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Today's
Stories
August 9, 2004
Gary Leupp
Why
Iraqi Christians are Moving to Syria
August 7 /
8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
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August 6, 2004
Joshua Frank
David
Cobb's Soft Charade: the Greens and the Politics of Mendacity
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Stan Goff
Mike Whitney
The
Arbitrary Imprisonment of Jose Padilla
William S. Lind
Corruption in the Marine Corps
David Price
In
the Shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 5, 2004
Mike Ferner
The Kerry Show: When Peace is Off
Message
Bruce Anderson
Two
Rejections
Robert Fisk
The Tale of Saddam's Cameraman
Todd Chretien
Florida
Comes to California: the Democrats' Plot Against Nader
Peter Linebaugh
Doing Time for Political Crime:
Paul and Silas, Bound in Jail
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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August
9, 2004
Welcome
to Bush's America
The
Tyrannous Whims of Government
By
ELAINE CASSEL
In the past almost four years, I have
come to fear almost everything the Bush administration does.
In one way or the other, it has harmed, perhaps irreparably,
virtually every aspect of American life. From raising the acceptable
arsenic levels in water (a little arsenic is good for us all)
to logging and snowmobiling in America's formerly treasured parks,
to ripping apart the bill of rights and trampling it underfoot,
to using the threat of "terrorist" attacks for political
gain, to going to war on a lie and not just spending our money
outrageously but being responsible for-and proud of-the deaths
of hundreds of American soldiers, the maiming of thousands more
(a deep and dirty secret) and the slaying of thousands (but who's
counting?) Iraqi civilians. All of this and much, much more literally
keeps me awake at night, sick with fear and worry.
But nothing disturbs me more
than the case of Ahmed Abu Ali.
Abu Ali is an American citizen,
born in Texas in 1981. He is a resident of Falls Church, Virginia,
where he lives with his parents. He was valedictorian of his
1999 graduating class in a northern Virginia high school. He
attends a Saudi university where he is studying for a degree.
Last June, Ahmed was taking
an exam at the International University of Medina. In stormed
Saudi police who took him away to a Saudi prison where he has
been since that day. It has taken a year for the story to make
any sense, and during this time his family and lawyer have kept
me informed about the case. However, they asked me not to write
about it, for fear that it may jeopardize his potential for release.
Now that it appears their son
may never come home, at least not if the Bush administration
can help it, they have filed a law suit in the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia, asking that their son be
given the same rights as the Supreme Court recently gave Guantanamo
prisoners and American citizen Yaser Hamdi-the right to, at a
minimum, challenge his detention. They have also given me permission,
through their attorney, to write about their son's case.
Here is the abbreviated version
of the undisputed facts, according to court records and discussions
with the family and attorney: Ahmed was acquainted with some
of the men charged in the notorious case of the Alexandria 11,
men who pled guilty or were convicted (all but one of them, and
that is important, as you will see) of conspiring to fight for
the Muslim cause in the constant battle between India and Pakistan
over the territory of Kashmir. Kashmir is divided between Muslim
and Christian populations and the Indian Christians and the Pakistani
Muslim governments share control over the territory. The interest
in fighting for Kashmir is one that is promoted by many Muslims.
The men were friends, and in the course of their friendship play
paintball and shoot at targets with guns, all perfectly legal
in Northern Virginia. In fact, gun use is so legal in Virginia
that the legislature recently passed a law affirmatively making
it acceptable (indeed promoting) the carrying of weapons into
bars and restaurants.
Initially charged under the
seldom-used Neutrality Act, which forbids an American from taking
sides with an "enemy" of the United States, those who
pled to conspiring to aid Muslims were given sentences of four
to ten years in exchange for testifying against the others; the
men who did not pled guilty were indicted with aiding and abetting
terrorism, upping the ante to life prison terms. Of the four
men who did not plead guilty to the new charges, three were convicted
by Judge Leonie Brinkema and sentenced to 85 to 115 years in
prison. These were men who were not a threat to the U.S., who
were not anti-American, who never took up arms against any one,
but who, it is true, were sympathetic to the Muslim cause. They
would have fought for the  Muslim cause in Kashmir, if
the occasion presented itself (India and Pakistan declared a
cease fire early in 2004).
One of the men who pled not
guilty had been in Saudi Arabia at the same time that Abu Ali
was "detained." He was extradited to the United States,
and Judge Brinkema found him not guilty. Though he is free at
the moment, he expects to be harassed by prosecutors. Surely,
he will be arrested and charged with something-anything to avenge
his acquittal by Judge Brinkema.
Abu Ali has been visited in
Saudi Arabia by the FBI and perhaps by Alexandria prosecutors.
From what little we know (he has been denied an attorney, and
the State Department and the Saudi government have conspired
to insure that he receives no mail or visits), he was urged to
confess to being part of the Alexandria 11, he refused, likely
being tortured and mentally and physically abused. He was urged
to renounce his U.S. citizenship, in exchange for the promise
of being taken to Sweden. (He was smart not to do that; last
week it was reported in the Washington Post that the U.S. government
aided Swedish officials in "rendering" Saudi citizens
back to Saudi Arabia where they were "tried" for "terrorism"
crimes and are serving lengthy prison terms. Both maintain their
innocence. )
If prosecutors had any case
at all against Abu Ali, they would surely have had him extradited
at the same time as Sabri Benkhala, who was acquitted by Judge
Brinkema. Abu Ali has been threatened with being named an enemy
combatant, but that would also mean that he would be brought
to the U.S., held like Americans Padilla and Hamdi and, now,
entitled to an attorney and the right to file a habeas corpus
petition challenging his relief.
But that is not going to happen.
The day Abu Ali's parents filed a petition for habeas corpus
and other relief, the U.S. State Department informed them that
the Saudis were going to charge Abu Ali with unspecified crimes
of "terror." Days before the case was filed, the Saudis
told the family that they were ready to release Abu Ali, but
had to have approval from the U.S. to do so. The Saudis said
they had no interest in him. The State Department, at that time,
it was up to the Saudis. Clearly, no one is telling the truth.
The State Department now says it cannot comment on anything,
because Abu Ali never signed "privacy" forms, forms
that the Saudis refused to give him (no doubt told to refuse
to deliver them by the same State Department that claims they
can't obtain them from their detainee).
Here is why I am scared to
death of this administration: Abu Ali will surely never come
home. There is no way the U.S. government is going to let a man
live to tell the tale of his capture by Saudis at the request
of the U.S., his incarceration without a charge, without a lawyer,
without access to his family, and, no doubt, his being subject
to torture during long periods of interrogation. Maybe Kromberg
wanted him at some time, found there was nothing to get him on,
then told the Saudis to torture him into confession of anything
that would make him extraditable. For the present time, it still
takes an actual criminal charge to indict someone.
But it takes nothing but the
whims of the government, to "render" an American citizen
to another country and demand that that country imprison the
American until it says to release him or her. But then the U.S.
cannot tolerate the word getting out about the whole story, so
it will have to silence Abu Ali by keeping him locked up forever
(or worse) in a Saudi jail.
Let's be clear about this-the
Saudis insist that they are holding him only because the U.S.
demands it.
Remember Nicholas Berg, who
was beheaded shortly after his release by the U.S. government
in Iraq? Remember how the U.S. insisted that it never had him
in custody but that that "Iraqi police" held him? Forget
for a time that the Iraqi police did nothing without the permission
of and payment by the U.S. government-the police said that they
had seized Berg at the demand of the U.S. and they released Berg
to its custody. Finally, after Berg died, the State Department
admitted the U.S. had detained him. When Berg refused the request
of the U.S. government that it take him out of Iraq, when Berg
insisted that he was going to leave Iraq on his own, he was murdered.
You connect the dots. Or not.
But don't turn away from the frightening truth of what your government
is up to-successfully, without accountability, violating every
right and privilege Americans have under U.S. and international
law.
Even if the federal court orders
that Abu Ali be brought to the U.S. to have a hearing, don't
expect it to happen. Accidents happen in prison, don't they?
Especially in foreign prisons. The Pentagon is even now making
it near impossible for attorneys for the Guantanamo prisoners
to meet their clients and file the petitions the Supreme Court
gave them the right to file.
Face it. We are living in a
time of anarchy. Our government is imprisoning its citizens without
cause and without process. Welcome to George Bush's America.
Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the
District of Columbia, teaches law and psychology, and follows
the Bush regime's dismantling of the Constitution at Civil
Liberties Watch. Her book, The
War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled
the Bill of Rights, will be published by Lawrence Hill this
summer. She can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features for July 31 / August 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
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