Detention transformed (Muslim) doctor into man of peace

SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down.

Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds of men, mostly Muslims, from all walks of life, he was suddenly a suspect in a crime beyond horror.

His home was raided, his life paraded in public view. His wife and three young children were traumatized no one could say when, or if, he might return. Alone and fearful, the young Saudi physician prayed. There, Dr. Al-Hazmi says, he was transformed into an agent for peace a goal that remains as he finishes his U.S. studies and prepares to go home.

"It became clear I would have to direct my life towards bringing Muslims and people of all faiths together to learn from each other and stop letting faith be used to promote bad things," Dr. Al-Hazmi said. "At one point, there in jail, I truly thought about leaving medicine in order to find a way for peace. This has truly been a life-altering experience for me."

A reserved man whose black beard fails to hide a frequent smile, Dr. Al-Hazmi, 35, has just finished a five-year residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. A freshly minted board-certified radiologist, Dr. Al-Hazmi returns next month to his native Saudi Arabia.

Mostly, he looks forward to a reunion with his wife and three children, ages 8, 6 and 2. He hasn't seen them for months, after they returned to Saudi Arabia. Dr. Al-Hazmi took his family home for a visit in November during the holy month of Ramadan, then returned alone to complete his medical studies.

"My wife and children were frightened by all that happened and no longer felt safe in the United States," he said. "We all knew the world had changed, and we must change with it."

Those fears were validated by what happened next. In December, Dr. Al-Hazmi was refused re-entry into the United States. His visa had been canceled because of his detention. The physician was forced to return to Saudi Arabia to sort out the mess.

He was allowed to return to the United States Jan. 7 after the direct involvement of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Officials at the medical school helped reschedule an exam Dr. Al-Hazmi had missed.

"That, too, was a difficult time. I nearly gave up, thinking I would just stay in Saudi and work. But my family convinced me to go back and finish my residency," he said. "I miss my family terribly. I speak to my children every night by phone. My son, the youngest, tells me I must come home right now. It's hard for him to understand why I can't."

Next month, Dr. Al-Hazmi will resume his career as a physician with Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, working in Dhahran. He remains committed, however, to his mission for peace, he said. He plans to write a book about his experiences.

"In jail, I thought I must gather together a group of Muslims and Americans of all faiths that could explain the points of view of both sides. We have to expose those on all sides who want to derail the way of peace," he said.

"I am tired of hearing people speak of peace out of one side of their mouth and urge war out of the other," he said. "As Christians and Jews and Muslims, we are not truly people of faith unless we respect the prophets of all faiths."

During his 12-day detention, Dr. Al-Hazmi was only one of nearly 1,200 mostly Middle Eastern men held for questioning after the terrorist attacks. Many were also questioned about their immigration status.

Only later did Dr. Al-Hazmi learn what lay behind his incarceration: Two of the plane hijackers share the doctor's relatively common Saudi last name. He also had made online airline reservations for Sept. 22, a date initially believed another round of terrorist attacks might occur. The plane tickets were for a planned trip to Disneyland with his children.

Dr. Al-Hazmi's attorneys cleared up all suspicions. The material witness warrant holding him was dropped, and the government declared him no longer a subject of investigation. The FBI agents who accompanied him to San Antonio shook his hand and bid him good luck as they dropped him off at his house Sept. 25.

Eight months after the detention, there is no hint of bitterness in Dr. Al-Hazmi's voice, even when he speaks of the darkest moments.

"I saw others in the jail who suffered far more than I did. One man cried all the time. He had no money for lawyers and could not make contact with his family. He was afraid he'd disappear in that jail," Dr. Al-Hazmi said. "The other just sat all day deep in depression. His expression never changed. We all suffered only because we were Muslims. That was a terribly painful thing to realize."

Dr. Al-Hazmi's eyes flashed with sorrow in remembrance. "At first, I was angry. But there is no room in the heart for anger," he said. "Anger serves no purpose. I understand fully that it was a crazy time. But most of those people are innocent of any wrongdoing. I know what it feels like to be innocent and no one believes you."

When Dr. Al-Hazmi brought his family the United States in 1996, he settled into a routine of medical studies, hospital work and spending time with his family. He was, by his own admission, never a very social person. Neighbors in the small compound of townhouses near the medical center recalled him as a small, friendly man who said little but waved a greeting as he walked with his family to a nearby park.

Dr. Al-Hazmi, a graduate of medical school in Saudi Arabia, first came to the United States in 1995 to take a medical review course at Tulane University in New Orleans. On June 5, 1997, he began a five-year radiology residency at UT.

He expected America to be a big country filled with open, friendly people. He finds that is still true.

"The people here have been very good to us. Nothing that happened to me after 9-11 changes that," he said. "It was a very scary time for everyone. Many of my Muslim friends were frightened about how people would react to them. My wife and kids were scared each time I left the house. My wife would page me five times in an hour.

"But after I was released, I received hundreds of letters and cards from Americans all over the country from important people to regular people wishing me well," he said. "It is amazing how many nice people there are in this country."

Blanca Posada, a registered nurse at University Hospital, has worked with many doctors during her 11-year career. Dr. Al-Hazmi is one she's going to miss.

"He's just a nice guy. He gets along with people very well. He's always polite and kind. I've never seen him temperamental or rude. He was always the peacemaker," she said. "He's who you want as a co-worker. He's the guy you want to keep."

"He prayed all the time. Some people found that odd, but it's just his faith," she said. "He's very devout and follows his religion closely."

During downtime, Ms. Posada, a born-again Christian, and the Muslim doctor would discuss their different religious views. "It was never judgmental," she said.

Dr. Al-Hazmi's thoughts still lie with the people being held incommunicado by the government. "They have no news, no idea of what allegations may confront him. Most of them are held for an expired visa. Is it fair to keep them in jail indefinitely for that?

Of the 1,200 Muslim men arrested in the weeks following Sept. 11, about 327 remain in custody, pending clearance of any links to terrorism, according to the Justice Department. Government officials have declined to identify the detainees or the reasons they remain in prison.

So far, only Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, has been formally charged in connection with the attacks.

In April, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the continuing detention of hundreds of men as biased and unconstitutional. The lawsuit claims the detainees have been held under unnecessarily harsh conditions in prisons in New Jersey and Brooklyn for months without being told why and have been unable to contact their families.

"We want the world to know that we are treating students, tourists, people here for short period of time, as criminals," said Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer at the center. "We're putting them into arbitrary detention, just like the worst totalitarian regimes we cry out all the time about in this country."

Dr. Al-Hazmi said his detention strengthened his devotion to his faith. He found refuge in his mosque in San Antonio. When not studying medical books, he reads the Quran for guidance.

"The last eight months has taught me to be closer to God. He was the only one with me as I sat in jail. It was a disaster for my wife and children when the FBI took me away. God gave us the strength to deal with it," he said.

"But Islam has also taught me that every Christian and Jew is also a child of God. You cannot love God and not love people. I hope to get that message out, that we must teach what we believe in common and minimize our differences," he said.

"I realize some may think me naïve. I know it will not be easy. We will be challenging powerful forces. But the world has changed. We must try to make that change for the good."

From England's The Guardian...

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FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated

Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11

Greg Palast and David Pallister
Wednesday November 7, 2001
The Guardian

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.

FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.

The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected terrorist organisation".

WAMY members deny they have been involved with terrorist activities, and WAMY has not been placed on the latest list of terrorist organisations whose assets are being frozen.

Abdullah, who lived with his brother Omar at the time in Falls Church, a town just outside Washington, was the US director of WAMY, whose offices were in a basement nearby.

But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis".

They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan.

"There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."

Only after the September 11 attacks was the stance of political and commercial closeness reversed towards the other members of the large Bin Laden clan, who have classed Osama bin Laden as their "black sheep".

Yesterday, the head of the Saudi-based WAMY's London office, Nouredine Miladi, said the charity was totally against Bin Laden's violent methods. "We seek social change through education and cooperation, not force."

He said Abdullah bin Laden had ceased to run WAMY's US operation a year ago.

Neither Abdullah nor Omar bin Laden could be contacted in Saudi Arabia for comment.

WAMY was founded in 1972 in a Saudi effort to prevent the "corrupting" ideas of the west ern world influencing young Muslims. With official backing it grew to embrace 450 youth and student organisations with 34 offices worldwide.

Its aim was to encourage "concerned Muslims to take up the challenge by arming the youth with sound understanding of Islam, guarding them against destructive ideologies, and instilling in them level-headed wisdom".

In Britain it has 20 associated organisations, many highly respectable.

But as long as 10 years ago it was named as a discreet channel for public and private Saudi donations to hardline Islamic organisations. One of the recipients of its largesse has been the militant Students Islamic Movement of India, which has lent support to Pakistani-backed terrorists in Kashmir and seeks to set up an Islamic state in India.

Since September 11 WAMY has been investigated in the US along with a number of other Muslim charities. There have been several grand jury investigations but no findings have been made against any of them.

Current FBI interest in WAMY is shown in their agents' interrogation of a radiologist from San Antonio, Texas, Dr Al Badr al-Hazmi, who was arrested on September 12 and released without charge two weeks later. He had the same surname as two of the plane hijackers.

He was also questioned about his contacts with Abdullah bin Laden at the US WAMY office.

Mr Al-Hazmi said that he had made phone calls to Abdullah bin Laden in 1999 trying to obtain books and videotapes about Islamic teachings for the Islamic Centre of San Antonio.

From Newsweek...

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Justice Kept In the Dark
Writer:	Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff
Source:	*Newsweek -MSNBC*
Date:	Wednesday, 5 December 2001 (DEC 10 Issue)

Mohammed Irshaid has lived in the United States for 22 years. Now a civil engineer in New York, the Jordanian-born Irshaid, 41, went to college in Ohio at the University of Toledo; his three children are American citizens, and he was close, he thought, to obtaining his long-cherished green card. As he was sitting in his office on the morning of Nov. 6, he was arrested by federal agents who told him his visa had expired and implied that they had information linking him to a terrorist plot. Irshaid was ashamed to be led away in handcuffs in front of his co-workers. “It was absolutely the most humiliating thing to happen to me in my life,” he says.

MORE HUMILIATION was to follow. He was thrown into a cell in Passaic, N.J., with nearly three dozen other men. The men, all Muslims, asked to hold on to their food trays so they could observe the Ramadan fast and eat after sundown. The guard wasn’t having any of it. “I don’t care about f—king Ramadan,” the turnkey said. The U.S. government never filed any charges against Irshaid. After three weeks, he was finally released. Irshaid says he was so happy he would have jumped for joy, had he not still been shackled and chained in leg irons. “This doesn’t change my love of America,” he told NEWSWEEK. “But with all due respect to Mr. Ashcroft, if somebody wants to accuse you of something, they should tell you what it is.”

Such stories are becoming uncomfortably commonplace. As innocent Muslim men swept up in the post-September 11 dragnet begin to emerge after being held in custody, often in secret, for weeks and months, they are telling embarrassing and sometimes horrifying tales of official indifference and, occasionally, abuse. Civil libertarians and a growing chorus of oped-page Cassandras are warning of a new McCarthyism and accusing Attorney General John Ashcroft of playing a modern-day Torquemada.

Ashcroft is not exactly shying from the role of Grand Inquisitor: “People have to make a choice,” the attorney general told NEWSWEEK, “whether they’re going to help us prevent additional terrorist acts or remain silent in the face of evil.”

AGGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN AGAINST SUBVERSION
Secret military tribunals. A manhunt that has swept up 1,200 men, mostly in secret. Orders to question every young male emigrating from the Middle East for the past two years. Plans to loosen up rules that restrict the FBI from spying on churches and political organizations. In the past few weeks, Ashcroft has led such an aggressive campaign to stamp out subversion that even old-time G-men are wondering whether the attorney general is trying too hard to fill the shoes of the late J. Edgar Hoover.

Are America’s civil liberties at risk? The Bush administration’s first line of defense—”trust us”—won’t wash. The government, John Adams wrote two centuries ago, is supposed to be made up “of laws and not men.” Nonetheless, it is far too soon to declare that the attorney general is undermining basic freedoms or tearing holes in the Constitution. Ashcroft is not a rogue operator: President George W. Bush strongly backs his words and deeds, if not always the attorney general’s dark and blustery tone. And Bush has plenty of historical precedent on his side. Some of America’s greatest presidents, including Lincoln, FDR—and John Adams—cut back on civil liberties during wartime. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the chief executive’s extraordinary powers to protect the national security. “The Constitution is not a suicide pact,” wrote Justice Robert Jackson 50 years ago.

Civil liberties are not absolute rights. They must be balanced against the public safety. At a time when suicidal mass murderers are trying to infiltrate the United States, the balance has shifted. That’s fine with most Americans: according to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, 86 percent think the administration has not gone too far in restricting civil liberties in its response to terrorism. White House officials say that every time the “liberal media” fret about Ash-croft’s assaulting civil liberties, the president’s approval ratings go up. “Attack us some more,” quips one aide.

And yet a closer look at the NEWSWEEK Poll shows some public ambivalence about the details. Secrecy does not sit well; a majority (58 percent) want trials to be open all or most of the time. Less than half believe that foreigners who are recent immigrants should be subjected to military tribunals. Support for giving more power to the government to fight terrorism has waned since September 11, from 54 percent to 35 percent. And NEWSWEEK has learned that some senior officials in the criminal division of the Justice Department as well as at the FBI have also privately expressed concerns about going too far.

KANGAROO COURTS?
The true test is still to come: will the military tribunals turn into kangaroo courts? That seems doubtful: under the scrutiny of a critical and watchful press and Congress, the administration is likely to use the tribunals sparingly and make sure that suspects receive some basic guarantees of a fair trial. The greater risk may be that the heavy-handed tactics could backfire. By rounding up young Muslim men for questioning, or holding them indefinitely on minor immigration charges, the Justice Department may alienate precisely the people they need to blow the whistle on suspicious activity.

The actual impact of the administration’s antiterror program turns on the way it is put into practice. In the beginning, White House officials insisted it would be too dangerous and cumbersome to give terrorists normal criminal trials. Judges, lawyers and jurors would be at risk of reprisal; the government would not be able to introduce classified evidence without compromising secret “sources and methods” of gaining intelligence; highly publicized trials could drag on and become circuses. All true. But the president’s decree calling for military tribunals was so vague and overly broad that it seemed to sweep aside any semblance of constitutional safeguards. It applies not just to terrorists but those who “harbor them.” Does that include landlords and cabdrivers? Only noncitizens could be tried before the tribunals, but some 20 million noncitizens live in the United States. On its face the president’s decree would invite the military to secretly whisk off suspects to a ship or to a distant military base and summarily execute them.

In fact, the precise rules for the tribunals are still being written by the Pentagon. It is more than likely that by the time these rules are put into use, Congress and the career lawyers at Justice will have some moderating input. Pentagon lawyers will be under pressure to build in basic safeguards, like the presumption of innocence, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, public proceedings (with narrow exceptions to avert real security breaches), a unanimous verdict to impose a death sentence, a defendant’s right to choose his own counsel and a right of appeal to the highest military court. Indeed, all these protections are already required by the Uniform Code of Military Justice for ordinary courts-martial, notes NEWSWEEK legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. The judges may also include not just military officers—who are beholden to their commander in chief—but retired federal judges or prominent citizens whose stature and independence are beyond question.

‘UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS’
And what if the rules do not offer such safeguards? A terror suspect captured abroad, it is true, will have no real recourse. In international law, terrorists, like spies, are “unlawful combatants.” They don’t even enjoy the basic rights of prisoners of war, who are entitled by the Geneva Convention to be properly fed and housed and not subjected to torture. But terror suspects living in the United States will be able to go to a federal court to file a writ of habeas corpus, the ancient protection against arbitrary imprisonment by the state. The federal courts are likely to throw out any military tribunals that do not offer the “fair and full trial” promised by the Bush administration. So far, according to senior officials, only a small number of suspects now in federal custody are likely to be considered to be tried in a military tribunal—and only then if a strong connection to the Qaeda network can be firmly established.

The United States aims to capture and try as many Qaeda leaders as it can dig out of the caves of Afghanistan, at least those who don’t die there first. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose swagger sometimes outdoes even Ashcroft’s, made clear that the Pentagon wants the Northern Alliance and other Afghan tribesmen to hand over Taliban or Qaeda leaders who fall into their grasp. But the United States may have more difficulty persuading its European allies to turn over Qaeda operatives arrested abroad. The laws of the European Union and many European countries prevent the extradition of criminal suspects to countries where they could face the death penalty.

This restriction could be a serious hindrance in the administration’s push to wipe out Al Qaeda’s global network. Already, partly at the prodding of the United States after September 11, some 50 countries have rounded up about 360 terror suspects. On Nov. 18, Spain charged eight suspected members of a Qaeda cell that, investigators believe, aided the September 11 hijackers. But Spanish officials said they would be reluctant to allow the suspects to be tried before a U.S. military tribunal.

At the very least, there would be months if not years of legal wrangling before terror suspects could be delivered to U.S. prosecutors. This is not to say, however, that there are not other ways to deal with terrorists. Under a new law, Britain will be able to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely—without any trial. A judge would have to approve the detentions at six-month intervals, but few jurists would be likely to set a suspected terrorist free. The CIA sometimes prefers that a terror suspect be extradited not to the due process of the American court system, but to a country with less-forgiving methods of extracting confessions and other useful information. In the little Arab emirate of Qatar a few weeks ago, police arrested a suspect named Ahmed Shakir. The CIA and FBI are very interested in Shakir. For one thing, he comes from Iraq and thus offers a potential connection to Saddam Hussein. For another, he was spotted by Malaysian intelligence at a terrorist gathering in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 to discuss the suicide bombing plot on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Also at that summit meeting were two of the men who later hijacked the plane that flew into the Pentagon on September 11. According to a senior Arab intelligence official, the Qataris “asked the Americans, ‘Where should we send this guy?’ ” The answer was, not the United States. The man was sent to Jordan instead. The Jordanians have been good about sharing intelligence with the United States. The CIA prefers not to ask how the Jordanians obtain that intelligence.

LIKE OUT OF A BAD MOVIE
Some of the 1,200 men swept up in the FBI’s dragnet since September 11 feel as though they might as well have been sent to a Third World dungeon. On Sept. 18, Hasnain Javed, 20, a Pakistani national who lives with his aunt in Houston, was on his way back to Queensborough College in New York to study computer information systems. In Alabama, he was pulled off the bus by the federal Border Patrol, who discovered that Javed was carrying an expired visa. They sent him to a county jail in Wiggins, Miss., where he was put in a cell with 10 other inmates. What happened next was out of a bad movie.

One inmate, perhaps kindly, perhaps coldly, suggested that he better ring for the guard. Javed rang the bell, but it went unanswered for more than 20 minutes. During that time, several inmates beat him severely, breaking one of his teeth, fracturing a couple of ribs and rupturing his eardrum. As they kicked and pummeled the Pakistani youth, they jeeringly called him “bin Laden.” Then they stripped him naked and beat him some more. “I was crying and telling them I had nothing to do with it,” said Javed. “They were kicking me and punching me and pinned my head to the floor.” Finally, four guards arrived—and watched. Struggling to his feet, Javed begged for help, and at last the officers stopped the beating. Javed was put into solitary confinement and eventually released on $5,000 bail. He is now so traumatized he is afraid to appear in public. “I’ve never felt this way,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I go out and worry if someone is looking at me funny. If I see a police officer, I wonder if he is going to say something to me, question me.”

The two-week ordeal of Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, a quiet family man and radiologist in San Antonio, Texas, was not as violent but just as chilling. Al-Hazmi had wept on September 11 when he saw the terrorist attacks. “My eyes filled with tears. It was absolutely evil,” he says. He went to the mosque and prayed for the victims. The next morning at 5 he was rising for his dawn prayer when he heard a knock on his door. He opened it to find a half-dozen federal investigators with guns. Frightened, Al-Hazmi let them search his house, but he refused to answer questions without a lawyer present. This seemed to surprise and antagonize his interrogators. “I thought you were going to cooperate with us and help us,” one said. Al-Hazmi asked, “Help you with what?” One of the gumshoes said, “You know what happened.”

HIS TROUBLES WERE ONLY BEGINNING
The investigators began quizzing him about the Holy Land Foundation. Al-Hazmi says he gave money to the group because it runs health clinics in Palestine. The investigators told him that they had just raided the Dallas office of the Holy Land Foundation because, they said, it funnels money to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group (an allegation the foundation vehemently denies). The tone of the questioning grew sharper. The G-men began asking Al-Hazmi if he knew the names of several of the hijackers. He said he did not, but he could see that his troubles were only beginning.

Taken to the FBI office in San Antonio, he was allowed to call his lawyer and his wife. It was the last time he would speak to her for 11 days. In shackles, he was led to a small room with no bed, just a mattress on the floor, and a gown that did not protect him from the chill. The extremely near-sighted Al-Hazmi was deprived of his eyeglasses so he could not read and was denied antibiotics that he was taking for his bronchitis, which steadily worsened. When the guard closed the door that evening, he told Al-Hazmi, “Merry Christmas.”

‘AL-HAZMI IS A COMMON NAME IN SAUDI ARABIA’
Still unsure why he was being held, Al-Hazmi was put on a plane for New York, where he was greeted by U.S. marshals holding automatic weapons. At the Metropolitan Correction Center, Al-Hazmi claims that he became the target of physical abuse (a charge the FBI denies). Al-Hazmi says that agents routinely kicked him in the small of his back while shouting at him and demanding his name. Finally, on Sept. 19, he was allowed to have a court-appointed lawyer and was told why he had been arrested: he shared the same family name as two of the hijackers, Salem Alhazmi and Nawaf Alhazmi, and in 1999 he had contacted Abdullah Binladen, one of Osama’s 50-odd siblings, about his organization, World Assembly of Muslim Youth, an Islamic group. He had also booked flights on Travelocity, the same Web service used by the hijackers. Al-Hazmi is a common name in Saudi Arabia. “It’s a big tribe. It’s like John Smith in the U.S.,” said Dr. Al-Hazmi.

On Monday, Sept. 24, he was released, without his glasses or clothes, in blue jail pants and a black top. He went home to San Antonio. He is thinking about quitting his job at University Hospital, where he is now treated with suspicion by some colleagues, and moving back to Saudi Arabia. He says he is not angry at the U.S. government. “Forgiveness is one of the principles of Islam,” he told NEWSWEEK. But he worries about his children. His son, 8, cried all time while he was in custody and still does not seem quite right. His daughter, 6, said to him, “You were in jail.” His eyes filling with tears, Al-Hazmi says, “How can you explain to innocent kids what happened? I’m embarrassed, ashamed to explain.”

For the first two months of the dragnet, the Justice Department refused to say much about the growing list of Middle Eastern men who were disappearing into jails all across the country. Under normal circumstances, outrage in the press and legal community would have forced a more complete accounting, if not an end to the roundup. But with dissent muted since September 11, it wasn’t until mid-November that the criticism rose to a level that forced Ashcroft and Bush to provide more answers.

DIFFERENT RATIONALES
Last week Ashcroft revealed that 603 people, none of them U.S. citizens, remain in custody. Perhaps a dozen are being held as “material witnesses” because they have been somehow linked to the attacks. An additional 55 have been charged with crimes, like lying to federal investigators. The rest are being held for immigration violations. Normally, immigration proceedings are public. But Ashcroft ordered the Justice Department to go to considerable lengths to keep them secret requiring hearings to be conducted behind closed doors. He has even refused to release the names of the detainees. The attorney general has offered different rationales. First, he said he wanted to protect the privacy of the detainees. Then he said it would be irresponsible in a time of war “to advertise to the other side that we have Al Qaeda membership in custody.” Justice Department officials acknowledged privately last week that the government has no evidence that any of the immigration detainees are members of Al Qaeda.

By sweeping with a wide broom—arresting potential terrorists before they strike—the government hopes to disrupt future terrorist attacks. But some former FBI officials, most prominently former director William Webster, have openly questioned the dragnet approach. More typically in terror investigations, the FBI has preferred to watch silently and wait, collecting evidence with wiretaps and other tools, until it was sure it could roll up the entire plot. Webster claims that the bureau prevented 131 terrorist attacks between 1981 and 2000. Of course, it missed the September 11 bombing, and Justice Department officials insist that the new threat calls for different and more urgent tactics.

Old FBI hands are also skeptical about the Justice Department’s decision to question some 5,000 new arrivals to the United States. (The order applies to all men between the ages of 18 and 33 who have arrived in the United States from Middle Eastern and other countries on non-immigrant visas since Jan. 1, 2000.) An official describes the effort as “a national neighborhood watch.” Participation is voluntary. As an incentive to cooperate, the administration is even offering to help noncitizens get green cards if they offer up useful information. The prize is a coveted “S Visa” (some joke that the “S” stands for “snitch”). Speaking last week to a gathering of U.S. attorneys, President Bush said, “We’re saying, ‘Welcome to America. You have come to our country; why don’t you help make us safe?’ ” According to a Justice Department memo, the questioning is supposed to occur in homes rather than police stations, with interpreters present, and avoid questions about religious belief.

SECRET EVIDENCE VS. NO EVIDENCE
But civil libertarians and Arab groups, as well as some veteran investigators, say that young Middle Eastern men will be wary. They’re afraid that if they come forward, they’ll end up in detention for an immigration violation. If they don’t, they’ll be suspected of hiding something. The fear in Middle Eastern communities that their rights are being trampled by the Bush administration is ironic, says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. In a play for Arab-American votes during the 2000 campaign, Bush vowed to end the Clinton administration’s practice of using “secret evidence” against suspected terrorists in deportation proceedings. “They promised to do away with secret evidence—and they did,” says Zogby. “The only thing is, they’ve replaced it with no evidence.”

Political leaders worry that the hard line will roil ethnic communities. Detroit, which has large African-American and Arab-American populations, has worked hard to calm sometimes tense relations between police, who are often black, and Arab-Americans in the shops and streets. When his already stretched-thin department was approached about the voluntary interview process a few weeks ago, Detroit Police Chief Charles Wilson says he replied, “No, we’re not going to do it.” He later changed his mind and assigned 10 “experienced and savvy” officers who are, he says, sensitive to civil rights. In Portland, Ore., a traditionally liberal community, Police Chief Mark Kroeker refused to lend his officers to the task. He was immediately bombarded with e-mails and chastised in the press for being unpatriotic. “I’m surprised by the reaction,” says Kroeker, “and to some extent, I feel I’ve been vilified. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Public fear is behind much of the aggressive stance taken by law enforcement at all levels. One Justice Department official suggested to NEWSWEEK that the administration chose to get tough now to head off a public cry for even more draconian measures in the event of a second major terror attack. If the terrorists do hit again—a high probability, federal officials still warn—panicked Americans might call for even more drastic steps. Privacy safeguards would likely come under assault from government eavesdroppers. And Americans really would have to start worrying about their freedoms as well as their safety.

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Daniel Klaidman, Mark Hosenball, Tamara Lipper, Martha Brant and Lynette Clemetson in Washington, Christopher Dickey in Amman, Stryker McGuire and Tara Pepper in London, Mar Roman in Madrid, Keith Naughton and Joan Raymond in Detroit, Lynn Waddell in Tampa, Ellise Pierce in Dallas, Anne Pelli Gesalman in Houston, Karen Breslau in San Francisco and Sarah Downey in Chicago

© 2001 Newsweek, Inc.

Sept. 20, 2001, 11:12AM

Officials mum on investigation in San Antonio

Immigration, weapons violations lead to arrests by Texas officials

By JOHN W. GONZALEZ
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

SAN ANTONIO -- With this city suddenly a center of attention for federal anti-terrorism investigators, officials on Wednesday remained tight-lipped about the scope of the probe here.

Associated Press

Montaz al-Hallak, a former Arlington Mosque imam who was being sought by the FBI last week because of his ties to Osama bin Laden, has been living in Laurel, Md.

They refused to specify whether anyone in San Antonio besides Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi might be involved in terrorist plots.

The 34-year-old doctor, who lived here about five years, is being held by federal authorities in New York as a material witness in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on Sept. 11.

"You're asking me questions I can't comment on, because they pertain directly to the investigation," said Darryl Fields, spokesman for Robert Pitman, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas.

At the direction of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Pitman on Tuesday convened an "anti-terrorism task force" among state and San Antonio-area law enforcement entities. Similar groups are being assembled around the nation under Ashcroft's directive.

"What information comes into that task force and what information goes out of that task force largely pertains directly to the investigation" and won't be disclosed anytime soon, Fields said.

"There's nothing we can really say at this point," he said.

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, who attended the area group's initial meeting, likewise declined to comment on its discussions or whether anyone besides Al-Hazmi was being scrutinized. Asked whether San Antonio might have been a hub for terrorist plotting, she again declined to comment.

On Sept. 11 two men carrying box cutters like those used in the terrorist hijackings, hair dye and a large amount of cash were taken into custody in Fort Worth aboard an Amtrak train bound for San Antonio.

The men, Ayub Ali Khan, 51, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, are being held for questioning.

And two of the suspected hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, who were aboard the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, have been traced to addresses in San Antonio.

Media reports citing unnamed sources and federal documents have said Al-Hazmi, a Saudi Arabian doctor who was completing radiology training at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, may have supported the Sept. 11 terrorism blitz financially and otherwise.

Although those suspicions could not be independently verified, media reports have said investigators were examining Al-Hazmi's bank records, e-mail, credit card transactions, activities and background.

Sources have said Al-Hazmi was among four people on a FBI "watch list" who had airline reservations to fly from San Antonio to San Diego this Saturday. USA Today, citing federal documents, reported that the doctor had a return ticket for a month later.

Reports about those flight arrangements puzzled Al-Hazmi's work associates because, they said, he had not disclosed any travel plans to them.

Mary Etlinger, chief of staff at the health science center where Al-Hazmi worked, said he "had not requested any time off" and would have been expected to provide at least two weeks' notice if he had travel plans.

Al-Hazmi, who was nearing completion of his radiology training, failed to show up for radiology duties at Wilford Hall Medical Center on Sept. 11. The following day, he was taken into custody as a material witness, but not charged with a crime.

Meanwhile, a former Arlington Mosque imam who was being sought by the FBI last week, apparently has been living openly in Laurel, Md.

Moataz Al-Hallak, according to federal agents, was wanted for questioning because of his ties to Osama bin Laden.

On Tuesday, his attorney held a news conference in Washington, D.C., and accused the FBI of pursuing a false tip that Al-Hallak had information about the terrorist attacks.

It was not known Wednesday whether agents have questioned him.

Al-Hallak, who reportedly once helped bin Laden obtain a small turbo jet to carry Stinger missiles, was one of several Muslims associated with the Arlington Mosque who have connections to the exiled Saudi terrorist organizer:

· Widih el Hage, former secretary to bin Laden, was convicted last May for his role in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

· Ihab Ali, a Florida taxi driver who lived in Arlington in the early 1990s, worked for bin Laden in Africa as a pilot.

· Essam Al-Ridi, an Arlington resident and close friend of Al-Hallak's, was also a pilot for bin Laden and testified in el Hage's trial that, with Al-Hallak's help, he had purchased a turboprop airplane for bin Laden.

· Mohamed Abdo, identified as an ally of Al-Hallak's, was arrested in Arlington on Friday and held on immigration charges. Television station KTVT reported that he was a former computer analyst for a subsidiary of American Airlines, whose jets were hijacked and crashed by the terrorists last week.

Elsewhere, the FBI said, a man driving a Chicago cab who was arrested in an East Texas city did not appear on its watch list, but he remained jailed on an immigration violation.

Abdul Rasheed was pulled over Tuesday about 30 miles north of Marshall, then later stopped again and detained. He was questioned by the FBI.

Two other men remained in the Smith County Jail on a hold from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said Lt. Deal Folmar of the Smith County Sheriff's Office.

Mohammed L. Fahad of Anderson County was arrested by federal agents Friday. Mustafa Abu Jdai, an Emory store operator, was arrested during questioning early Sunday at the Tyler FBI office.

The men were not believed to be connected to last week's attacks.

In Nueces County, a Pakistani man under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms remained in custody on weapons charges and immigration violations.

Muhammad Asrar, a convenience store owner, was arrested Monday in Alice, about 40 miles west of Corpus Christi, for allegedly possessing an illegally modified mini-14 automatic rifle and a large quantity of ammunition.

Nueces County Sheriff Larry Olivarez said Asrar was not believed to be connected to the terrorist attacks.

Chronicle reporter Jim Henderson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

And from the same writer at the Dallas Morning News!

________________________

Questioning of San Antonio man stuns neighbors

09/18/2001

By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News

SAN ANTONIO - San Antonio doctor Albader Al-Hazmi, who is being questioned by federal agents about last week's terrorist attacks, is a friendly family man who seemed "like a normal American," according to a neighbor.

"The family seems absolutely ordinary," Eric Vela said. "They drive around in a red minivan."

Dr. Al-Hazmi, a radiology resident from Saudi Arabia working at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, was sent to New York for FBI questioning Friday. Dr. Al-Hazmiwas among 49 people detained on immigration violations and being questioned in connection with the investigation. None has been charged, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Monday.

Neighbors of Dr. Al-Hazmi's at the Villas of Northgate community said they were shocked that the man who waved at them on the way to the mailbox was being questioned in connection with the attack.

Federal agents descended on the gated community Wednesday, the day after the attack, to search the three-bedroom townhouse rented by the Al-Hazmi family.

"They were going through the garage and the house," Mr. Vela said. "They were hauling boxes out of the house."

Authorities also seized a computer from the library at the University of Texas Health Science Center, said Leni Kirkman, spokesman for the center.

Dr. Al-Hazmi, 34, was last seen at the hospital at a residents' conference on the day before the attacks, Ms. Kirkman said. He did not show up for work Tuesday, which Ms. Kirkman said was unusual.

Shortly after the attacks on the East Coast, the hospital staff was contacted by the FBI, Ms. Kirkman said.

Neighbors said they have not seen the family since the Friday before the attack. Last week, the family vehicle was in the garage, but no one was home. The blinds and curtains on an upstairs window hung askew, and the backyard gate was open.

Hospital employees were surprised to hear that Dr. Al-Hazmi was being questioned, but no one was rushing to judgment, Ms. Kirkman said.

"We're all doing a wait-and-see approach," she said "Everything I'm hearing, he had great credentials, was certainly a resident in good standing. The Health Science Center is saying he certainly is proficient in his duties."

Last week, the FBI told the hospital that "when he decides to come back to work here at university hospital, that they have no problem with that," Ms. Kirkman said.

"Obviously, we're shocked," said Dr. Gerald Dodd, chairman of radiology at the UT Health Science Center and Dr. Al-Hazmi's supervisor.

But, he added, "We haven't received any specific confirmation that he is involved in any way, and we will continue to treat him as innocent until we know otherwise."

Dr. Dodd said Dr. Al-Hazmi is in the final year of a four-year residency. "He is a good doctor, and I thought him to be a good man," he said.

"If there was anything different about him, it was that he was clearly a religious man."

Ms. Kirkman said Dr. Al-Hazmi "would stop at the designated times for a Muslim, [when] he would need to pray, but nothing red-flagged us as [his] being zealous."

Officials at Islamic centers in San Antonio said they had no knowledge of Dr. Al-Hazmi or his family.

Dr. Al-Hazmi came to San Antonio in July 1997 from Saudi Arabia, where he earned a medical degree from King Abdul Aziz University in 1991, Ms. Kirkman said. He worked at the teaching hospital there for a year then went to King Fahd central hospital in 1992. After a year there, Dr. Al-Hazmi went to work as a general physician at the health center of Aramco, a Saudi oil company in Abqaiq and Dhahran, Ms. Kirkman said.

Four years later, he came to San Antonio as a resident.

"We did not have enough students coming up in the UT Health Science System program to match with us," Ms. Kirkman said. "That's when we accept folks from outside the country."

Dr. Al-Hazmi was sponsored by the oil company he worked for, Ms. Kirkman said.

Records show that Dr. Al-Hazmi and his family lived briefly in an apartment near the medical school. Employees at the complex referred all inquiries to the FBI.

The family moved to the Villas of Northgate, a quiet complex of about 100 homes that is home to University of Texas at San Antonio students, medical students and retirees.

Mark Alvarenga, a resident of the Villas community, said Dr. Al-Hazmi and his family were among about a half-dozen Middle Eastern families who lived in the complex.

"They were pleasant and would wave and say hello as they walked around the neighborhood," Mr. Alvarenga said. "But they all pretty much kept company with each other. They didn't socialize with the other neighbors."

Dr. Al-Hazmi lived in the community with his wife and children. Neighbors thought he had two daughters and an infant son.

Christina Garza said she did not know Mrs. Al-Hazmi's first name but said she "wore the traditional Muslim head covering. You could only see her eyes. The children were rarely let out to play. Sometimes, we'd see the kids looking at us from their upstairs window."

Officials at the nearby Leon Valley Elementary School said the doctor's oldest daughter attended kindergarten briefly but withdrew Nov. 29, 1999. School officials said if a student withdraws to attend another school, the new school requests their records. No such request has been received, school officials said.

If the family entertained, it was with the other Middle Eastern neighbors. Those residents began moving out, one at a time, in March, Mr. Alvarenga said. "We noticed that they were leaving," he said. "The doctor was the last one left."

Staff writers Michelle Mittelstadt in Washington, George Kuempel in San Antonio and Diane Jennings in Dallas contributed to this report.

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