To: U.S District Court
Ziyad Yaghi is a 21 year old American citizen, from Jordan originally, residing in North Carolina whom has lived in the United States since the age of two. He has been accused of attempting to commit terrorism abroad by the United States government, in an indictment which appears to be based on an incorrect premise, namely that the US seek to infer that trips abroad were part of a terrorist conspiracy.
Ziyad visited Jordan in 2006, the country of his birth. Unfortunately the US Indictment appears to have misinterpreted this intention, and states instead that he was seeking armed conflict.
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Phase 2: We need to raise money so Ziyad can reply to all of your letters and be able to call home. Did you know that it costs him $25 for every phone call he makes just so he can hear his mother’s voice? Please help her listen to her beloved son’s voice. Your donation will allow her to send letters to Ziyad, call him and visit him.
It doesn’t matter how much you donate. Even if it’s a dollar, that’s more than enough. If you cannot send contributions online, please let me know and I will provide you with an alternative. Thank you.
Continue reading [ACTION] Ziyad Yaghi Petition and Donations
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Shaker Aamer is the last London resident being held in Guantánamo Bay. He is a long term British resident, a 42 year old Saudi national, with a British family, including a 7 year old son he has never met. Shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan it is believed Shaker, like hundreds of others, was sold by tribal warlords and during detention suffered vicious torture in the dark Prison in Kabul. He eventually ended up in Guantanamo where much of his time has been spent in solitary confinement. According to David Rose (author and human rights investigative journalist ‘Guantanamo: America’s War on Human Rights’) so many innocent people “ended up there as a result of military-intelligence screening procedures in Afghanistan and elswhere that were flawed and inadequate, made still worse by the use of woefully poor and virtually untrained translators”. Shaker Aamer’s story is a terrible human tragedy. Shaker has a seven year old son he has never met and his oldest child remembers him only from photographs. A family has been ripped apart for no legal or apparent reason and eight years on it is way past time for justice to be done – Shaker needs to be returned home to London. Shaker Aamer has been described by MOAZZAM BEGG (author ‘Enemy Combatant’ & ex-Guantanamo detainee) as a smiling, caring and unforgettable person who was very well-known in the south London area. Shaker has never been tried or charged and yet has been held in solitary confinement for far longer periods than other prisoners. During his time in Guantanamo Shaker Aamer has protested against the injustices at the prison.
A delegation of Pakistani military officers was on a flight from Washington D.C. to Tampa, FL for a meeting with US Central Command when the officers were pulled off the flight for talking – because apparently when foreign people talk to one another on a plane, it’s best to jump to the conclusion that they are terrorists and then treat them as such.
Part of the strategy to success in Afghanistan involves a partnership with the Pakistani government. We are very much relying on the Pakistani military and police to help stamp out Taliban influence. When this delegation, which is trying to help us fight terrorists, is harassed as a result of one particular woman’s assumption upon hearing someone say that they are tired and looking forward to arriving at their final destination, that doesn’t exactly engender good feelings in the relationship that is already a little rocky. All of the fear mongering and Islamophobia of those on the right is now having an impact on our ability to work with our allies. The Telegraph piece quoted above does indicate that a spokesperson for the American Embassy in Pakistan has said talks are underway to reschedule the visit. By Andy Worthington for Cageprisoners
On Tuesday evening — the day before Colonel Muammar Gaddafi marked the 41st anniversary of the coup that brought him to power — 37 political prisoners were released from the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, site of a brutal massacre of prisoners in 1996, when up to 1,200 men were murdered.
Although the release of the 37 men was obviously timed to shift attention from protests marking the anniversary by the regime’s many opponents — including family members of those whose deaths or disappearances have never been acknowledged — it is, nevertheless, a sign of progress, as well as political opportunism.
Under the influence of Saif al-Islam, one of Gaddafi’s sons and the head of the Gaddafi Foundation, a charity that includes a human rights committee, the Libyan regime has, in recent years, sought to reconcile itself with former political opponents, leading to the release of hundreds of prisoners since 2007. As Reuters explained, “Saif al-Islam has campaigned for reconciliation with Islamists who promise to lay down their arms. His initiative has met resistance from conservatives in his father’s entourage with whom he is competing for influence.”
INDIANAPOLIS — American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh and another Muslim inmate have asked a judge to order a federal prison to allow them and other Muslims in their highly restricted cell block to pray as a group, in accordance with their beliefs. The American Civil Liberties Union last Thursday filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis for summary judgment on behalf of Lindh, 29, and Enaam Arnaout, 47, who claim that the prison’s policy restricting group prayer in the Communications Management Unit violates their religious rights. The ACLU contends there are no disputes over the facts of the case and that the law is on the inmates’ side, and asks the judge to rule in their favor. Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence at the Terre Haute prison for aiding Afghanistan’s now-defunct Taliban government, wrote in a legal declaration that his religion requires him to pray five times a day, preferably in a group. “This is one of the primary obligations of Islam,” he wrote. Praying in his cell is not appropriate, he said, because the Quran requires a ritually clean place for prayer and he is forced to kneel “in close proximity to my toilet.” Lindh wrote that Muslims in the unit are currently being allowed to pray together once a day during Ramadan. At other times, the group prayers had been limited to once a week, court documents said.
Continue reading John Walker Lindh Asks Judge To Allow Muslims to Pray as A Group
TORONTO Omar Khadr’s war-crimes trial is set to resume Oct. 18 in Guantanamo Bay. It was not immediately clear why that date was chosen. If the October date holds, it means the trial will be restarting more than two full months after its abrupt halt two weeks ago when Khadr’s defence lawyer took ill. Lt. Col. Jon Jackson was cross-examining a prosecution witness on the first day of the trial proper Aug. 12 when he collapsed in the courtroom with a gall-bladder condition. The Toronto-born Khadr, 23, is on trial for allegedly killing an American special forces soldier in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was 15 years old. His contested military commission trial is the first under U.S. President Barack Obama and has been severely criticized by human and legal-rights groups. [For good reason, it is not a legal procedure, does not resemble a legal procedure, and Obama is a liar.] UNBELIEVABLE! By: Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press TORONTO – A Canadian citizen’s four-year fight to stave off extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on terrorism-related charges, is poised to become even longer. The federal government has decided to appeal a court ruling that stayed extradition proceedings against Abdullah Khadr on the grounds U.S. authorities had been complicit in his jailing and abuse in Pakistan. “This is a government that has shown little respect for the judiciary by appealing every decision we have received, only to be later corrected by the Supreme Court,” Dennis Edney, one of Khadr’s Edmonton-based lawyers, said Tuesday. In granting the rare stay on Aug. 4, Ontario Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer found the U.S. had violated basic principles of justice. He called the human-rights violations suffered by Khadr “both shocking and unjustifiable.”
Continue reading Canadian government set to appeal Abdullah Khadr extradition stay Canadian Press by: Keith Olbermann | Countdown With Keith Olbermann (First published August 16, 2010) SPECIAL COMMENT (Transcript) Finally as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the inaccurately described “Ground Zero mosque.” “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.” Pastor Martin Niemoller’s words are well known but their context is not well understood. Niemoller was not speaking abstractly. He witnessed persecution, he acquiesced to it, he ultimately fell victim to it. He had been a German World War 1 hero, then a conservative who welcomed the fall of German democracy and the rise of Hitler and had few qualms the beginning of the holocaust until he himself was arrested for supporting it insufficiently. Niemoller’s confessional warning came in a speech in Frankfurt in January, 1946, eight months after he was liberated by American troops. He had been detained at Tyrol, Sachsen-hausen and Dachau. For seven years. Niemoller survived the death camps. In quoting him, I make no direct comparison between the attempts to suppress the building of a Muslim religious center in downtown Manhattan, and the unimaginable nightmare of the Holocaust. Such a comparison is ludicrous. At least it is, now.
Continue reading There Is No ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ (Video/Transcript) After working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials are alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules: the prosecution of a former child soldier whom an American interrogator implicitly threatened with gang rape. The defendant, Omar Khadr, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. Senior officials say his trial is undermining their broader effort to showcase reforms that they say have made military commissions fair and just. Two seemingly contradictory portraits are emerging of Michael Enright, the 21-year old aspiring filmmaker arraigned yesterday on hate crimes charges for allegedly stabbing a New York City cab driver because he was Muslim. There’s the Michael Enright who volunteered for an interfaith group, whose Facebook profile picture was with a young girl he met on his trip to Afghanistan, and who liked the book Angela’s Ashes, movies like “Boys Don’t Cry” and music by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Michael Enright that neighbor Alma Quinlan knew was a “great kid who is very sociable and attentive to his mother.” Then there’s the Michael Enright who reportedly had a serious drinking problem and slit the throat of a cab driver while yelling “This is a checkpoint, this is checkpoint, motherf**ker, I have to put you down.”
Continue reading Student Charged In Muslim Cabbie Slashing Kept Diary With Anti-Muslim Writings |
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