Vyan

Thursday, November 23

Making Peace and Charity a Crime!

Thinkprogress has a wonderful list of 21 Reasons to be Thankful. Some of the best gems are:

We’re thankful Rick Santorum will have more free time to find the WMD.

We’re thankful Maf54 isn’t online right now.

I echo their sentiment. I'm Thankful for the 110th Congress, and also Hopeful that the act of Peacefully Demostrating and/or Giving Money to Legitmate Charitable Organizations will no longer be treated as a Criminal Offense.
Here's some more Thinkprogress Holiday Cheer before we get to the depressing stuff...

We’re thankful for “the Google” and “the email” (and the “series of tubes” that make them possible) — but not iPods, which are endangering our nation.

We’re thankful Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will no longer chair the Senate environmental committee.

We’re thankful Bill O’Reilly does not resort to name calling - well, besides labeling ThinkProgress as “far left loons,” “kool-aid zombies,” “hired guns,” “vile,” “haters,” a “far left smear website,” and “a very well-oiled, effective character assassination machine.”

We’re thankful Ted Haggard bought the meth but never used it.


Amen.

Ok, on to business...

As we enter this Holiday Season, I wanted to take today to point out a series of articles which address how being a Peaceful and Giving Citizen just might land you in Gitmo. First we have the issue of the Pentagon tracking Peace Protestors:

Washington - An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that "a church service for peace" would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding "nonviolence training" sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Fortunately, all this hypersensitivity by the Pentagon is all in the past. Right?

The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats - and not peaceable First Amendment activity - was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place.

"I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," said Daniel J. Baur, the acting director of the counterintelligence field activity unit, which runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. "I don't want to deal with it."

Mr. Baur said that those operating the database had misinterpreted their mandate and that what was intended as an antiterrorist database became, in some respects, a catch-all for leads on possible disruptions and threats against military installations in the United States, including protests against the military presence in Iraq.

Whew - glad that's over. We shouldn't have people who attend church services being spied upon without probable cause and one of those warrant things.

But then again, is it really? Did they ever mention how this information was gathered in the first place - or that they've stopped gathering it? All they said was it's no longer being kept in the database.

The Government couldn't still be targeting people who engage in "peaceable First Amendment activity" could they?

Uh oh...

In May 2005, David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the constitutional implications of a series of "anti-terrorism" laws rushed through Congress after 9/11. Cole said [emphasis mine]:

The statutes described above prohibit virtually all associational support to selected political organizations, while granting executive branch officials effectively unreviewable discretion to target disfavored groups. These laws make it a crime to write an op-ed, provide legal advice, volunteer one's time, or distribute a magazine of any "designated" group, even if there is no connection whatsoever between the individual's support and any illegal activity of the proscribed group.

Guess I better shelve that "Go Hezbollah Go!" Blog I was considering, eh?

But all joking aside this is serious business.

Under these statutes, an American citizen who sends a treatise on nonviolence to the Kurdistan Workers' Party to encourage it to forgo violence for peace can be sent to prison for 15 years. This is so even if he proves that he intended the treatise to be used only for peaceful ends, and that it was in fact used solely for that purpose. Such a moral innocent can be said to be "guilty" by association. [1]

If you think this is an exaggeration and couldn't happen, think again. This is precisely the situation in which Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir found himself.

In response to the humanitarian crisis caused by years of sanctions against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Dr. Dhafir - an Iraqi who has been an American Citizen for the past 30 years - started an organization called "Help the Needy".

For 13 years, Dhafir worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them.[7] According to the government, Dhafir donated $1.25 million of his own money over the years.[8] As an oncologist, he was also concerned about the effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi population, which was experiencing skyrocketing cancer rates.[9]

For the crime of breaking the U.S. and U.K.-sponsored U.N. sanctions on Iraq and sending humanitarian aid to sick and starving civilians, Dhafir was held without bail for 31 months and then sentenced to 22 years in prison. By implication, his were terrorist acts.

Democrats led by Senator Patrick Leahy have demanded a closer look at the contents of the Pentagon Peace Activist Database.

"I fully intend to ask what's in those databanks, because many of them go way beyond any legitimate needs for our security," says Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Congress wants to know not just what data was collected, but why and how it was to be used.

As well he should because it's clear that simply monitoring isn't what they did with Dr. Dhafir and Help the Needy.

Since the day of Dhafir's arrest, February 26, 2003, when 85 (!) agents went to his home, government officials at national and state levels have portrayed Dhafir's humanitarian work as support of terrorism.[26] Simultaneous to Dhafir's arrest, between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., others associated with HTN were arrested in Syracuse, New York; Boise, Idaho; and Amman, Jordan. At the same time, about 150 mainly Muslim families who had donated to HTN were interrogated by government agents.[27] On the same day, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that "supporters of terrorism" had been apprehended - a completely unfounded assertion that was reiterated by New York Governor George Pataki in August 2004, just prior to the start of Dhafir's trial.[28]

At the same time, and throughout the trial, local government officials - the prosecutors and the District Attorney - denied that the case had any connection to terrorism. Instead they portrayed Dhafir as a common thief.[29] District Attorney Glenn Suddaby said, "[T]here's no evidence that any of the Help the Needy money went to al Qaida, the Iraqi government, or to buy arms and bullets that could be used against U.S. soldiers."

The likelyhood of more Dr. Dhafir's remains quite strong. In October the Military Commissions Act (pdf) expanded the definition of an "Enemy Combatant" to include not only American Citizens but also any persons who have "materially supported" terrorists.

‘‘§ 948a. Definitions
‘‘In this chapter:
‘‘(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—(A) The term ‘unlaw-ful
enemy combatant’ means—
‘‘(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who
has purposefully and materially supported hostilities
against the United States
or its co-belligerents who is
not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who
is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);

The act makes a clear distinction between U.S. Citizens and "Aliens". Alien Enemy Combatants are denied Habeas relief, Citizens are not. Alien Enemy Combatants are to be tried by Military Commissions, Lawful Combatants are to be Court Marshalled, but exactly what is supposed to happen to Citizen Enemy Combatants such as Dr Dhafir is not made clear.

I for one am Thankful that Sen Chris Dodd has already introduced legislated to restore Habeas and narrow the definition of "Enemy Combatant" to someone who is an actual Combatant.

Still it's clear we have some miles left to travel before we can all sleep easily in our beds. But Halliburton has nothing to worry about.

Neither Breinholt nor West stated that these "powerful prosecution tools" are being used mostly against Muslim charities and individuals associated with those charities, while violations by large corporations like Halliburton, which did billions of dollars worth of business in defiance of [the exact same statutes used against Dhafir - 50 U.S.C. ss 1701,1702] IEEPA, go largely unpunished. At the most these corporations have gotten a slap on the wrist and a fine, but no individual board member or officer has ever faced prosecution. [60] And although many non-Muslim charities work in the same troubled regions of the world as Muslim charities, not a single non-Muslim charity has been closed.[61] None of this was mentioned at the lecture.

By now it should be obvious that Dr. Dhafir and his co-defendants in HTN were nothing more than scapegoats. Terrorism Trophies and Scalps for John Ashcroft and George Pataki's collection while genuine terrorists and international money laundering by companies such as KBR continues unabatted. I'll let the words of Dr. Laila al-Marayati from a 2004 Pace University Law School symposium be final.

The ever-present threat of a "terrorist designation" by the Treasury Department functions based on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent." The use of secret evidence, hearsay, erroneous translations, guilt by association and press reports in recent court cases further erodes the ability of charities to rely on basic assumptions regarding their constitutional rights, especially when the courts ultimately favor the government when "national security" is allegedly at stake. Overzealous surveillance tactics of the intelligence community such as wiretapping, infiltrating organizations by bribing employees to work as spies (thereby disrupting normal and lawful humanitarian activities), and engaging in other forms of harassment - when added to the above bleak picture - will not only chill, but will freeze completely American Muslim charitable giving overseas. Perhaps this is the goal of the U.S. government. However, no one should be fooled into thinking that America or the American people will be much safer as a result.

This Holiday Season all of us who continue to be able to excersize our Constitutionally Protected Rights with impunity and confidence have so very much to be thankful for.

Never take your Freedom for Granted.

Vyan

No comments: