Many Middle Eastern (mostly Arabs) immigrants in Detroit are protesting the interview requests from DOJ. This dissent has outraged me. DOJ needs as much information as possible to piece out the layout of al Qaeda operation and why some of these Arabs are protesting is beyond me. These people may have information that are pertinent for the safety of American public, and they are not willing to share it? Such outrageous uncooperative behaviour and attitude are the cause and roots for disliking them and should not be tolerated. Reading the story made me puke.
Look at these statements:
<<``Looking at some of the stuff that's going on right now, you'd think that you're living in a military state,'' Siblani said. ``If they don't have any suspicions of them, why would they interview them?'' he asked, adding the interviews with FBI and other law enforcement officials appeared anything but voluntary.>>
<<``I think it's outrageous,'' said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. Apart from creating a sense of backlash and fear, he maintains it has been perceived across the Middle East as a virtual U.S. declaration of war against all Arabs and Muslims. >>
These spokesmen are donkey morons, and are jeapardizing the good Muslims and Arabs. They think this is profiling? Who are they kidding or joking with? If they strongly feel that way, where is the remorse for the incubation and support of OBL and the al Qaeda in their homelands? Is it more important that they protect their own Arab kinds than to assist the US in rooting out the al Qaeda and bring them to justice? Where is their sense of values, responsibility, and loyalty for humanitty and for this America? Have they forgotten that they cannot stop ethnic cleansing among their own Muslims (brothers?).
As far as I am concerned, many of these so called Arabs and Arab Americans are existing in the US to take advantage of Americans' generosity and kindheartedness, and American system. WE, Americans, need to become worldly and more concious, so we could direct our generosity and kindhearts righteously, and to be able to determine future direction of United States.
Here is the article:
U.S. Moves to Question Mideast Men About Attacks
Updated 5:36 PM ET November 27, 2001
dailynews.att.net
By Tom Brown
DETROIT (Reuters) - A federal law enforcement group in Michigan has sent letters to hundreds of Middle Eastern men urging them to submit to questioning about the Sept. 11 attacks. But critics say the request amounts to intimidation and most will be too terrified to refuse.
``Do you think that anyone who's going to get a letter like this would say, 'Well, I don't think that I'm going to talk?' They're intimidating people,'' said Osama Siblani, a native of Lebanon who is editor in chief and publisher of the Arab American News, a weekly newspaper based in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn.
In the Detroit metropolitan area, home to the largest concentration of Arabs in the United States, an anti-terrorism task force sent the letters to about 560 people this week, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins said.
In the letter Collins, who heads the Detroit-area task force, tells recipients it is crucial to the thoroughness of the Sept. 11 investigation that they volunteer for an ''interview'' by next Tuesday.
As with about 4,440 other Middle East immigrants wanted for questioning by the U.S. Justice Department, the people the letters are addressed to are all men, aged 18 to 33, who entered the United States on temporary visas after Jan. 1, 2000, from certain countries.
The list of the countries has not been made public. But Justice Department officials have said they were places that known al Qaeda operatives were last in before entering the United States.
The United States has blamed the al Qaeda network, headed by Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, for the Sept. 11 suicide plane attacks that killed nearly 4,000 people.
``Your name was brought to our attention because, among other things, you came to Michigan on a visa from a country where there are groups that support, advocate or finance international terrorism,'' said the letters signed by Collins, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
``We have no reason to believe that you are, in any way, associated with terrorist activities,'' the letters added. ''Nevertheless, you may know something that could be helpful in our efforts. In fact, it is quite possible that you have information that may seem irrelevant to you but which may help us piece together this puzzle.''
MASS DRAGNET?
Coming against the backdrop of the executive order signed by President Bush earlier this month -- declaring that foreigners arrested on terrorism charges can be tried at any place or time by military courts -- the interview process has sparked fears that young Arab and Muslim men are being set up for a mass dragnet.
``Looking at some of the stuff that's going on right now, you'd think that you're living in a military state,'' Siblani said. ``If they don't have any suspicions of them, why would they interview them?'' he asked, adding the interviews with FBI and other law enforcement officials appeared anything but voluntary.
``The whole process sparks many concerns,'' added Imad Hamad, a Dearborn-based regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
``It's a form of racial profiling,'' said Hamad, a longtime U.S. resident who was exonerated in a secret evidence trial in 1996 of alleged links to the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
``I think it's outrageous,'' said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. Apart from creating a sense of backlash and fear, he maintains it has been perceived across the Middle East as a virtual U.S. declaration of war against all Arabs and Muslims.
``The government that protected us from hate crimes two months ago is now literally becoming a danger to civil liberties,'' Zogby said.
He said the questioning of thousands of Arab immigrants, targeted more than two months after the attacks on New York and Washington because they fit some generic profile, was likely to undermine confidence in an investigation that has produced no apparent breakthroughs so far.
'AMATEUR HOUR'
``At best, it makes the whole thing look like amateur hour,'' said Zogby. ``I don't know what they've been doing for the last 10 weeks.''
Zogby said that only the Detroit area had taken the step of sending the letters and that it was unclear how other anti-terrorism task forces around the country would proceed.
A total of 870 Arabs and Muslims are wanted for questioning across Michigan, described in a recent report by the Michigan State Police as a lucrative recruiting and financial support center for radical Middle East groups.
Lloyd Meyer, an assistant U.S. attorney who heads the anti-terrorism task force in the western part of the state, said his officers would not use letters to ``invite'' foreign nationals there in for questioning.
``We believe that a friendly face-to-face encounter at the door of a visitor in familiar surroundings will create less anxiety and is more personal than a letter from the federal government,'' Meyer told the Detroit Free Press. |
