Posted on 11/16/2001 5:26:42 PM PST by Roy Tucker
DALLAS (AP) - Arabs and Muslims expressed outrage Friday at the U.S. Justice Department's plan to interview 5,000 young male foreigners, who are not suspected of any crimes, as part of the terrorism investigation. Civil rights activists say the action constitutes racial profiling.
"Unless the government has credible evidence that all these 5,000 men were involved in terrorism, which is very unlikely, then what Mr. Ashcroft is advocating is racial profiling at its most fundamental level," said Ramzi Dakour, vice president of the Arab American Students Association at the University of Texas at Austin.
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Tuesday that the Justice Department has distributed a list of 5,000 men it wanted to interview about the Sept. 11 attacks. The list comprises men ages 18 to 33 who entered the United States since Jan. 1, 2000, from certain countries.
The countries represented were linked to the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks or were waystations for the terrorist organization, al-Qaida. The department acknowledges the men are likely to be Arab and Muslim, but says the list wasn't based on ethnic origin.
"This is yet another example of the heavy-handedness that's being used without any rhyme or reason," said Sohail Mohammed, an immigration lawyer in New Jersey. He represents several men who were questioned shortly after the attacks and are now jailed on immigration charges.
Mohammed said he would advise people to cooperate with questioners "if there's a good, well-articulated reason other than just a general fishing around."
Earlier interviews seemed to be just that, he said, "Stupid questions like, 'What do you think of American civilization?' and 'Why do you pray five times a day?' If that's what they're going to ask this time, people will say, 'No fishing in this house.' "
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is distributing hundreds of pamphlets, some in Arabic, explaining civil rights under federal and state law.
The Justice Department interview initiative is "formalized, black-and-white stated policy directing law officers to racially profile," said William Harrell, executive director of the state ACLU.
Hana Saleh, a member of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Texas at Dallas, said students are increasingly concerned about racial profiling.
"You can't just say that because a person is from this part of the world, they will act this way," she said. "People who know us personally would never approve of this. As human beings, we all want freedom."
Najat Elsayed, president of the University of Houston's Council of American-Islamic Relations, said people with no connection to the attacks may feel nervous about talking to investigators for fear a miscommunication could land them in jail.
"We want to help as much as possible, but we haven't done anything wrong and we are legal, productive citizens," she said. "We don't see why we should be subjected just because someone from our race did something."
Yeah, September the 11th. Where were you?
Yes, your patriotism. I remember your stupid statement from another threat where you expressed your anti-americanism and expressed your wish for Bush amd this nation to be defeated.
Your wish fulfilled?
This is news?
Actually, you are not even required to be loyal to that great document. But if that's what you like, have at it.
Personally, I want my government to protect my kids from scumbag terrorists. The terrorists and their supporters (many Moslems here in the US cheered the acts of terror) are the ones who created the "profile". I say round them up, sit them in hard wooden chairs under bright, hot lamps, deprive them of sleep, and make them squeal like stuck pigs.
Unless I missed something, police are allowed to search for information, concerning a crime. If the crime involved a geographic location, the search would be thusly focused. Same would go for an ethnic group.
The ACLU should be very careful, if they are advising people to not cooperate with a duly authroized criminal investigation. That is bad legal advice.
Many folks are missing historical precedents for extraordinary methods, in wartime. I don't believe that immigramts, here at our temporary pleasure, should be permitted to evade the investigation. The profiling issue is bunk. LE uses it justifiably, every day.
It would most surely be valid, if it was reasonably believed that group could assist in an investigation. That would hold up in court, too.
Try a more realistic example. Say a church congregation was harboring a child molester, by their silence. It would be valid to interview every member of the congregation.
To say nothing about the fact the Muslim murderers violated civilized behavior, which they should be morally outraged by, regardless of their own religion, or nationality. The fact they are more concerned about profiling, tells me they are NOT outraged; that they prfer to hide out in silence; and I conclude they SUPPORT the attack, to a degree.
I believe that is so, because almost to a man, they veer off into Palestine injustice at every chance. I hope that of the 5,000 we find a few terrorists, and also find about 2,000 visa violators, and deport them.
Only by acting with firm purpose, will we start on a sane, self-serving and survival path. To do otherwise is self-destructive. The ACLU would have us self-destruct.
This is a global reaction to an atrocity, not some local broken treaty skirmish.
Apparently it was decided those 2 Arabs who were very suspicious were not involved in that, the WHITE MAN who apparently acted alone has been executed. We know the Jihad is a very large and very coordinated effort, someone is paying a lot of money for those apartments and flight school tuition and all the rest.
It's proof of the author's bias that s/he refuses to identify these 'activists'. We know, of course, that it's they're as far away as the hand puppet on the author's non-writing hand.
Yes a belief in the Koran alone is enough to raise some serious suspicions about their purpose in being in the United States. If they believe in the Koran, they do not believe in the separation of Church and State, they do not believe in living with infidels for long which means they can live with them to convert them or take them over but never to tolerate them. They believe in eventual world-wide Islamic rule.
Di they round up all white men. That's a bit of news I missed.
I agree with you. In fact, the FBI paid me a visit in 1970 because I was an anti-war protestor and was on a fund-raiser in Eugene, Oregon, when someone blew up the ROTC building at the college. Since we were four strangers from Seattle associated with a protest group, all of us and our families got a visit.
I'm white and my family has been here since 1710 and fought in the American Revolution, so I think it is really ridiculous for noncitizens to whine. We just accepted it as part of American life; if you belong to a suspicious group, you might be investigated. This was true 30 plus years ago, obviously.
I don't think Attorney General Ashcroft has used RICO against prolife protesters, yet. Janet Reno did, however, and too many of the lower level bureaucrats and local law enforcment agents may still be threatening and arresting with this in mind. I heard they're still arresting doctors under threat of these laws.
Have you heard of a case that I missed?
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