Memorials
By Judy Bello
31 August, 2012
Countercurrents.org
A few weeks ago, I attended a memorial service for 6 Sikhs killed while praying in their Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, by a homicidal racist. Members of various interfaith groups gathered here in Rochester, NY, far from the site of the crime to listen to representatives of local churches, mosque, synagogue and temple pray in their various traditions for the victims, and embrace the Sikh community within our larger community of faith. This massacre was preceded by another, about a week before, where a mentally unbalanced young man shot up a movie theater with an automatic rifle, killing 12 and wounding many more. Ironically, one of the trailers preceding the film depicted a group of men shooting into a movie theater audience and killing all present. The victims of these terrible events received broad sympathetic coverage in the Mainstream Media. Both shooters were white men born in America. Both have been presented by the press as mentally ill, and the one who is still alive, a many with a long history of white supremacist activism and racist expression, will most likely use this as his defense.
Last weekend, I attended a memorial at the Masjid As-Salam, an inner city Mosque in Albany, NY. We were commemorating the 8th year since the arrest of two innocent Muslim men, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hussain, who were subsequently convicted of charges related to terrorism and shipped off to prison for 15 years apiece. Aref and Hussain were ensnared in an FBI Sting operation in 2004, carried out by a convicted criminal who was paid $32,000 for his trouble and relieved of the consequences of his own crimes. A pathological liar with a proclivity for fraud was precisely the man for the job of setting up two innocent, good hearted men. Though neither of these men had any interest in terrorism, and neither had any inclination to break the law, they were arrested on the basis of loose talk by the provocateur in their presence. Engaged by his apparent flattery and generosity, these men repeatedly counseled him to set aside his anger and forgo violence, insisting that jihad is an inner process.
Accustomed to wild talk in their raw immigrant community, they ignored his nonsensical talk of weapons and wars in Kashmir, a place with no particular resonance for either of them, while he, claiming to be a wealthy businessman, put together a much needed business loan for Hussain, which was later witnessed by Aref (like a notary) in his capacity as Imam of the inner city Mosque where they worshiped. In fact, the FBI claimed at one point, they had something to do with a ridiculous, nonexistent plot to kill a Pakistani Ambassador in NYC. However, their absolute rejection of this plan foiled it. After following the recent news of Iranian plots, one has to wonder that there is so little imagination with regard to the plots the FBI dreams up for potential enemies.
Yassin, I will call him Yassin since I have been corresponding with him in prison, left behind a wife and 4 children. Actually, I call him Kak Yassin, which in the Kurdish culture where his roots are, means Brother Yassin. He calls me Dada Judy, or Aunt Judy. These are nice polite Kurdish honorifics based on family relationships. Its ironic, really, that Yassin was ostensibly targeted as a terrorist due to his name appearing in an address book in Kurdistan (where his extended family still live) as 'Kak' Yassin, which they translated as 'Commander' Yassin. This is an inconceivable mistake from the standpoint of Kurdish culture.
I first heard Yassin's story from his lawyer, Steve Downs, who heads an organization called Project SALAM, which provides support to victims of what Steve likes to call "preemptive prosecution". These are individuals who have been arrested, tried on the basis of spurious charges devolving from sting operations, and then put in jail for a very long time, because someone somewhere was concerned that they might some day commit a crime. Project SALAM has a board that they put up whenever they have an event, with the names of more than a hundred victims of preemptive prosecution. Would it surprise you to know that all but a handful of these individuals are Muslim men? This is a painful truth for the communities they hail from, mostly poor inner city immigrant communities populated by refugees and people pursuing the great American dream of security and prosperity for their families. Steve mentioned Yassin to me because I had recently returned from visiting Suleimaniya, a Kurdish city near where he was born.
As it turns out, Yassin had a peripheral role in the sting that landed him and Mohammed Hussain in prison, though he was the primary target of that sting. Hussain needed a loan, so he was used to get to Yassin. The provocateur offered an Islamic loan to Hussain, i.e. a personal loan with no interest. Usury is 'haram', or forbidden in Islam. Perhaps someone ought to mention this to the Gulf Emirates, where they promote fundamentalist Islam while engaging in money laundering and credit card processing for the entire region. As Imam of the Mosque, Yassin witnessed Hussain's loan as tradition requires. Neither Aref nor Hussain did anything illegal, or tried to hide his activities. In fact, after a while, they did start to question the veracity of their benefactor, but the loan was enacted as a kind of shell game which required that they constantly jump through hoops to keep it afloat so they were drawn deeper and deeper into a convoluted process with no clean end and no way out.
I met Fatima Hussain, Mohammed's wife the evening before the memorial. A warm and friendly woman, she was talking about her concerns for her husbands health. The food in prison is not good for a diabetic, and his blood pressure is high as well. She had to give up the family Pizza shop, and has the equipment in storage. Members of Project SALAM and the Muslim Support Group have helped her to maintain the rental property Hussain had used the loan to fix up. Her 6 children were around somewhere, and her granddaughter playfully set a toy on her head over the colorful shawl she wore to cover her hair as we spoke. Focused on our conversation, she didn't bother to lift her hand to remove it. We talked about how none of us have jobs with income to match those we had 8 years ago.
On this visit the day before our Memorial, Yassin's youngest daughter Dilnia, born after his incarceration, had been brought to the Mosque by her brother. A bright and busy second grader, she was flitting around the women's room in a cotton sundress like a little butterfly, asking questions, and laughing at the answers. The next evening, Dilnia arrived in jeans and cowboy shirt, still curious and laughing. after listening to her older sister Alaa give a brief memorial for their father, I met her mother Zuhur. Zuhur was standing outside the Mosque after our vigil, dressed in black, her face streaked with tears. Despite receiving the generous support of the local community and members of Project SALAM, she moves from one crisis to the next. Her husband has been gone for 8 years, and she struggles with her loneliness.
Today she is upset because, having grown up in rural Iraq, and immigrated through the UN Refugee program, she has no papers, no birth certificate, no green card, no documented citizenship. She says she wants to visit her family. She knows that when Yassin is released in another 7 or 8 years, he will be deported (to Iraq, I assume - but). Supporters are raising the not insignificant sum required to send 5 people to Iraq so his family can follow him. But Zuhur does not have the necessary papers to travel, much less emigrate, and her children will have grown up in Albany, NY. Dilnia, at least, is an American citizen by birth. Zuhur is stateless. The problem spins in her mind, blocking her ability to conceptualize a happy ending, a reunion, the restoration to wholeness of her family.
Our Memorial on August 4th commemorated the loss of Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hussain to their families and their community. But we should not forget the other hundred plus people removed from their lives. A few of them came attended the Memorial for Yassin and Mohammed. Alicia McCollum spoke on behalf of her nephew, David Williams, one of the Newburgh 4, a group of 4 impoverished black men, with mental and social liabilities, set up by the same provocateur who had ensnared Aref and Hussein. They said that they were just conning him and had no intention of following through with the crime. They needed the money. Their criminal mentor was paid $250,000 for entrapping them, a schizophrenic, a drug addict, a guy with a sick relative, and sending them to jail for 25 years apiece. Do you feel safe now?
Shahina Parveen and Fahd Ahmed of DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), an immigrant advocacy organization in NYC attended. Fahd translated for Shahina while she told the story of her mildly retarded son, Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was entrapped by an FBI provocateur, paid $100, 00o too send him to prison. According to Shahina, the agent pursued Matin relentlessly, calling and coming by, asking him to go to certain inflammatory websites and download information. Later, inciting him to vent his frustration and rage in verbal diatribes suitable for recording and prejudicing a jury that would later sentence him to 30 years in prison for participating in a scheme that was never enacted, which he had not conceived, and which he had neither the resources or competence to organize on his own. Since no crime was actually committed, it is not certain that Siraj would have followed through, but another victim of the provocateur, a schizophrenic 'friend' of Siraj introduced to him by the provocateur, testified that Siraj was really going to commit the crime if given the opportunity, in return for being released by the court. Shahina lives with a mother's grief at the loss of her child, and the indignation of citizen betrayed by her government.
And then there are the hundred other stories of lost youth and lost lives; young men like Ziyad Yaghi, another young Muslim American imprisoned for over 30 years for big talk in the presence of a government provocateur; Syed Fahad Hashmi, a young man sentenced to 20 years because his friend (the provocateur) left a backpack full of socks and rain-gear in his apartment, which were later reported as donations for terrorists in Afghanistan. Then there are the cases of those accused because of their charitable initiatives towards the suffering people's of the besieged countries of the Middle East and SW Asia; Dr Aafia Siddiqui, tortured, incarcerated, shot nearly dead, robbed of her children, at least one of whom appears to have died, and now serving 86 years in a Texas Prison; Dr Rafil Dhafir of Syracuse, an Iraqi Immigrant, sentenced to 22 years in prison for providing charity, food and medicines, through Mosques in Iraq during the sanctions; the Holy Land 5, respected Arabic businessmen, sentenced to 65 years for donating to charities run by Hamas in Gaza (where the need is and was desperate) before Hamas was put on the terrorist list; 73 year old Lynne Stewart, sentenced to 14 months for violating 'special administrative procedures' (for terrorism suspects) by publicly sharing a message from her client, then later re-sentenced to 10 years for 'lack of remorse'.
The list goes on and on. What of these victims of government scams and well paid sociopath fraudsters, of hysterical biases blowing trivial actions out of proportion, of charitable actions misconstrued as support for 'terrorism'? What about their mothers and wives and children? How many communities across the nation will gather to mourn them? Where are the indignant cries of the broader public?
For more information on project SALAM, visit http://projectsalam.org
For information on Yassin Aref, visit http://yassinaref.com
To read a detailed description of the arrest and trial of Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hussain:
read Shamshad Ahmad's book "Rounded Up" (available on both the above listed websites). As President of the Masjid As-Salam he knows the individuals well, and was present throughout the ordeal.
Judy Bello is currently a full time activist thanks to the harsh and unforgiving work environment in the Software Development Industry. Finally free to focus on her own interests in her home office, she is active with The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, with United National Antiwar Coalition and with Fellowship of Reconciliation Middle East Task Force, and often posts on their blog at http://forusa.org. She has been to Iran twice with FOR Peace Delegations, and spent a month in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya in 2009. She is looking forward to going to Pakistan in a few weeks to talk to victims of the US drone campaign in Pakistan’s Northwest Territory. Her personal blog, Towards a Global Perspective, is at http://blog.papillonweb.net and she administers the Upstate anti-Drone Coalition website at http://upstatedroneaction.org.
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