Materials for this attack, which killed six people and did $500 million
in damage, cost only around $400.4 Even the spectacular 9/11 attacks needed
a relatively small amount of money: funds for accommodation in cheap motels
and airline tickets. What was crucial to the attack was "four committed
individuals with some basic knowledge of how to fly, fifteen dupes who
were just along for the ride, so to speak, and publicly accessible airline
schedules, plus the freak occurrence of airlines actually running on time,"5
not a huge cash reserve.
-
- This notion has been used to justify targeting Muslim
charities in the U.S. and since September 11, 2001, six major U.S. Muslim
charities and several smaller Muslim charities have been shut down.6 Naylor
compares this strategy to someone "furiously throwing lethal punches
in the air and hoping there are not too many innocent bystanders, or at
least no independent witnesses, in the general vicinity."7, 8
-
- In Satanic Purses, he explores the reasons that Islamic
charities have suffered this fate. Although bigotry and political opportunism
play a significant role, Naylor finds this is not the whole story. The
problem is compounded by a profound ignorance of Islamic culture and the
Qur'an.
-
- In many ways, the Qur'an lays out an early blueprint
for a welfare state. Prosecuting attorneys and "national security
experts" often have no basis for understanding an economic ideology
so contrary to the one prevalent in the West; this in turn leads to both
misinterpretation and misrepresentation. According to Naylor:
-
- Part of the West's confusion over Islamic charities arises
because the Qur'an supports an economic ideology very different from the
canons of savage capitalism so beloved of today's bond brokers and televangelists.
Islamic ethic imposes on Muslims as their primary duty the creating of
a just society that treats the poor with respect. It favors equity over
economic hierarchy, cooperation over unscrupulous competition, and charitable
redistribution over selfish accumulation.9
-
-
- The first wave of attacks on U.S. Muslim charity came
in December 2001 when the government closed down the three largest charities,
Holy Land Foundation (HLF), Global Relief Foundation (GRF) and Benevolence
International Foundation (BIF), accusing each of supporting terrorism.
In each of these cases, the charities' assets were frozen and their principals
imprisoned without bail.10
-
-
- In its report "Muslim Charities and the War on Terror,"
OMB Watch voices its concerns about the treatment of Muslim charities and
the people involved with them, along with the questionable evidence used
to shut them down. The closures have resulted in blocking humanitarian
assistance to people who desperately need it, denying these charities the
right to due process, and holding the individuals associated with their
humanitarian work "guilty until proven innocent." The report
concludes that, despite their expanded investigative powers, the authorities
have failed to produce evidence of terror financing by U.S.-based charities.11
-
- The government assault on U.S.-based Muslim charities
has left many Muslim communities with some of their most esteemed members
behind bars. Associates of charities are often held without bail and subjected
to smear campaigns by the government and press long before their cases
come anywhere near a court of law.12 They are denied the most basic rights
of due process: the right to liberty, to be secure in their persons from
unreasonable search and seizure, to a speedy trial by an impartial jury,
to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusations, and to be presumed
innocent until and unless proven guilty.13 Many Muslims have been virtually
forced to accept plea agreements, either because they did not believe they
could get fair trials in the post-9/11 climate and the consequences of
losing at trial under present draconian federal sentencing laws was too
big a gamble to take, or because they were threatened with being declared
"enemy combatants" and stripped of their rights under the Geneva
Conventions and the U.S. Constitution.
-
- Those few who chose to go to trial, trusting in the integrity
of the U.S. legal system, faced gross impediments to achieving even a measure
of justice. In addition to being held without bail, they were bankrupted,
denied access to their own records and counsel, and subjected to trials
that were not really about what they were ostensibly about.14 Where no
link to terrorism could be found, the government prosecuted for routine
white-collar crimes and then declared successes in the "war on terror."15
-
- When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his resignation
in November of 2004, he gave as evidence of success in the war on terror
211 criminal prosecutions, 478 deportations, and $124 million in frozen
assets.16 A 2006 publication, "Terrorist Trial Report Card" (NYU
School of Law's Center on Law and Security) lists many of the cases he
cited.17 But what Ashcroft neglected to mention, and the Center on Law
and Security failed to address, was that almost none of these cases involved
any actual terrorism convictions. Indeed, at the time of Ashcroft's resignation
there had been only one bona fide terrorism conviction, that of the British
shoe-bomber, Richard Reid.18
-
- Naylor points out that the government is aware of the
discrepancy between what people are convicted of and what they are sentenced
for:
-
-
- When reporters queried these oddities, a federal prosecutor
responded: "Bona fide terrorism is a matter of semantics. I don't
think you can draw conclusions based on what a person is convicted of."
Indeed. In a further explanation of the inner workings of the justice system,
he noted: "We charge them with readily provable offenses â¤
rather than what they might actually have done."19
-
- INNOCENT BYSTANDERS AND SEMANTICS
-
- That the government is set on a "terrorist"
prosecution from the outset in many of these cases is illustrated clearly
in a 2003 "Terrorist Financing" paper by Jeff Breinholt, Deputy
Chief of the Department of Justice's Counterterrorism Section.20 Under
a section titled, "'clean money' cases" Breinholt listed not
only people who had already signed a plea agreement, but many who had yet
to have their days in court. In other words, regardless of the defense
strategy, whether plea agreement or trial, the result would be heralded
as a "win" for the government in its "War on Terror."
-
- At the time the article was published, July 2003, Enaam
Arnaout, of Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), had been held without
bail for more than a year and had already accepted a plea agreement to
a charge that had nothing to do with supporting terrorism.21
-
- Others named in the 2003 report, more recently arrested,
included: Dr. Rafil Dhafir, of Help the Needy (HTN); Sami Omar Al-Hussayen,
associated with the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA); and Dr. Sami
al-Arian, a Palestinian professor from Florida,22 who had been held without
bail for four months. They had not accepted plea agreements and none of
the cases had come to court.23
-
- Arnaout accepted a plea deal after being held for 16
months of solitary confinement in 23-hour lockdown. He and his lawyer believed
this was his best option, given the political climate. Furthermore, going
to trial would have been very costly and carried the risk of a 90-year
prison term.24 For pleading guilty to a single count of "racketeering
conspiracy," in which he admitted using BIF donations to provide boots,
tents, uniforms, and an ambulance to units of the Bosnian army at a time
when Muslims in Bosnia were attempting to defend themselves against Serbian
atrocities, he received a sentence of more than 11 years " over and
above the 16 months he had already spent in solitary confinement.25
-
- Dr. Rafil Dhafir, founder of the charity Help the Needy,
was arrested along with other HTN associates in a high-profile operation
on February 26, 2003.26 His charity had a history of collecting donations
and sending aid to starving Iraqi civilians during the brutal embargo on
that country. The government exerted great pressure on Dhafir, including
its refusal to release HTN money to pay for wheelchairs for handicapped
Iraqis, to persuade him to accept a plea bargain.27
-
- Despite all the pressure and the possibility of a 250-year
prison sentence, Dhafir chose to go to trial. He was subjected to a show
trial that lasted four months and resulted in his conviction for conspiring
to violate the embargo on trade with Iraq and for "money laundering"
(forwarding the charitable contributions), as well as multiple counts of
submitting inaccurate Medicare billings and of "tax evasion"
(deducting his own generous contributions to HTN). Any mention that the
government had prosecuted on these charges only after trying unsuccessfully
to tie him to terrorist groups was strictly forbidden. After being held
without bail for 31 months, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. His
appeal to the Second Circuit is pending.
-
- Writing about Dhafir's case and the money-laundering
charges in Satanic Purses, Professor Naylor says: "Yet all the money
he had sent went not in cash but first by check to a local bank, then by
cashiers' check to Jordan, where it was used to buy emergency supplies.
Not only was it completely open, but Dhafir kept a careful ledger, which
the government seized and used as evidence. This is strange behavior for
a dedicated money-launderer."28
-
- Meanwhile, Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a graduate student
from Saudi Arabia, was arrested on an unrelated matter in Boise, Idaho,
on February 26, 2003, the same morning that associates of the Help the
Needy (HTN) charity were arrested in Syracuse, New York. Yet his name appears
on the same press release in which the DOJ announced "funders of terrorism"
had been arrested.29 After being held without bail under 23-hour lockdown
for 17 months, Al-Hussayen was cleared of all charges at trial " which
focused on his maintenance of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA)30
website -- and deported to Saudi Arabia on July 21, 2004.31
-
- Regarding the case of Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, Naylor writes,
"On the surface that might seem another embarrassing failure [for
the government]. But it succeeded in demonstrating to Muslim males that
the Justice Department had the power to destroy lives. Prior to his legal
vindication, al-Hussayen's wife and children were deported; his friends
were scared off; his reputation was ruined; and of course, he had spent
eighteen months under lock and key. Ultimately the government agreed to
drop the immigration charge, too, if he in turn agreed not to appeal his
deportation order."32
-
- Professor Sami al-Arian, a Palestinian, was arrested
on February 20, 2003, and held without bail for 28 months prior to a 6-month
trial that included 80 government witnesses. The verdict, on December 7,
2005, was "not guilty" on the most serious charges of abetting
terrorism, and the jury was hung on other lesser charges because the judge
interrupted deliberations.33 The government refused to release him. Last
year, believing it was the only way he could secure his release, Al-Arian
accepted a plea agreement that included a few extra months in jail and
his deportation upon release. Despite this agreement he was given a maximum
57-month sentence. He is currently being held in contempt of court for
refusal to testify in front of a Grand Jury. While he is held on "contempt"
charges his original criminal sentence is not running.34
-
- Unfortunately these four cases are not unique; rather,
they are just a sampling of how these prosecutions " even when unsuccessful
" have wrecked so many people's lives.35
-
- THE COSTS TO ONE MUSLIM COMMUNITY
-
- The assault on Muslim charities and their principals
has had enormous detrimental psychological and financial impact on Muslim
communities. Not only do many Muslims live in fear of a knock at the door,
but their communities are also burdened with the financial support of those
families with breadwinners in prison and with colossal legal bills for
defending their members against a government with unlimited finances, a
government unwilling to let facts get in the way of its pursuit of success
stories in the "war on terror."36
-
- Dr. Dhafir, mentioned above, is a founding member of
the mosque in Syracuse, New York, and an esteemed member of that community.
An Iraqi-born oncologist, he had been a U.S. citizen for almost 30 years
when he was indicted. He and his American wife were very active in the
local community and Dhafir often spoke at events and on local TV and radio
about cancer care. In the early 1990s, in direct response to the humanitarian
catastrophe created by the U.S. and U.K.-sponsored UN sanctions on Iraq,
he founded the charity HTN and for 13 years openly sent food and aid to
starving civilians who were the sanctions' victims.37,38
-
- A devout man, he devoted much of his life to prayer and
charity and, according to the government, donated half his income to charity
each year. In his oncology practice he treated those without medical insurance
for free, paying for expensive chemotherapy medicine out of his own pocket
and telling patients to pay whatever they could whenever they could.39
-
- As he was arrested on his way to work, just weeks before
the U.S. invasion of Iraq,40 other agents broke down the door of his home
and held guns to Mrs. Dhafir's head. Both Ayman Jarwan, Executive Director
of HTN, and Osameh Al-Wahaidy, were arrested the same morning, agents having
awakened their families, including young children.41 At the same time,
between the hours of 6:00 and 10:00 a.m., 150 Muslim families who had donated
to the HTN were interrogated.42, 43 It was later that same day that Attorney
General Ashcroft made his announcement about "funders of terrorism"
having been arrested.44
-
- In a statement handed to the press on the day of his
sentencing, Dhafir said:
-
-
- What was the result of Feb 26, 2003 besides imprisoning
of innocent people? Scores of innocent elderly American cancer patients
died needlessly, innumerable tens of thousands of Iraqi needy (children,
women and men) died, and more than that suffered malnutrition and the humiliation
of poverty. An entire segment of our society here was treated as criminals,
intimidated, interrogated and threatened. Never in the history of the Islamic
Society of Central New York had we had so many cases of depression and
suicide that the mosque had to engage the services of a psychiatrist to
help out. The dream of this Republic being a sanctuary for the oppressed
was shattered on that day and a new sad reality was erected in its place.45
-
- Although not under arrest, Mrs. Dhafir spent much of
the day in her nightclothes and was not allowed to go to the bathroom without
an escort. Meanwhile, approximately 85 agents collected "evidence"
at the Dhafir home.46
-
- After his arrest, Al-Wahaidy was taken to the Justice
Center in Syracuse and spent all day in his pajamas handcuffed to a wall
bar.47
-
- Jarwan was held without bail for two weeks and then released
when the judge granted him bail. Prosecutors tried to deny bail to Jarwan
because he had a degree in nuclear physics and suggested that he was capable
of making a "dirty bomb," but the judge, fortunately, agreed
with Jarwan's lawyer that this was a ludicrous suggestion.48
-
- The government did eventually press a charge against
Mrs. Dhafir and she accepted a plea bargain, pleading guilty to lying to
a government agent because she had said in a claim for Medicare reimbursement
that her husband was physically present in the office of his oncology practice
when he was not.49 She received two years' probation and a $10,000 fine.
In addition she had to pay Medicare $62,000 and do 150 hours of community
service.
-
- Dr. Dhafir's associate Osameh Al-Wahaidy, a math instructor
at Oswego State University, was initially told that there was no problem
with his job because "he hadn't been arrested on a sexual harassment
charge." The following day he was fired. The judge did not allow him
to return to work at Auburn Prison, where he had a position as imam; yet
the prison guard union supported him and he was put on paid leave and thus
could continue to support his family.
-
- Al-Wahaidy, like all the other HTN defendants except
for Dr. Dhafir, accepted a plea bargain.50 He pled guilty to conspiracy
to violate the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA, commonly
known as the Iraq sanctions) but reserved the right to challenge the legality
of the Presidential Proclamation imposing sanctions against Iraq. 51 Two
co-workers from Auburn Prison testified on his behalf at his sentencing
and he received two years' probation, a $5,000 fine and 100 hours of community
service. On appeal, the Second Circuit upheld the validity of the Proclamation
and thus of Al-Wahaidy's sentence.
-
- Ayman Jarwan's attorney, Jim McGraw, advised him to accept
a plea bargain; although he was "facing substantial prison time for
something he was not guilty of," the anti-Muslim climate made a fair
trial unlikely.52 Jarwan pled guilty to violation of IEEPA and cooperated
fully with the government, traveling the country to educate the FBI and
other government agencies about Muslim culture. Yet he was unexpectedly
sentenced to 18 months, and McGraw felt that the government had gone back
on its part of the bargain.53 Jarwan's wife and children returned to Jordan
just after his sentencing; after serving 15 months, Jarwan was released
on December 22, 2006. He was then held in county jail in immigration custody
until February 2007 when he was finally deported to Jordan, where he now
lives with his family. Apart from Dhafir, Jarwan was the only other HTN
defendant to get prison time.
-
- As a consequence of Dr. Dhafir's refusal to accept a
plea bargain the government piled on charges, and when his case came to
trial 19 months after his arrest, he faced a 60-count indictment of white-collar
crime charges. The government employed many tools to impair his ability
to defend himself. Despite the facts that the Muslim community in Syracuse
put up $2.3 million in bond money and that Dhafir offered to wear an electronic
tag, he was never granted bail. His assets were frozen, making it more
difficult to secure defense counsel, 54 and while being held, he was denied
access to both his own records55 and, at one point, to his counsel.56
-
- Just prior to the start of the trial, New York Governor
Pataki " who of course had no official interest in the matter -- denounced
Dhafir's activities as a "money laundering case to help terrorist
organizations."57 And while state and national level officials smeared
Dhafir in the press, local prosecutors successfully petitioned Judge Norman
Mordue, the presiding judge who had denied Dhafir bail on four occasions,
to prevent the accusation of terrorism from being part of the trial. This
ruling turned into a brick wall that the defense kept hitting; throughout
the trial the government could hint at more serious charges but the defense
was never allowed to address them.58
-
- Although he was not convicted of any terrorism-related
crime, the government continues to tout Dhafir's case as yet another success
in its "war on terror."59 In the sentencing phase, where the
rules of evidence do not apply, he was labeled a "national security
threat" because he had violated IEEPA,60 and a government pre-sentencing
memorandum linked him with people who, although at the time were allies
of the U.S., later became enemies:
-
-
- In the 1980s Rafil Dhafir traveled repeatedly to Pakistan
where he worked as a volunteer doctor in the mujihadin refugee camps on
the border of Afghanistan. Photographs and videotapes seized from his home
show that, during that time, he met and interviewed Abdalla Azzam, the
founder of Al Queda, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the future Taliban Prime
Minister of Afghanistan. At the same time, Rafil became more involved in
Salafism in the United States, becoming the Vice President of the Islamic
Assembly of North America (IANA), which styled itself as an umbrella organization
for Salafists in North America.61
-
- The government neglected to mention that the reason Dhafir
went repeatedly to Pakistan during the 1980s was as a volunteer for Doctors
Without Borders, although it did acknowledge in a footnote that at the
time Dhafir met these people, it was "U.S. policy to support the mujihadin
who were engaged in jihad against the Soviet Union." 62
-
- Barrie Gewanter, Executive Director the American Civil
Liberties Union, Central New York Chapter, issued a statement on Dhafir's
case the day after he was sentenced. She expressed deep concern about selective
prosecution, questioning whether Muslims in the U.S. could truly receive
a fair trial. She reiterated an ACLU concern about impediments that denial
of bail placed on the legal defense and criticized his unequal treatment
under the law. She stated that Dhafir "was presumed guilty long before
the trial began, and of much more than indicated in the charges against
him." The statement continued: The federal government has repeatedly
tried to pitch this as a case with national security implications. Both
the US Attorney General and the NY State Governor referred publicly to
this case in the context of a terrorism prosecution.
-
- However, federal prosecutors never filed any charges
related to terrorism nor did they prove any link to terrorists. Instead,
this turned out to be a case of white-collar crime; the trial process was
filled with descriptions of financial statements and details of financial
transactions. The government should not have engaged in inflammatory publicity
before the trial, nor introduced highly prejudicial allegations of terrorist
links through the back door of sentencing.63
-
-
- Within weeks of Dhafir's sentencing Jeff Breinholt, author
of the article on "Terrorist Financing," mentioned supra, and
Greg West, one of the prosecutors in the HTN case, presented a lecture
to faculty and students at Syracuse University Law School entitled "A
Law Enforcement Approach to Terrorist (sic) Financing," in which they
talked about this case.64
-
- Breinholt asserted that Dhafir's case had been "under-prosecuted."65
In the context of the lecture's title, his implication was clear. Although
prosecuted for "money laundering" of voluntary charitable contributions,
tax evasion, and Medicare fraud, Breinholt insinuated Dhafir's real offense
was money laundering for terrorist organizations. He compared the government's
strategy towards Muslim charities with its prosecution of the early 20th
Century Mafia boss Al Capone for tax evasion when everyone knew that was
not his "real" crime, that he was guilty of much more serious
things, although those could not be easily proven.
-
- Addressing this shopworn comparison in Satanic Purses,
Naylor suggests that: "A better analogy would be if the U.S. decided
to curb bootlegging in the 1920s by charging everyone with an Italian surname
with vagrancy, then locking them up on Ellis Island."66
-
- Dhafir was recently sent to the federal "correctional"
institution in Terre Haute, Indiana and is being held in a new program
there, the Communications Management Unit (CMU). Most of his fellow CMU
residents are other Arab and Muslim prisoners who were not convicted of
any serious terrorism offense.67 In a recent letter, Dhafir wrote about
the nationally coordinated plan, ordered by the Attorney General himself,
to put all these Muslims/Arabs in one place.68 Prisoners are held completely
segregated from the general population and all communication is heavily
monitored. All ingoing and outgoing mail is screened and inmates are allowed
one 15-minute phone call per week, in English, and one four-hour non-contact
visit a month.69 (Ordinarily, medium-security federal prisoners have extensive
contact visits, regular access to the mails, and 300 minutes each month
for telephone use.)
-
- "THE PRICE OF LIBERTY IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE"70
-
- Today, in the U.S., Muslims and Arabs are being subjected
to an ad hoc redefinition and contraction of their basic freedoms.71 It
is obvious that Dhafir and the others mentioned in Breinholt's "Terrorist
Financing" paper were not afforded the protections the Bill of Rights
guarantees to all, and yet there is little outcry against, or public debate
about, such blatant aberrations. What happened in Nazi Germany and Europe
during the 1930s did not happen overnight; there was a gradual erosion
of freedoms from the late 1920s through to 1945. Afterwards, people looked
back in horror at what had been done in their name.
-
- In his new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American
Republic, Chalmers Johnson decries the lack of political will to confront
the grave threats facing our democratic republic. He likens the United
States of today to a cruise ship on the Niagara River: upstream from the
falls a few people on board have begun to detect a slight hiss in the background,
and notice a faint haze of mist in the air and on their glasses, and a
slightly faster current in the river, but none has realized that it's almost
too late to head for the shore.72 Whether we are a society willing to struggle
to regain the protection of our freedoms and the equitable application
of the law remains to be seen.
-
- The government still hounds Dhafir; it recently demanded
reconsideration of an appeals court order allowing Dhafir copies of his
trial transcripts at the expense of the court.73 Completely unverifiable
insinuations of personal wealth persuaded the court to place some $15,000
in additional costs on the defense. As a result, the Dr. Dhafir Support
Committee was forced to raise these additional funds, at risk of seeing
the appeal dismissed before it could even be briefed. Fundraising continues
in order to repay the most dedicated donors who borrowed most of the amount
needed to pay the court reporter and for the anticipated high costs of
printing the brief and appendix. Dr. Dhafir is now represented by nationally
respected criminal appeals attorneys Barry Boss, of Cozen & O'Connor
in Washington, DC, and Peter Goldberger, who is also a longtime member
of the NLG Military Law Task Force.
-
- If you care about the Constitution's guarantee of civil
liberties, please help by sending a donation in any amount to: Dr. Dhafir
Appeal Fund, c/o Peter Goldberger, Esq., Attorney at Law, 50 Rittenhouse
Place, Ardmore, PA 19003. Make checks payable to "Dr. Dhafir Appeal
Fund." Please note that donations are not tax deductible. For more
information go to: www.dhafirtrial.net.
-
- ______________________________________
-
- Katherine Hughes is a student at Syracuse University.
She attended almost every day of the seventeen-week Dhafir trial, taking
notes for five hours each day. For the last three years she has tried to
educate people about the Help the Needy case and the plight of Islamic
charities in the U.S.
-
-
- 1 Thomas Naylor, "Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and
Misinformation in the War on Terror" (hereafter Naylor, Purses), McGill-Queens
University Press, 2006, p.5
-
- 2 Naylor, Purses, p.6
-
- 3 Naylor, Purses, p. 337.
-
- 4 Naylor, Purses, p. 339.
-
- 5 Naylor, Purses, p.338.
-
- 6 L. Al-Marayati, "American Muslim Charities: Easy
Targets in the War on Terror," presented on December 3, 2004 at Pace
University Law Symposium, Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines: The Impact
on International Philanthropy (hereafter Al-Marayati, Easy Targets): http://www.library.law.pace.edu/PLR/25-2/Al-Maryati.pdf.
-
- 7 Naylor, Purses, pp. 8 & 337
-
- 8 Naylor, Purses, p. 168
-
- 9 L. Al-Marayati and B. Abdelkarim, "The Crime of
Being a Muslim Charity" (hereafter Al-Marayati, Crime), Washington
Post, March 12, 2006: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/
AR2006031001859.html
-
- 10 OMB Watch, "Muslim Charities and the War on Terror"
(hereafter OMB Watch Report), revised March 2006: http://www.ombwatch.org//npadv/PDF/MuslimCharitiesTopTenUpdated.pdf
-
- 11 Naylor, Purses, p. 339; OMB Watch Report
-
- 12 "The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC)
is creating a Human Rights Abuse Database with the stories of hundreds
of individuals whose lives have been harshly affected or ruined entirely
by U.S. government policies since 9/11." See information on this Database
in the Bill of Rights Defense Committee newsletter, November 2006: http://www.bordc.org/newsletter/bordcnews5-7.php
-
- 13 Naylor, Purses, p.339 and The Bill of Rights: http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm
-
- 14 See Michael Powell's Washington Post article where
he describes the government's approach to this case as "shadow boxing"
for a description of the arrest. "High-Profile N.Y. Suspect Goes on
Trial: Arrest Was Called Part of War on Terrorism, but Doctor Faces Other
Charges" (hereafter Powell, Washington Post), The Washington Post,
October 19, 2004: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43278-2004Oct18.html
-
- 15 Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an upstate New York oncologist,
was charged for white-collar crimes but sentenced to 22 years as a national
security threat.
-
- 16 Naylor, Purses, p. 332
-
- 17 The Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of
Law "Terrorist Trial Report Card: US Edition," September 11,
2001 " September 11, 2006: http://www.lawandsecurity.org/publications/TTRC_US_2006_Appendix_B.pdf
-
- 18 Naylor, Purses, p. 332
-
- 19 Naylor, Purses, p.332
-
- 20 Jeff Breinholt, "Terrorist Financing," U.S.
Attorney Bulletin, July 2003, Volume 51, number 4 (hereafter Breinholt);
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usab5104.pdf.
-
- 21 To one count of racketeering conspiracy: http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2003/pr021003_01.pdf
-
- 22 Al-Arian's involvement with charity organizations
was prior to 1992. Listen to Amy Goodman's interview of Al-Arian from prison.
Democracy Now, February 2007: http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl
-
- 23 Dhafir's case went to court in October 2004; Al-Arian's
case went to court in July 2005.
-
- 24 All other HTN defendants accepted plea bargains for
the same reason. A video interview with Ayman Jarwan's lawyer, Jim McGraw,
is available (15 minutes in two parts): PART 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i123mRoBtEo
?PART 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZJIJTf5mak (Hereafter, McGraw
Video.)
-
- 25 A statement issued after the plea agreement was made
stated, "The plea agreement entered into today is an acknowledgment
by the government that neither Mr. Arnaout nor BIF ever provided any support
to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, or any other terrorist organization. The
agreement further demonstrates that Mr. Arnaout and BIF never supported
any activity that was contrary to the interests of the United States."
Statement of Enaam Arnaout: http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa021103b.htm
-
- 26 For a description of the arrest see Powell, Washington
Post.
-
- 27 HTN's lawyer Scott Porter offered a deal whereby all
of HTN's assets would go to buy wheelchairs (the vendor offered two for
one price) for handicapped Iraqis. The prosecution blocked this because
Dhafir would not enter a guilty plea. The money was dispersed to other
charities unrelated to the donors' intentions after Dhafir was sentenced.
See http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2005/12/06/please-write-to-judge-mordue/
#more-218
-
- 28 Naylor, Purses, p. 229.
-
- 29 Powell, Washington Post.
-
- 30 http://www.iananet.org/
-
- 31 Al-Hassayen's defense lawyer, David Nevin, said he
asked a pool of about 150 potential jurors to raise their hands if they
had ever known a Muslim. Only about four or five raised their hands and
they were all vetoed as jurors by the prosecution. Nevin compared the trial
that followed to the "Far Side" cartoon in which a dog faces
a jury of cats. From Amy Waldman's "Prophetic Justice:" Atlantic
Monthly, October Issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200610/waldman-islam/3
(hereafter Waldman, Prophetic).
-
- 32 Naylor, Purses, p.333. Here Naylor also contrasts
treatment of Muslim males with a case involving a non-Muslim male.
-
- 33 Listen to a February 2005 interview of Professor Sami
Al-Arian by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl
Al-Arian spoke by telephone from prison.
-
- 34 Peter Erlinder, "The Ordeal of Dr. Sami Al-Arian:
Despite Acquittal on Terrorism Charges, No Prospect of Release for Dr.
Al-Arian," Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, April 2007: http://www.wrmea.com/archives/April_2007/0704024.html
-
- 35 See this author's correspondence with John O'Brien,
the local reporter on the Dhafir trial: http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2005/02/09/strongdisagreement-over-
correctionstrong/#more-73
-
- 36 It is estimated that the prosecution cost of Sami
Al-Arian's case is somewhere in the region of $80 million: http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm
-
- 37 See A. Arnove, "Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly
Impact of Sanctions and War," South End Press, 2002 and R. Clark,
"The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq: The Children Are Dying," a
report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. World View Forum, Inc.
1996.
-
- 38 At trial the defense showed that a 1990 New York Times
article had mentioned humanitarian exception to the sanctions. Susan Hutner
of the Office of Foreign Assets Control said in her testimony that mosques
and Iraqis were not targeted for education about the sanctions, although
she personally gave lectures to members of the oil and banking industries.
From this author's witness of the proceedings. (Hereafter, Hughes Witness.)
-
- 39 See Kristen Hinman, "The Iraqi Doctor: Patients
Revere Him, the Government Wants to Put Him Away:" http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/801mag/2004/801_IRAQIDR.pdf
Hinman's grandmother was a patient of Dhafir.
-
- 40 This was part of a government operation ahead of the
Iraq war. Code named "Imminent Horizon," its stated purpose was
to "disrupt and rattle" potential terrorist operations ahead
of the invasion of Iraq. Reported by ABC news March 5, 2003, see newshttp://www.jubileeinitiative.org/
DhafirOperationImminentHorizon.htm
-
- 41 Hughes Witness. A detailed description of the arrests
can be found in court transcripts.
-
- 42 See R. Gadoua, "Up to 150 Questioned; Doctor
Is Denied Bail; Muslims Afraid to Speak Out Publicly," The Post-Standard
(Syracuse, NY), March 1, 2003, available here: http://www.freedhafir.org/
and McGraw Video
-
- 43 The ACLU-CNY expressed concerns about how the interrogations
had been handled among other questions, families were asked how often they
prayed and whether they celebrated Christmas: http://www.cnyclu.org/. At
one meeting I attended, a man recounted that the government had gone back
20 years in his bank records because he had donated $150 to HTN.
-
- 44 See the government press release from that day: http://www.dhafirtrial.net/court-documents/indictment-from-arrest/
-
- 45 Dr. Dhafir's sentencing statement: http://www.dhafirtrial.net/about-dr-dhafir/dhafir-sentencing-
statement/, p. 36.
-
- 46 Hughes Witness.
-
- 47 Hughes Witness.
-
- 48 Hughes Witness. Fuller descriptions of the arrests
of Jarwan and Al-Wahaidy are available in court transcripts.
-
- 49 The whole Medicare part of the case, 25 counts, revolved
around the "incident to" rule, which decided how billing should
be handled "incident to" the doctor's treatment. For coverage
of this part of the trial see, Katherine Hughes, "Dr. Dhafir's trial
concluded today, Wednesday, January 26, 2005:" http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2005/01/26/strongdr-dhafirs-trial-
concluded-todaystrong-today/#more-19
-
- 50 Other defendants in the case include William Hatfield,
Dhafir's accountant and Ahmed Yusef Ali, head of Somali Relief Network,
the charity that had shared its tax-exempt status with HTN. On the day
of the arrests government agents went to Hatfield's office in Oneida, New
York, blocked the street at both ends and entered the office where he and
his secretary worked. He was told that it would be better for him if he
did not call a lawyer but cooperated with government agents. Hatfield accepted
a plea agreement, pleading guilty to helping Dhafir file a false statement
to the IRS; he received 2 years probation, a $15,000 fine, and 150 hours
community service. Ahmed Ali accepted a plea agreement and pleaded guilty
to impeding IRS collection; he received 2 years probation and a $10,000
fine. Two others arrested on the morning of February 26, 2003 are former
HTN associate, Walid Smari, of Idaho, and Danya Wellmon, Dhafir's laboratory
technician at his medical practice. Both accepted immunity in exchange
for their testimony at Dhafir's trial. Jean Karp, a former Catholic nun
and Dhafir's nurse for many years, had left Dhafir's practice to start
a free clinic for the poor. She was grandfathered into a new Medicare program
and received her own Medicare number that meant she could bill Medicare
directly. She was not charged with any crime by the government, but when
Dhafir was arrested her Medicare number was taken from her; as a consequence
the free clinic closed. She had no idea why it had been taken and it had
not been reinstated when she testified at Dhafir's trial.
-
- 51 See a New York Times article mentioned in the cross
testimony of Susan Hutner, the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC),
which the defense cited as an example of information suggesting that humanitarian
aid was exempt from the sanctions on Iraq. P. Lewis, "The Iraqi Invasion;
U.N. Expected to Approve Iraq and Kuwait Trade Ban," New York Times,
August 6th, 1990. Hutner stated that in an effort to educate the public,
OFAC had contacted the press, the banking and oil industries and that she
had given presentations to these industries. OFAC did not notify mosques
and Hutner could not remember if she had taken any calls from mosques or
Muslim charities. Susan Hutner's testimony O3-CR-64, volume XII, filed
on January, 11, 2005. Executive order 13224, issued on September 23, 2001,
changed the guidelines for humanitarian aid. For a more detailed description
of the effects of these new regulations, see Al-Marayati, Easy Targets.
-
- 52 Mike McAndrew "Fund-Raiser for Iraq Now Helps
Iranians: Man Involved in Help the Needy Case Urges People to Aid Earthquake
Victims," Syracuse Post Standard, http://dontsmeardhafir.blogspot.com/2004/11/islamophobia-syracuse-
post-standards.html
-
- 53 McGraw Video.
-
- 54 The government presented its case in minute detail,
spending days and days following checks from bank to bank, followed by
days and days of people from Dhafir's office verifying their signatures
on Medicare forms. Because Dhafir had been bankrupted in the course of
seeking justice, the defense was able to call one witness for 15 minutes.
The defense lawyers felt that they had successfully defended the case using
government witnesses. Having sat through almost all of the 17-week trial,
I agree and do not understand the jury verdict. At the very least, the
defense gave cause for reasonable doubt on each of the charges. There was
a core group of about 12 court watchers, several of whom attended almost
every day of the trial, who also felt the defense had successfully defended
the case.
-
- 55 Dhafir was charged with only white-collar crime. In
his sentencing statement, he said, "My computers were confiscated,
my documents were seized, my bank records hid from me, my personal library
was ransacked; books which have nothing to do with the allegations were
taken. To this date I am denied to see for myself what was actually taken
so that I can retrieve evidences that will refute all the allegations beyond
the shadow of the doubt:" http://www.dhafirtrial.net/about-dr-dhafir/dhafir-sentencing-
statement/
-
- 56 See ACLU-CNY Chapter Statement on Dhafir Case, 10/28/05:
http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2005/01/26/strongdr-dhafirs-trial- concluded-todaystrong-today/#more-19
http://www.cnyclu.org/issues.htm
-
- 57 See Naylor, Purses, p. 229
-
- 58 Hughes, Witness.
-
- 59 Department of Justice Examples of Terrorism Convictions
Since Sept. 11, 2001: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/June/06_crm_389.html
|
