Law and Disorder May 4, 2009

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Host Updates:

• CCR 100 Days Score Card
• 100 Days Glimmer of Hope
  
• Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon Says He Will Continue With Investigating US Torture Conspiracy
• Update on Troy Davis – Brian Evans AI Abolition Campaigner – Stay of Execution Ends May 16, 2009
• Troy Davis Video – Finality Over Fairness
  

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Unreasonable Intrusions Report

Last month, the Muslim Advocates released a report titled Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home. The report documents the systematic and widespread practice of federal agents interrogating Americans returning home after overseas travel at our nation’s borders and international airports. Muslim Advocates, a sister group with the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), which is a group of approximately 500 Muslim lawyers, law students and other legal professionals.

Farhana Khera:

• These are folks who are returning home from travel and they’re being stopped at borders, land crossings.
• After showing valid US passports, federal agents are engaging in very invasive questioning and searches of these Americans.
• Muslim or those Americans who may look Muslim.
• The questions (from border agents) go into first amendment protected areas. What mosque do you attend? How often do you pray?
• We want to educate federal policy makers, members of Congress, Homeland Security and the Obama Administration about this practice.
• Laptops, cameras and phones searched, in some cases asking about people in images, and how they particular individuals.
• Again, all of this without any evidence or suspicion.
• Ninth Circuit Decision US v Arnold, pretty much gives blanket authority to federal agents at the border to search laptops and electronic devices of law abiding Americans.
• We really need some standards in place that address the need of probable cause and reasonable suspicion before seizing personal data.
• We believe that Americans have the right to enter the country and not be compelled to answer questions, particularly about first amendment protected beliefs.
• We are giving practical advice in saying that you think this line of questioning is inappropriate. Get badge #’s of officers who have your stuff, then file a complaint.
• Traveler’s Privacy Protection Act – Proposed Legislation, to be re-introduced.

Guest – Farhana Khera, first Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML). Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D_WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the USA PATRIOT Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti_terrorism policies since September 11, 2001. She was the Senator’s lead staff member in developing anti_racial profiling legislation and organizing subcommittee hearings on racial profiling.

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FBI Exposed: Federal Judge Orders FBI to Provide Full Muslim Surveillance Records

Last week a federal judge ordered the FBI to submit 100 documents detailing the bureau’s surveillance of Muslim leaders and organizations in Southern California and specifically, documents relating to the Council on American_Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles and its executive director. The court’s decision came in response to a 2007 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California that claimed the government’s incomplete and long_delayed response violated the Freedom of Information Act.

An attorney with the ACLU of Southern California says the surveillance records will show how the FBI infiltrated Southern California mosques and invasively monitored members of the Muslim community as if they were criminals.

“Truth can never be redacted. Only full disclosure will satisfy us and alleviate the pervasive fear in our communities and congregations,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, who joins us today.

Shakeel Syed:

• It was confirmed in a court of law, under oath, that the FBI had employed informants, in one case, the informant was a former convicted felon.
• Craig Monteilh has multiple identities, he was given a different by the FBI and sent into one of the mosques.
• He embraced Islam proclaiming that he wanted to become Muslim and wanted to make his faith public.
• He abused the Islamic platform to gain trust in the community. The FBI told him the best way for you to infiltrate is to become Muslim and pretend to be a slow learner.
• The people at the mosque were alarmed when Craig Montel was encouraging others to blow up buildings in LA
• They called the FBI office on Craig Monteilh unaware that he was an informant. They brushed the report aside.
• Radiation monitoring of mosques
• We filed a FOIA request jointly not individually, which was good because what was suspected is now fully confirmed in the court of law that informants were paid as provocateurs in the area.
• In 2006, one of our members of the mosque, a student, ambushed an agent that was following him and he was apprehended by the University of Irvine campus police. We later filed a case against this individual and later never heard back from the campus police or the FBI.
• We received similar reports in our conversations with other community leaders in other areas such as Chicago, New York, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco.
• It was revealed in some of the FBI surveillance documents that my private speeches were mentioned that were against the war in Iraq. Dalia Hashad – “They were in the mosque.”
• We continue to receive reports from the community on an almost ongoing basis from within the regions of Southern CA that the FBI has approached them to become informants, threatened them, intimidated them, offered them convenience of getting their naturalization papers expedited or immigration papers duly adjusted.
• I’m disgusted, but more emboldened to stand up and assert my rights.

Guest – Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

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