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Human Rights Watch: US Counterterrorism Prosecutions Often an Illusion

James Cromitie, center, is escorted from Federal Plaza, headquarters of the FBI in New York, by federal agents and police, early Thursday

(Washington, DC) –The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism “sting operations” based on religious and ethnic identity, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released today. Many of the more than 500 terrorism-related cases prosecuted in US federal courts since September 11, 2001, have alienated the very communities that can help prevent terrorist crimes.

The 214-page report, “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions,” examines 27 federal terrorism cases from initiation of the investigations to sentencing and post-conviction conditions of confinement. It documents the significant human cost of certain counterterrorism practices, such as overly aggressive sting operations and unnecessarily restrictive conditions of confinement.

“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report. “But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”

Many prosecutions have properly targeted individuals engaged in planning or financing terror attacks, the groups found. But many others have targeted people who do not appear to have been involved in terrorist plotting or financing at the time the government began to investigate them. And many of the cases involve due process violations and abusive conditions of confinement that have resulted in excessively long prison sentences.

The report is based on more than 215 interviews with people charged with or convicted of terrorism-related crimes, members of their families and their communities, criminal defense attorneys, judges, current and former federal prosecutors, government officials, academics, and other experts.

In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act. Multiple studies have found that nearly 50 percent of the federal counterterrorism convictions since September 11, 2001, resulted from informant-based cases. Almost 30 percent were sting operations in which the informant played an active role in the underlying plot.

In the case of the “Newburgh Four,” for example, who were accused of planning to blow up synagogues and attack a US military base, a judge said the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” and had, in the process, made a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.”

The FBI often targeted particularly vulnerable people, including those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent. The government, often acting through informants, then actively developed the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the targets to participate, and provided the resources to carry it out.

“The US government should stop treating American Muslims as terrorists-in-waiting,” Prasow said. “The bar on entrapment in US law is so high that it’s almost impossible for a terrorism suspect to prove. Add that to law enforcement preying on the particularly vulnerable, such as those with mental or intellectual disabilities, and the very poor, and you have a recipe for rampant human rights abuses.”

Rezwan Ferdaus, for example, pled guilty to attempting to blow up a federal building and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Although an FBI agent even told Ferdaus’ father that his son “obviously” had mental health problems, the FBI targeted him for a sting operation, sending an informant into Ferdaus’ mosque. Together, the FBI informant and Ferdaus devised a plan to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol, with the FBI providing fake weaponry and funding Ferdaus’ travel. Yet Ferdaus was mentally and physically deteriorating as the fake plot unfolded, suffering depression and seizures so bad his father quit his job to care for him.

The US has also made overly broad use of material support charges, punishing behavior that did not demonstrate an intent to support terrorism. The courts have accepted prosecutorial tactics that may violate fair trial rights, such as introducing evidence obtained by coercion, classified evidence that cannot be fairly contested, and inflammatory evidence about terrorism in which defendants played no part – and asserting government secrecy claims to limit challenges to surveillance warrants.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is a US citizen who alleged that he was whipped and threatened with amputation while detained without charge in Saudi Arabia – after a roundup following the 2003 bombings of Western compounds in the Saudi capital of Riyadh – until he provided a confession to Saudi interrogators that he says was false. Later, when Ali went to trial in Virginia, the judge rejected Ali’s claims of torture and admitted his confession into evidence. He was convicted of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and conspiracy to assassinate the president. He received a life sentence, which he is serving in solitary confinement at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

The US has in terrorism cases used harsh and at times abusive conditions of confinement, which often appear excessive in relation to the security risk posed. This includes prolonged solitary confinement and severe restrictions on communicating in pretrial detention, possibly impeding defendants’ ability to assist in their own defense and contributing to their decisions to plead guilty. Judges have imposed excessively lengthy sentences, and some prisoners suffer draconian conditions post-conviction, including prolonged solitary confinement and severe restrictions on contact with families or others, sometimes without explanation or recourse.

Nine months after his arrest on charges of material support for terrorism and while he was refusing a plea deal, Uzair Paracha was moved to a harsh regime of solitary confinement. Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) – national security restrictions on his contact with others – permitted Paracha to speak only to prison guards.

“You could spend days to weeks without uttering anything significant beyond ‘Please cut my lights,’ ‘Can I get a legal call/toilet paper/a razor,’ etc., or just thanking them for shutting our light,” he wrote to the report’s researchers. After he was convicted, the SAMs were modified to permit him to communicate with other inmates. “I faced the harshest part of the SAMs while I was innocent in the eyes of American law,” he wrote.

These abuses have had an adverse impact on American Muslim communities. The government’s tactics to seek out terrorism suspects, at times before the target has demonstrated any intention to use violence, has undercut parallel efforts to build relationships with American Muslim community leaders and groups that may be critical sources of information to prevent terrorist attacks.

In some communities, these practices have deterred interaction with law enforcement. Some Muslim community members said that fears of government surveillance and informant infiltration have meant they must watch what they say, to whom, and how often they attend services.

“Far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism, the policies documented in this report have diverted law enforcement from pursuing real threats,” Prasow said. “It is possible to protect people’s rights and also prosecute terrorists, which increases the chances of catching genuine criminals.”

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    • Friend of Bosnia

      So what, they were killed for daring to want to remain what they were. And quite a few had honestly tried to become Christians yet they were burned at the stake or thrown in jail just for being their fathers’ sons. To instill fear in all other people. So, in a way all inquisition trials were show trials. One must be nuts to defend the Inquisition. What is your motivation to defend them???

    • Feel free to identify where I claimed that they were humanitarians, or where I claimed that there were not horrible abuses. For that matter, feel free to extrapolate upon how the actions of members of an institution in one province in one century must exemplify the actions of an entire group over the course of several centuries. Moreover, your original point was that these were “show trials.” In the case of the Moriscos, those prosecuted were prosecuted for being Muslims, which they were. That is the opposite of a show trial.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Oh c’mon. They weren’t humanitarians. I have a book with transcripts of Inquisitorial persecution of Moriscos in the province of Cuenca during the 16th century. Who were persecuted for daring to try and remain Muslims after being Christianized by force. Doesn’t make a nice picture.

    • “WIth the Inquisition in the Middle Ages it was the same thing.” Actually, it wasn’t. I encourage everyone of European ancestry or with an interest in European history to actually read transcripts from Inquisitorial trials. Extremely illuminating. Of course horrible abuses took place, as with every human institution. But most of what people think they “know” about the Inquisition–and, interestingly, of the European Middle ages–is based on hearsay, innuendo, and cultural conditioning. There was an entire centuries-long propaganda war concerning this, whose effects are still far-reaching. Google “Black Legend” sometime.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      “Miniluv”, to resume it in one word

    • Friend of Bosnia

      I will from now on refer to the various American secret services as “Thought Police”; “Ministry of Love or Miniluv”; NKVD 2.0, Stasi 2.0, UDBA 2.0 and Securitate 2.0. I might add, Gestapo 2.0. I see their purpose is the same: intimidate people, keep them in line through fear. Do in ordinary citizens for “crimethink” or “Thoughtcrime”.

    • Solid Snake

      Well Israel is a great piece-maker when it comes to Palestinian women and children.

    • Yausari

      So what if Israel did some peace agreements? they had to. that does not mean that the Zionist are the peacemaker when they made enemies with their neighbors in the first place.

    • The greenmantle

      everyone else frankly . If I thought you could be trusted to deliver I would have a go myself . But I would not trust you even to define the boundries of Isreal .

      Sir David

    • Friend of Bosnia

      As Amie has stated in the article on the FBi informats documentary here, teh activities of the American secret services remind me of what the secret police of Communits Yugosoavia, the UDBA did: the same thing – infiltrate the religious communities, provoke people into talking foul of the authorities and presto – a counter-revolutionary who can be arrested, tortured, put before a show trial and thrown in jail or executed. To instill fear into the populace. WIth the Inquisition in the Middle Ages it was the same thing. Another commenter said that all this proves one thing: a large proportion of the American leadership are sick, crazy, stark raving mad. Driven by paranoia, hysteria, cynicism and plain, cold-hearted inhumanity. How far have they strayed from the Four Freedoms that FDR once postulated. Instead with all the possibilities that electronic surveillance offers this is on the best way to become a totalitarian state which will make Orwell’s 1984 or Stalinism with its NKVD and Gulags look like a kiddie camp in comparison.

      Dark, indeed very dark ages are coming.

    • Nur

      I would make the case…but reading the rhetoric makes me think that no matter what, the person offering the money does not see peace as a mutual agreement without caveat.

      In fact, I don’t think the person has the money.

    • Yausari

      It’s got to be a joke

      [EDIT] OMG s’not a joke!

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Bah, read Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”. If the description of the inquisitor, Bernard Gui, who really lived, is accurate, and I have no doubt it is, then the FBI, is like Bernrd Gui, not interested in who the culprit/the real terrorist is, but to “let the populace see the heretic burn”, no matter if he is really a heretic or just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing new under the sun.

    • Omar_the_Egyptian

      More justification for the invasion of gaul and the “de-frenching” of The Maghreb, Sahel and the rest of Muslim West Africa.

    • Anonymous

      WTF?

      FUCKING DISGUSTING PIG

      What the hell is he thinking

    • Yausari

      Oh good coz I thought they were wasting their money… phew!

    • Reynardine

      The real terrorists are staging insurrections in Nevada. The real terrorists are threatening to lynch the President. The real terrorists are causing government shutdowns, sending militias to our southern border to shoot little kids, attempting to bring about a coup by barricading Washington, DC…but the real terrorists are ril uhMericuhns and ril Chrischuns, so we don’t rilly even talk about them.

      And meanwhile …

    • mindy1

      Pathetic, they should use that money to track ACTUAL terrorists >:(

    • JD

      Everyone has a budget to hit end of the year… if there is no terrorism then there is no need for a large budget and so no large staff ,no new FBI toys, no FBI suv that get 30 feet to the gallon. This is for your own good and save Current agents jobs and retired agents pensions.

    • Yausari

      What a great way to waste time and money for a false threat. As a bonus, you violate human rights. I guess this Muslim Brotherhood that is taking over US, is really the FBI. What exactly are you trying to do? I got to update my status to bored s#itless.

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