Terrorism fears in U. S. trampled rights
With broader powers after 9/ 11, agencies made some dubious arrests, study finds
On a cold December morning in 2003, Mohamed Warsame had just returned to his Minneapolis home after dropping his wife and child at a daycare centre, when he heard a knock on the door.
That morning he was juggling a tight schedule of graduate studies and tutoring in computer science, and was eager to get to school.
At the door were three Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who had other plans.
They drove him about 160 kilometres to a National Guard base, Camp Ripley. There, over the next two days, they grilled him about his trip to Afghanistan in 19992000 where he went in search of the perfect Islamic state. He grew disenchanted with the violence and returned to North America.
The interrogation was secretly taped, but for reasons that have never been explained, the FBI “failed to preserve any record of that encounter,” according to court records.
Two days later, Warsame was arrested and charged with providing material support to al- Qaida. The naturalized Canadian citizen born in Mogadishu, Somalia, had moved to the U. S. from Toronto in 2002 to join his wife.
For six months before his arrest, the FBI had him under 24hour surveillance, but had found no proof he was connected to terrorism.
Nonetheless, he was labelled a dangerous threat and placed in pre- trial solitary confinement. For the next 5 ½ years, he remained in a 10- foot- by- 10- foot cell 23 hours a day, with nothing to read except the Qur’an, no radio and limited access to TV. Only his lawyer, Dan Scott, was allowed visits.
Finally, in 2009, by which time, says Scott, he had become “less and less connected to reality,” he pleaded guilty. He was immediately released and sent back to Canada, where he now lives in the Toronto area.
Warsame is one of more than 500 people convicted of terrorism in the U. S. since 9/ 11. Studies by civil liberties groups and legal experts show most of these cases involved questionable judicial practices and human rights abuses.
They include targeting of racial and religious groups, pre- trial solitary confinement often lasting years, secret evidence not disclose to the accused — and in about 150 cases the use of undercover police officers and confidential informants to entrap people who had shown no involvement in terrorism plotting.
In an in- depth study of 27 “homegrown” terrorism cases, Human Rights Watch found seven in which police targeted vulnerable people who were mentally ill or intellectually handicapped, and therefore, as one forensic psychologist testified, “susceptible to the manipulations and demands of others.”
As Ottawa attempts to pass new anti- terrorism laws designed to broaden police powers, the U. S. experience is a cautionary tale.
After 9/ 11, Americans felt themselves under siege, with the FBI spending 40 per cent of its $ 3.3 billion US budget on counter- terrorism.
“We forget how paranoid things were back then,” Scott said. “9/ 11 proved that the Constitution of the United States only exists when it is convenient for it to exist.”
While many prosecutions have targeted people actively engaged in planning or financing terror attacks, “many others have targeted individuals who do not appear to have been involved in terrorist plotting,” the Human Rights Watch report said.
Case studies show the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the New York City Police Department, use undercover officers and/ or paid confidential informants with criminal and prison records and/ or histories of drug addiction to infiltrate mosques and target Muslims who had criticized U. S. policy on the Middle East. Postmedia News contacted the FBI and the NYPD for interviews. The FBI acknowledged the request, but never followed up. The NYPD did not respond.
A typical case is that of Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was 21 when the NYPD anti- terrorism task force targeted him. He has an IQ of about 78, the mental age of a 12- year- old. He lived with his parents and spent most of his days watching cartoons and playing video games.
In 2003, NYPD informant Osama Eldwoody, 50, who was paid to trawl New York Muslim communities, befriended Siraj at his mosque, posing as a terminally ill nuclear engineer with a deep knowledge of the Qu’ran. He noted in a police report the target was “impressionable” and became a father figure to young man, who was eager to please him.
Eldwoody spent the next year encouraging Siraj to hate Americans, directing him to gruesome websites showing the bodies of Muslims he claimed had been killed or tortured by Americans. “Killing the killers,” he told Siraj was allowed by the Qu’ran.
He persuaded Siraj to seek revenge by bombing a subway station in downtown New York. Siraj’s friend, James Elshafay, 19, a drug addict who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, became part of the “conspiracy.”
At one point, Siraj told Eldwoody he didn’t want to kill anybody and would have to “ask my mom’s permission.”
In August 2004, Siraj was charged with conspiring with Elshafay to attack the subway station. After one year of solitary confinement, he was convicted and jailed for 30 years. Elshafay became a government witness and got five years; Eldwoody was paid $ 100,000 US.
Other cases followed the same pattern:
In 2012, the NYPD charged Ahmed Ferhani, 27, with plotting to blow up a synagogue. Ferhani had been committed to a psychiatric ward involuntarily about 30 times. An NYPD informant, known as Ilter Ayturk, convinced him to join in a plot to blow up a synagogue and the Empire State building. Ferhani got 10 years in prison.
Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, lived with his parents near Boston after graduating from university with a physics degree. He had psychiatric problems and was on medication for depression. He also became easily disoriented and was once found standing in the middle of a road, refusing to move. He claimed his thoughts were being controlled by outside forces.
In December 2010, an FBI undercover informant, a former heroin addict with a criminal record, targeted Ferdaus at his mosque. Over the next year they constructed a plot to use remote- controlled model planes filled with C- 4 plastic explosives or hand grenades to attack the Pentagon and the Capitol.
FBI agents gave him with a model airplane and flew him to Washington to reconnoitre. They also delivered fake C- 4 explosives, six AK- 47s and grenades to a warehouse where they photographed him holding a gun. Ferdaus pleaded guilty to conspiring to attack government buildings and is now serving 17 years.
Miriam Conrad, his lawyer, says the FBI is creating conspiracies out of angry people. There was never any evidence the agency was disrupting a plot, she told lawfareblog.com.
“The only plot was between Mr. Ferdaus and the informant. My point is once the government decides to go after somebody like this in this fashion, the die is already cast,” she said.
While the FBI was executing its elaborate sting on Ferdaus, warnings from Russian intelligence about Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev went unheeded.
On April 15, 2013, the brothers bombed the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring about 264 others. They also shot dead a police officer.
Conrad is now representing Dzhokhar.
We forget how paranoid things were back then; 9/ 11 proved that the Constitution of the United States only exists when it is convenient for it to exist.