Guantánamo in New York City
To that end, this article is the first in a series, produced by The Nation in collaboration with Educators for Civil Liberties, to provide a systematic look at the pattern of rights abuses in the domestic “war on terror.” ECL was founded in 2008 by college faculty members concerned by the rights abuses in the case of a former Brooklyn College student and Muslim political activist, Syed Fahad Hashmi. Fahad’s arrest on charges of giving material support to Al Qaeda had topped the evening news in 2006. He was said to be a homegrown terrorist, an Al Qaeda quartermaster—a terrifying picture. But upon probing further, a different view emerged. Fahad was being held in New York, just miles away from where he grew up and from the classroom where I had taught him civil rights, in extraordinary isolation and sensory deprivation. He would spend the next three years in solitary confinement awaiting trial. An American citizen charged in federal court, Fahad was being prosecuted with evidence that he was not allowed to review. The centerpiece of the government’s case against him was a cooperating witness, Mohammed Junaid Babar, who had stayed with Fahad in his London apartment and borrowed Fahad’s cellphone. Babar had in his luggage raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks that he then took to an Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan. Finally, part of the government’s case against Fahad—a Salafi Muslim and member of the controversial political group Al Muhajiroun—were his political activities and speeches while a student at Brooklyn College.
My faculty colleagues and I, believing ourselves to be knowledgeable, informed citizens, were stunned to realize how little we knew about what was going on right under our noses—that researchers and human rights advocates, focused on the horrors abroad in the “war on terror” (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition), had largely overlooked the civil rights abuses happening right here at home. We initiated a petition about these concerns in Fahad’s case, which was signed by more than 550 scholars and writers in the spring of 2008. But almost no one, save The Chronicle of Higher Education and longtime civil libertarian Nat Hentoff in The Village Voice, covered it. Fahad’s family and friends, still living in Queens, New York, where he grew up, worked to draw attention to his case but encountered little help and much fear. A year later, I decided to write the story myself: “Guantánamo at Home” was published by The Nation in April 2009. That article galvanized a grassroots movement in New York, leading to weekly vigils for seven months outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Fahad and others were being held. That movement was later used by the government and federal judge to justify an anonymous jury and extra security for Fahad’s trial. The day before the start of his trial, Fahad accepted a government plea deal for one count of conspiracy to provide material support. He was sentenced to fifteen years and is now incarcerated at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
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Meanwhile, local movements sprang up across the country—usually led by family members and their community allies—to draw attention to other cases. From Boston to Fort Dix, from New York to Virginia, people wrote petitions, held rallies, attended court hearings and attempted to expose the government’s conduct in these cases. While many of the larger human rights groups focused on Guantánamo, while investigative journalists and academic researchers looked overseas, these small bands of people attempted to bring these domestic issues to the forefront. This work was often lonely and chilling. They faced judges who allowed the use of classified evidence, inflammatory “experts” and stings in which government informants masterminded and supplied the “plots.” The government sanctioned the use of prolonged pretrial solitary confinement and special administrative measures (which add another layer of isolation by restricting a prisoner’s communication with the outside world). Almost without exception, this produced pleas and convictions carrying long—sometimes lifetime—sentences, often under deeply inhumane conditions at the federal supermax in Florence or the Communication Management Units in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Marion, Illinois. Over and over, the mainstream media refused to dig deeper, taking these prosecutions and convictions at face value as justice being served. Over and over, appeals courts upheld these decisions, and there was little sustained public response.
Just because something is legal does not make it just. Many of the most egregious rights violations in American history—slavery, the seizure of Indian land, segregation and the expansion of the penal system, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the firing of gay and communist-sympathizing federal employees during the McCarthy era—were accomplished and legitimated through the law. Most of these historical instances were undertaken as necessary security measures. It took public dissent and a sustained outcry, long and arduous struggles, to reveal the rights abuses embodied in the law.
Understanding the threat that such abuses pose to constitutional values and international human rights standards, The Nation has committed to this series in order to closely examine law enforcement, legal practices and core assumptions in the domestic “war on terror.” These articles will run monthly under the banner “America After 9/11” and will feature a diverse array of scholars, researchers and advocates to fill in the different parts of the picture. As the late British historian Tony Judt reminded us: “We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right?… We must learn once again to pose [these questions].”
Dave Zirin recently exposed “How the NYPD Uses Sports for Surveillance.”
