One
Day We’ll All Be Terrorists: Syed Fahad Hashmi And The
Dark Heart Of America
29 December 2009By Chris Hedges
Syed Fahad
Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America.
He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a
joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we
torture, not only in black sites such as those at
Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay,
but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional
Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S.
citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of
providing and conspiring to provide material support
and two counts of making and conspiring to make a
contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his
case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that
the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic
extremists, but the codification of draconian
procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties
and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to
tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any
guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected
terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming
turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to
silence all who are branded as disruptive or
subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are
not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in
the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear,
sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who
are already being placed by the state in special
detention facilities with Muslims charged with
terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate.
Courageous groups have organized protests, including
vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They
can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or
www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this
Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large
vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower
Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional
rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist
cases launched by the Bush administration, is
appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial
evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up
parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it
charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter
of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of
facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would
probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in
prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more
than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known
as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to
prevent or severely restrict communication with other
prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people
outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news
and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to
attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour
electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must
shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write
one letter a week to a single member of his family,
but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He
has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour
of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for
violence” is cited as the reason for these measures
although he has never been charged or convicted with
committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother,
Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He
spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing
with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and
torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and
socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the
manipulation of the law to suppress activists and
scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an
example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what
will happen to them if they speak about the plight of
Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve
my brother’s humanity and remove the special
administrative measures. These measures are designed
solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize
the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the
malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards
the millions of Muslims who are considered as
non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a
form of psychological torture, far more effective in
breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as
science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its
successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke
souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art
of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered
suspects into secretive courts when they no longer
have the mental and psychological capability to defend
themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,”
said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the
case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi
has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution
only recently turned over a significant portion of
evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate
with the news media, either directly or through his
attorneys. The conditions of his detention have
impacted his mental state and ability to participate
in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken
activist within the Muslim community, abridges his
First Amendment rights and threatens the First
Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While
Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and
associations are constitutionally protected, the
government has been given wide latitude by the court
to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by
extension, intent. The material support charges
against him depend on criminalization of association.
This could have a chilling effect on the First
Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist
and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and
associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even
those who break no laws, can be stripped of their
rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the
legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can
detain and prosecute people not for what they have
done, or even for what they are planning to do, but
for holding religious or political beliefs that the
state deems seditious. The first of those targeted
have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the
last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis,
an associate professor of political science at
Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but
Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American
citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and
all the evidence collected against you cannot be
reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary
confinement before you are convicted of anything.
There has been attention paid to extraordinary
rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false
idea that if people are tried in the United States
things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to
happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at
home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the
Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on
terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6,
2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story
on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used
graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.”
He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London
and then became the first U.S. citizen to be
extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest,
Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed
his master’s degree in international relations at
London Metropolitan University. His case has no more
substance than the one against the seven men arrested
on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a
case where, even though there were five convictions
after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director
acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational
rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older
case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now
under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded
by the Justice Department although he should legally
have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently
handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned
the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea
agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something
more important here, and that’s the integrity of the
Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony
of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in
early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment
for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges,
Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks,
which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in
south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi
allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call
conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very
outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said
Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to
American Muslims about the cost of being politically
active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and
ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get
socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is
planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political
talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial.
Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because
they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us?
People who care about First Amendment rights should be
terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights
issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty
to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also
faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to
serve as a government witness and has already
testified for the government in terror trials in
Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced
sentence for his services, and many speculate he will
be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is
very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist
activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove
intent. This intent will revolve around alleged
conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s
presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York
political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn
College, has made provocative statements, including
calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,”
but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as
a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is
not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state
terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice
Department, planning for future detentions, set up in
2006 a segregated facility, the Communication
Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute,
Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute
are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at
Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly
Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights
and environmental activists, among them Daniel
McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging
operations in Oregon. His sentence was given
“terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act.
Amnesty International has called the Marion prison
facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although
communication customarily is off-limits to prison
officials—are monitored in these two Communication
Management Units. Communication among prisoners is
required to be only in English. The highest-level
terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary
Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in
Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human
interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation,
replicating the conditions for most of those held at
Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from
Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they
will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like
conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying
empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally
impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American
activists into these facilities is another ominous
development. It presages the continued dismantling of
the rule of law, the widening of a system where
prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory
deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo
courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and
innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence
against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the
engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.
Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig
every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter
covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the
Middle East. He has written nine books, including
“Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That
Gives Us Meaning” (2003).
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