The FBI has reached out to muslim clerics and is turning them into informants in its war against terror.

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. and other counterterrorism authorities have pursued a campaign to recruit Muslims like Mr. Konaté as informers. As part of this effort in New York, the agency recently created a "citizen academy," where more than two dozen Muslim clerics and business leaders completed a course of eight evening sessions in January. Although they are not considered full-fledged informers, they have helped the F.B.I. chase down terrorist suspects by posting their pictures in mosques.

Not all of the clerics are eager to participate.

Concerned about implicating innocent people and perhaps alienating the faithful who look to them for counsel, some Muslim clerics say they are also put off by an awareness of the F.B.I.'s history, especially its surveillance of black leaders during the civil rights era. Their mistrust has only deepened since the government made accusations against mosques in the New York City area — notably Al Farooq in Brooklyn, which was said in a federal affidavit last month to have funneled money to Al Qaeda.

There's also a chilling effect on the mosque members.

Already, some mosques in the area say they are noticing a drop in attendance, and some worshipers who still go say they no longer feel at liberty to engage in discussions for fear they are being spied on.

As one iman quoted in the article said, his advice for other imans is, "Be very careful"--about trusting the F.B.I.

On April 1, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee in connection with the submission of Bush's propsed budget for the Department of Justice. You can read his testimony here. At times, he deviates from his prepared script.

Ascroft discusses many DOJ projects, listing successes.

Now, I would like to give you a brief overview of the results to date of our integrated prevention strategy to fight the war on terrorism:

First, we are gathering and cultivating detailed intelligence on terrorism in the U.S

Hundreds of suspected terrorists have been identified and tracked troughout the United States

Our human sources of intelligence have doubled

Our counter-terrorism investigations have doubled in one year

Over 18,000 subpoenas and search warrants have been issued;

Over 1,000 applications in 2002 were made to the FISA court targeting terrorists, spies and foreign powers that threaten our security, including 170 emergency FISAs. This is more than 3 times the total number of emergency FISAs obtained in the 23 years prior to September 11th.

Ashcroft also provides details of DOJ's Iraqi Task Force:

The FBI has a new Counterterrorism website. The site has details about the 9/11 hijackers, the Anthrax investigation, and contains descriptions of the State Department's 35 designated foreign terrorist organizations. [link via Paper Chase.]

It also has the Bureau's reports on terrorism in the U.S. Here are the links for law enforcement counter-terrorism training and jobs.

From Free Mike Hawash:

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms parking lot. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR.

Here are some facts:

Mike is not charged with any crime, and it has not been suggested that he will be;

Mike is a U.S. citizen of middle-eastern descent;

The warrants and subpoenas in Mike's case are all secret, sealed by the court at the U.S. government's request;

The U.S. has held other middle-eastern men for as long as 15 months without charge as "material witnesses";

Historically, "material witness" arrests were solely for grand-jury or trial witnesses who were either a "flight risk" or represented a "danger" to the community. Mike has a job, a home, a family, and deep roots in his community.

What you can do

Write your Congressmen! Write to your U.S. Senators and representative. Most have webmail forms on their congressional websites, and all have their postal addresses on their sites.  Here is one letter that has been sent.

Go to www.senate.gov to find your Senators, and www.house.gov to find your U.S. Representatives.  If you live in Oregon, your Senators are Senator Wyden and Senator Smith.

Your U.S. Represenative may be one of: Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Gregory Walden and David Wu.

The host of the site is a former Intel Corp. Vice President and was Mike's boss at Intel during much of the 1990s. Thanks to Atrios and Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review for the link.

We wonder whether this arrest is a result of information obtained from a cooperating defendant in the federal terrorism case pending in Oregon against six suspects. Ziska has more links to the case, which the LA Times suggested may be more of a case of bumbling holy warriors than terrorism. Via Cursor, here's more.

INDICT has been collecting information about Iraqi war crimes since 1996. To date the organization has targeted twelve members of the Iraqi regime for prosecution. INDICT has released for the first time some of the evidence it has gathered implicating senior members of the Iraqi regime in horrific abuses of human rights. Here is an online summary (in pdf) of first hand accounts of the brutality. The full statements are downloadable.

Who is INDICT?

Former Senator Gary Hart, who is in the process of deciding whether to run for President, is blogging about the war against Terrorism and Iraq and how to make restore the American republic. The blog went live today, comments are accepted. His voice is a welcome addition to the blogoshpere.

There is no better authority on terrorism. Hart has been against Bush's War on Iraq. He warns us that America is not prepared for retaliatory attacks. If you haven't read his speeches with concrete proposals for how we can become better prepared and how America should shape its foreign policy in the 21st century, we highly recommend them.

We say, Run, Gary, Run. He needs your encouragement. There is a meetup in Denver on April 3. We'll be there. He's also accepting contributions to help with expenses as he travels the country testing the waters for a possible presidential run.

Here's another consequence of the war on terror and deposing the Taliban regime: Opium production is way up in Afghanistan, including in some districts in which the crop has never before been cultivated.

What's changed?

The production of opium, from which heroin is refined, was wiped out under the hard-line Taliban regime, but farmers began planting it again when the religious militia was deposed in 2001 during the U.S.-led war on terror. Some farmers ripped up their wheat fields to plant the lucrative drug-producing plant, which brings in hundreds of times the revenue.... The U.N. drug agency said opium yields had soared to 3,750 tons in 2002, making Afghanistan the world's No. 1 producer again, a record it had held prior to the eradication of poppies by the Taliban in 2001.

The new Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, last year offered to pay $500 for every acre that the farmes destroy. But there were few takers, with an acre of an opium crop bringing $6,400.00. And this year, the new Government discontinued the cash incentive plan due to lack of resources. A special report on opium growing in Afganistan finds there are 11 opium-processing laboratories in Badakhshan and that much of the opium was being smuggled over the border into nearby Tajikistan. One farmer interviewed said poppy is his only means of survival:

"Now at least we have a few roads, some electricity and some good teachers in schools, and all of this is the barakat [blessing] of the poppy," the angry peasant said, pointing out that no teacher or doctor would walk for hours or even days to a district for almost no salary, and knowing that he could not return for four to five months when it snows and roads were blocked. "They [government] comes by helicopter to destroy poppy, but not to bring us medicine, evaluate our needs and tackle our problems," he complained, mentioning that even though almost every family had a gun, they would welcome any fair and just decision by the government. "The people love Karzai," he said, hoping that the government would ultimately approach the issue in a positive and sustainable manner.

Human Rights Watch today called for the United Nations to appoint "a high-level expert to monitor the impact of counter-terrorist measures on human rights... Human rights abuses will fuel terrorism, not defeat it. Governments must be stopped from using counter-terrorism as a pretext for repression.” Yesterday, HRW released a report detailing abuses made in the name of fighting terrorism.

The report includes case studies from China, Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and Uzbekistan.

...The Human Rights Watch report highlights systematic violation of due process rights, far-reaching restrictions on civil liberties, crackdowns against internal political movements, allegations of torture, tightening of controls on refugees and migrants and arbitrary detention of non-nationals. For instance:

The United States’ response to September 11 has seen the arbitrary and secret detention of non-citizens, secret deportation hearings and the military detention without charge or access to counsel of U.S. citizens designated as "enemy combatants;”

Two of the eighteen recently released detainees at Guantanamo Bay have cited rewards and beatings as part of the treatment.

At the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, prisoners who argue with guards are persecuted and sometimes beaten, while those who obey are rewarded with good food, clothes, hygiene, and even video games, according to interviews with the largest group of detainees set free so far from the main facility for Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects.

The eighteen men were sent back to Kabul from Guantanamo and have since been allowed to return to their homes. They were innocent of any connection to terrorism or Al Qaeda. Some were low level employees of the old Afganistan regime, e.g., drivers to Taliban leaders. To be fair, the article cites most of the released men as praising their treatment at Guantanamo. The bad treatment is apparently saved for those perceived to be terrorists or those who don't go along with the U.S.'s game plan.

Murtaza, 28, of southern Helmand province, was one of two who said they had received bad treatment. A driver for the Taliban who also fought as a soldier, his problems at Guantanamo began, he said, when he protested the confiscation of his Koran. US guards piled everyone's copies on the floor and then sat on them, he said. Murtaza also said guards had whistled loudly during the five-times-daily Muslim prayer calls, and had dragged chains on the ground to annoy inmates while they were praying. ''I was gassed till I fainted and hosed with water cannon for complaining and resisting the indignitites against the holy Koran,'' Murtaza said, pulling up his pant leg to show scars he says he got from being kicked by heavy-booted US soldiers when he protested their actions.

A U.S. spokesman denied the charges, alleging the detainees have no reason to tell the truth. That rings false to us in light of Murtaza's scars. Some more allegations:

The men said they did not know of anyone having been beaten during interrogation. But Murtaza complained about being put in rooms with frigid air-conditioning and invasive strip searches. ''It was life in a cage,'' he concluded. He said he saw a prisoner beaten until his arm broke after protesting guards dragging chains during prayers. ''There are many human beings suffering there, and praying and reciting the Koran is not a crime, nor is it proof of affiliation with the Taliban or Al Qaeda,'' he said.

If these prisoners are to be believed, and we tend to believe them, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are not being physically mistreated during interrogations, but when the authorities perceive them to be a discipline problem, the scenario changes substantially: rooms with freezing temperatures; kept naked for a week; strip searches; beatings; water torture and gassing; interruption of prayers and deprivation of prayer books.

Why did the U.S. hold these men in captivity for sixteen months before freeing them? Surely they knew fairly quicky the men were neither terrorists or criminals. How many more of the 660 men currently being warehoused at Guantanamo are being held, and perhaps mistreated, despite being innocent?

The LA Times reports that 30 captured prisoners have been flown from Afganistan to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

18 of the original detainees have been sent home. There are now 660 detainees at the Cuban naval base.

No criminal charges have been brought against any of them.

There is an excellent article by Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker on terrorism and torture. A quote:

...just as the victims of torture are utterly helpless, the perpetrators of it are utterly debased. Like capital punishment, torture is abhorrent not only for what it does to the tortured but for what it makes of the torturer. It is the perfect opposite of what we like to think our country has stood for. It is surely not what we wish to become.

Also in the New Yorker is Unembedded, journalist Hampton Side's article on why he backed out of being an embedded journalist. [Links via Bloviator who has some very good commentary of his own.]

The Advocate - Gary Hart says U.S. can't handle terror attacks:

Many municipalities are woefully unprepared for the terror threats they'll face as the country goes to war with Iraq, former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart told more than 200 people last night packed into the auditorium of the Darien Community Association.

"We're not ready, and we're about to kick open a hornet's nest in the most dangerous part of the world," said Hart, speaking on the topic of homeland security as President Bush's deadline for war passed.

The federal government has not allocated enough resources to state and local governments to fight terror, said Hart, 66, who has recently expressed interest in a 2004 presidential run.

As war loomed, Hart said the president has failed to show clear and convincing evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

"How did we get from 9/11 to the Taliban to Saddam Hussein?" he asked.

But with troops already committed to fighting a war in Iraq, Hart said Americans should stand behind the country and its troops.

"The debate is over. It will continue when the war is over," he said. "When American lives are at stake it's not the time to debate war."