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Media reports – May 27, 2008
Arab-American agent not allowed to work on important counterterrorism assignments
Washington, May 21: The FBI’s highest-ranking Arab-American agent told a congressional panel today that he is not being allowed to work on important counterterrorism assignments, despite a shortage of agents who speak Arabic.
Bassem Youssef, chief of the communications analysis unit of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said only 62 percent of posts were filled in the counterterrorism unit. In other words, more than one out of every three positions in an elite FBI division that tracks Al-Qaeda terrorists is vacant.
Egyptian-born Bassem Youssef, a Coptic Christian, has been an agent with the FBI since 1988. Youssef, who is represented by the National Whistleblower Center, has sued the FBI, claiming he was discriminated against for not being posted on counterterrorism assignments since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The suit alleges Youssef has been passed over for promotions inside the counterterrorism division after voicing concern about less qualified agents being promoted.
CAIR – May 27, 2008
Mission foods fires six Muslim women
over Islamic attire
ST. PAUL, MN, May 27, 2008 - The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called on Mission Foods (also known as Gruma Corporation) to rehire six Muslim workers allegedly fired from a plant in New Brighton, Minnesota for refusing to wear tight-fitting pants and shirts as part of a new company uniform.
CAIR-MN said the workers were fired after a new manager implemented a dress code that did not accommodate the Muslim women, whose religious beliefs require them to dress modestly and prohibit them from wearing tight or revealing clothing.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Minnesota Human Rights Act requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of their employees unless an "undue hardship" would prevent them from doing so.
The company, which produces Mexican tortillas and chips, cited safety concerns in implementing the dress code. However, CAIR-MN noted that all six Muslim women were packagers stationed at tables, and did not work on a conveyor belt. No safety issues have emerged regarding Muslim dress in the last 2 years the Muslim women have been employed. OSHA inspectors did not cite the plant for any hazards relating to employee dress during an inspection earlier this year. Furthermore, new management implemented the new uniform policy in February 2008, accommodated the women initially by allowing them to wear lab coats, and then abruptly took that accommodation away in April 2008.
CAIR-MN offered to help the company and its employees reach a mutually agreeable solution to the dispute. “We are certain that a resolution can be reached that is satisfactory to both the employees and the employer,” said CAIR-MN Civil Rights Coordinator Taneeza Islam. One possible solution Ms. Islam offered is re-instituting the lab coats.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - May 6, 2008
FBI says men in ferry photo were innocent sightseers
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
The FBI has called off a global manhunt for two men who looked Middle Eastern and were spotted snapping pictures and demonstrating "suspicious behavior" on a Washington ferry last summer.
The men appeared at a U.S. Embassy two weeks ago and identified themselves as European business consultants who were on a trip to Seattle, FBI officials said Monday.
Special Agent in Charge Laura Laughlin said the men took a couple of days off in the middle of the July visit and decided to ride a car ferry. They took photos to show relatives back home, she said.
FBI agents have seen the photos and found them to be innocuous, as were the pair's business activities, Laughlin said.
The consultants came forward to clear their names, stating that they feared getting arrested if they returned to the United States. They gave U.S. Embassy officials documentation of their identities, jobs and the reason for their trip to the U.S. last summer.
The men, described as residents of a European Union country, were not identified.
Photos of the pair, taken by Washington State Ferries employees, were released to the news media in August in an effort to identify and locate them, after an investigation found that they "showed an inordinate interest in the operation of the shipboard systems," the FBI said at the time.
Two years ago, a Justice Department report named the Washington ferry system as a top target for maritime terrorism.
The decision to release the photos was controversial, in part because some news organizations chose not to publish them. The Seattle P-I ruled out publication, citing civil liberties and privacy concerns, which editors felt outweighed the newsworthiness of the images.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights and advocacy group, said "the authorities handled this situation quite well." "I have no indication that the authorities went beyond what they are allowed to do. Reports were brought to them and they checked them out the best they could."
But Hooper wasn't happy with some other responses: "Anti-Muslim Internet hate sites; the bloggers; the ones that routinely say 'round up the usual Muslim suspects'; the extremist commentators that would be willing give up the rights of others to create a false sense of security for themselves.
"Media outlets that chose not to pander to this type of hysteria made the right choice and indeed protected the reputation of people who were doing nothing more than sightseeing," Hooper said.
"At the time, there was a hue and cry that it was justified to single these people out merely based on their appearance and the perception that they may have been Middle Eastern or Muslim, and that perception was used to justify profiling them for security concerns," he added.
"Once there is a perception that the individual is Muslim or Middle Eastern, every subsequent act becomes suspicious in the eyes of the onlooker."…………..
The FBI, in a statement issued Monday, thanked "the many media organizations worldwide that published the photographs and ultimately played a prominent role in resolving this matter, allowing the investigative resources of the multiple law enforcement agencies to be redirected to other important matters."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/361872_ferryterror06.html
May 5, 2008
New York Times Exposes Immigrant Deaths in Custody
A front-page article on May 5, New York Times provides some insight into the barbaric treatment of immigrants held in US custody. After obtaining a government list through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Times investigated the circumstances surrounding a number of immigrant deaths that occurred in detention centers between 2004 and 2007.
Sixty-six immigrants died in custody during those three years, according to the scantly detailed list, compiled by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in January under pressure from Congress to provide an accounting of its treatment of prisoners. At that time, the House passed a bill—which later stalled in the Senate—that would have required states receiving specific federal funds to report deaths of prisoners.
The Times article (“Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in Custody,” by Nina Bernstein, May 5, 2008) describes the immigrant detention system as “a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration.” The prisons, through which some 330,000 people pass each year according to ICE, are run with little oversight and little documentation Within this system, thousands of immigrants are “locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them,” the Times notes. “Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.”
Many who are swept up in ICE raids have committed no crime beyond simply overstaying their visas, and others are needlessly imprisoned while their citizenship applications are processed in the government system. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, an agency created by the Bush administration as part of its clampdown on democratic rights in the name of the so-called “war on terror.”
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