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Innocence is No Defense: Three Suspicious Cases
by INDEPENDENT STAFF
September 2004
Late this May, Attorney General John Ashcroft released photos of seven suspected terrorists as one of the government's “Be on the Look-out Alerts.” Over the next twenty-four hours, the FBI received more than 2,000 tips from all over the country, one of which came from an employee of a Philadelphia water pump facility who noticed that one of his co-workers, a Jordanian, bore a striking resemblance to the wanted Kuwaiti Amer el-Maati. So he revealed his suspicions to the boss, who contacted law enforcement officials, who began to inquire about the man's immigration status.
According to Engy Abdelkader, an attorney at the Council of Islamic-American Relations, the Jordanian had been in this country legally since 2000 or 2001 with a green card. Green card holders are required to have their cards on them at all times, but the Jordanian man was in the habit of leaving his at home for safekeeping. The law enforcement officials who picked him up refused to allow him to return to his home, several blocks away, to retrieve the card and prove his legal status. Instead, they took him to the precinct and threatened to arrest him. Finally acknowledging that he was not the Kuwaiti suspect, they released him.
A week later, Abdelkader explained, the Jordanian man came home to find a card from an FBI agent slipped in his door. When he called the number, he was asked to report alone to a meeting with the agent and a Philadelphia Police Department detective. During that meeting, he was reminded that he resembled the wanted Kuwaiti, and the officials began to question him about his mosque.
“‘Have you seen any airplane seats or weapons at your mosque?'” Abdelkader claims they inquired of her client. “‘You might be in some trouble. Do you want to get married? Because we can make that difficult for you—unless you cooperate.' He was asked to be a government informant.” Overwhelmed, unsure of his rights, her client agreed to a follow-up meeting with the authorities.
In the interim, the Jordanian contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and retained Abdelkader as his counsel. CAIR placed several calls to the FBI inquiring about their interest in the Jordanian man, but the calls were not returned.
A week later, the Jordanian received a letter from Special Agent William Riley of the Department of Homeland Security, summoning him to the 5th floor of 1600 Callowhill Street at 9 a.m. on Monday, July 12 to meet with Special Agent Mark Olexa. To the agent's surprise, he arrived with Abdelkader, she remembers.
“The immigration agent was completely surprised [to see me],” she explained. “I think that if I wasn't there he would have asked a completely different set of questions. I said listen, it's already been determined that he's not this individual [the Kuwaiti]. What has this to do with his immigration status? You have his green card. Why are we here?
And then he said he needed an extra fingerprint, something completely bogus, and that was it. They left and he hasn't been bothered since.”
Olexa said that that he was unable to comment to the media. Calls to his supervisor were not returned. Chief Inspector Joseph O'Connor of the Philadelphia Police Department's Counter-Terrorism Bureau was unable to recall the case.
On September 11, 2001, Philadelphia resident Nabil Ayesh pulled up to a stop sign outside a police station in Upper Darby. Ayesh, a Palestinian, struck an officer as suspicious, and he was detained, jailed and transferred in the middle of the night to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
According to attorney Sally Baraka, who helped coordinate Ayesh's legal assistance, the authorities there determined that Ayesh was none other than Osama bin Laden. After one year and twenty-five days in jail, over which time it was determined that he was not, in fact, Osama bin Laden, Ayesh was released. His wife and children had already been deported, and his van, full of construction tools, had been confiscated and auctioned off.
In late April 2003, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Ayesh had been arrested again in upstate New York. According to the article, Ayesh was a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding. The officers were not satisfied with the documents he produced, and put him back in jail.
Stefan Presser, Ayesh's counsel, told the Inquirer that Israel had decided to accept his return. He was deported, Baraka said, and has not been heard from since. Marwan Kreidie, executive director of the Arab American Development Council, said that while the local Arab community enjoys a good relationship with the Philadelphia Police Department and the FBI, immigration is “a different story.”
Immigration attorney Anser Ahmed agreed.
“They arrest anyone they think is suspicious. They've taken a power-hungry approach—they're doing it, they're getting away with it, nobody seems to mind. If you're going to deport people, deport everybody. Don't just focus on certain groups.”
On September 11, 2002, an Arab American family was eating lunch at Macaroni Grill in Willow Grove. While they waited, they took advantage of the crayons on the table to doodle on the restaurant's paper tableclothes. The father, unhappy with a local strike, drew a yellow school bus. Someone else, perhaps the 80-year old grandmother at the table, drew an airplane.
Several days later, the FBI paid a visit to the family's house. The family believes a Macaroni Grill employee reported their credit card, which was then traced.
Kreidie, who sent letters to the Macaroni Grill on the family's behalf, “didn't want to make a big stink about it.” But, he added, “We should have.”
Malia Brink, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said Muslims in the United States are often hesitant to speak out publicly about perceived infringements to their rights. “They're a hard nut to crack,” she said. “They think if they keep quiet, if they cooperate, it will blow over.”
Brink said she believed that law enforcement officials are not just profiling members of the Arab American community, but targeting them. “There is more prosecution for minor offenses,” she explained. “Those things are very disconcerting … It's as though they want to get any conviction on this person so they can never come back to the United States.
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