No Justice For US Muslims: Tareq
Mehanna Found Guilty
31 Jan 2012
By Karin Friedemann
On December 20, 2011, Tareq Mehanna was found guilty
of terrorism support by a Boston jury, despite the
fact that the government relied solely on innuendo and
prejudice against Muslims to make their case. Mehanna
is an Egyptian-American Muslim who was arrested by the
FBI in 2009, at the age of 27. Mehanna, who faces life
in prison, is accused of translating al Qaeda
propaganda into English, as well as seeking terrorist
training in Yemen, though he insists he was just
traveling for religious study. Mehanna's sentencing is
scheduled for April 12. Richard Hugus, in an article,
"The Inquisition Comes to Boston," published on
uruknet.info, writes:
"The recent finishing off of the Bill of Rights in the
National Defense Authorization Act was actually just a
formality. The United States has been able to
persecute and convict US citizens for a long time now
whether they had a trial by jury or not... Jury trials
don't make any difference when it comes to terrorism
cases because the American public is deeply ignorant
and long trained to be intimidated by authority."
Mehanna's trial went on for eight weeks.
"It was a circus of prejudicial evidence,
government-coerced informers, Patriot Act snooping by
the FBI, phony government experts on terrorism, and
all-around ignorance about the Muslim religion,"
writes Hugus.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a front group led
by Charles Jacobs, demonstrated outside the
courthouse. This same group has been spearheading the
campaign against the show, "All American Muslim."
"The only thing the United States was able to prove in
its case against Tarek Mehanna was that he was opposed
to the war in Iraq," writes Hugus.
"There was nothing he said in the hundreds of instant
messages and online chats, stolen from his computer
and introduced absurdly as evidence, which would not
have been said by any opponent of that genocidal
attack."
This case is all the more unfortunate because it could
have been prevented. The Roxbury Mosque dropped its
charges against Charles Jacobs and the David Project,
even after they had clear evidence that they were
guilty of the Federal crime of conspiracy against
rights, thus allowing the Zionists to continue their
plots against other Muslims. I understand that legal
proceedings are expensive and stressful, but Charles
Jacobs, a Polish immigrant, could have ended up behind
bars. Instead, yet another Muslim, innocent of any
criminal wrongdoing, faces life in prison just because
the Muslim community wanted to finish building their
beautiful mosque.
There is so much evidence that the legal attacks
against Muslims are purely racist in content. This
author was even targeted by Charles Jacobs, Robert
Spencer, and their group of anti-Muslim supporters,
accused of support for terrorism, due to her
pro-Palestine commentaries under the pseudo-name
"Maria Hussain." Court documents from the Roxbury
Mosque defense showed that Zionist prosecutors planned
to prosecute me for my opinions. However, according to
emails revealed as part of the discovery process, they
found out my real name and decided not to prosecute
me, because although I profess Islam, they were not
sure if my ethnic background might be Jewish.
Glenn Greenwald comments that "this meaningless,
definition-free word — Terrorism — drives so many of
our political debates and policies... It's a word that
simultaneously means nothing and justifies
everything."
Mehanna's alleged support for terrorism was based on
"Sawt-al-Jihad" magazine – a document that government
witness Evan Kohlmann claimed was found on his
computer, even though there was no evidence that the
document had ever been opened at all.
Evan Kohmann has a history of being unqualified. He
also served for the outrageous prosecution of the
honorable Imam Yassin Aref of Albany, NY. During
Aref's trial, the government's expert, Evan Kohlmann,
gave totally wrong misinformation about IMK to the
jury in order to depict Aref as a terrorist because he
was once employed by the Islamic Movement for
Kurdistan (IMK), which the US government does not even
consider to be a terrorist organization. The "expert
witness" Evan Kohlmann testified to a ridiculous
connection between the IMK, the militant Kurdish Ansar
al-Islam organization, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein,
in order to incriminate the innocent man, who came to
the US as a refugee.
Mehanna was fortunate enough to have a real expert on
the defense, but it didn't seem to matter much.
Dr. Marc Sageman, a terrorism consultant and former
CIA case agent, a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy and
a CIA case officer in Afghanistan coordinating
America's covert operation against the Soviet
occupation, testified that the videos on Mehanna's
computer were never used as a recruiting tool for al-Qaida.
This testimony was all the more remarkable, because
Sageman has studied al-Qaida from its birth in 1988;
he knew and lived with all the major commanders of the
mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet army. He
consults for the Defense Department, the Department of
Homeland Security and the CIA. He has classified
security clearance, which the under-qualified
government witnesses don't have.
In response, Evan Kohlmann, merely testified that the
kind of videos and documents that Mehanna translated
and promoted online were allowing al-Qaida to recruit
and incite young men to violence.
"He tells stories," Sageman tried to explain.
Even after questioning, Mehanna continued to praise
his trip to Yemen. "I didn't regret it for a second,"
he said, "how could you? Those are the best two weeks
of my life."
Some of Mehanna's old friends testified against him
under government pressure, citing his "extremist"
views, including Daniel Maldonado, a New Hampshire
native serving a 10-year prison sentence after
pleading guilty to training alongside al Qaeda members
in Somalia.
"The government decides if I can hug my children,"
Maldonado admitted during his appearance at the trial.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance
writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com
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