'War on Terror' casts a wide net

Last Thursday, Ramzy Baroud, who teaches mass communications at the Curtin University of Technology in Malaysia, noticed that he didn't have enough pages in his US passport for the trip to Dubai, where he was to participate in the 4th annual Arab Thought Foundation conference. So he added a stop at the US Embassy in Brunei to his pre-departure "to do" list.

As he found out after waiting more than 3 hours to get his passport back, the US government had him on a list of their own.

The perplexed consular officer adjudicating Ramzy's request for extra pages said that he could not return the passport nor could he provide any explanation beyond "this is very serious" and "you're on a list". Ramzy and his family spent the weekend trapped in Brunei.

He was not idle. Then again, he rarely is. Editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com and an ardent activist on behalf of the Palestinian cause, his unflagging (and 100 per cent nonviolent) campaign to broadcast the plight of his people so alarmed Israeli officials that he is excluded from returning to Gaza, his birthplace. Of course, this is just speculation. No Israeli official has ever divulged the reason for blacklisting him.

It is entirely possible that Ramzy's predicament is a result of intelligence sharing between Tel Aviv and Washington. The Israeli designation is likely to have raised concern at the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.

During his unexpected sojourn in Brunei, Ramzy alerted friends around the world. Within 48 hours, an armada of non-governmental organisations including Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Constitutional Rights and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) along with a global network of allies had rallied to his defence.

The consular officer also had a busy weekend. Despite his repeated inquiries, the State Department had not provided him with an explanation for holding the passport. So the officer told Ramzy that he had spent hours on the internet, conducting his own rather crude background check in an effort to find some rationale for the instructions he had received.

Linda Mansour, an immigration attorney with the ADC who now represents Ramzy, said that in 26 years of practice she had never come across a case of the US government seizing an American citizen's passport while abroad.

Perhaps cognizant of the legal quicksand, State reversed course over the weekend, and the Embassy returned Ramzy's passport to him with a generous supply of extra pages. Though a welcome development, the consular officer was once again unable to explain the about face.

The delay caused Ramzy to miss the conference, and cost him thousands of dollars in phone calls and accommodations, to say nothing of the emotional anguish he and his family suffered that weekend. Yet he is not pursuing the all-American lawsuit.

Optimistic assessment

When I emailed Linda about the legal case, she replied that they are quietly seeking an explanation for all that transpired. Perhaps, as she put it, this may have been "a terrible mistake".

That optimistic assessment is actually quite plausible.

Ever since 9/11, when the nation's fear allowed the Bush administration to convert hysteria into law under the guise of national security, and with the blessing of a weak-kneed Congress, the Patriot Act and other less well-known measures have eroded prized civil liberties.

American citizens such as Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla found to be 'enemy combatants' are held indefinitely without legal representation or formally charged with a crime; for speaking to each other in Arabic, Syrian American Ahmad Al Halabi and Muslim convert James Yee, a Navy chaplain, were deemed suspicious, monitored and eventually charged with espionage; 30-year legal resident and South Florida University Professor Sami Al Arian, a tireless fundraiser and advocate for the Palestinian cause, faces 17 federal terrorism-conspiracy charges.

The silver lining? In all the cases above, and in many more, the government has failed to convince that all-important third pillar of democracy, the judicial system, that 9/11 sanctioned the suspension of American civil liberties.

In July, th Supreme Court ruled that while Congress did give US President George W. Bush the authority to detain Hamdi as an enemy combatant, Hamdi maintained the right to challenge his detention in US courts.

Innocent

In the spring, the government dropped the most serious charges against Al Halabi and Yee. On December 5, a jury in Florida found Al Arian innocent of 8 counts, and was hung on the other 9, including the most serious terrorism-related charges.

Perhaps the most promising news came in September, when federal Judge John Gleeson ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior government officials would have to testify in a lawsuit brought against them by Egyptian and Pakistani immigrants. The suit accuses them of organising a campaign to violate the rights of Muslim immigrants held at the infamous Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, an American Abu Ghraib just a few miles from the Statue of Liberty.

Gleeson's opinion recalled a 1970 Supreme Court ruling that held former President Richard Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell liable for an illegal wiretap of a radical group. As Gleeson put it, "He [the Attorney General] may on occasion have to pause to consider whether a proposed course of action can be squared with the Constitution and laws of the United States."

Bush's team isn't conceding defeat just yet. A number of legal manoeuvres are under way to circumvent the Supreme Court's decision to hear other detainees' cases. Despite his success in court, Al Arian may be deported.

But the courts are standing up to the Administration, Congress has got its mojo back (just in time for 2006 elections), and Americans are waking up to the dangers of overzealous and often discriminatory law enforcement practices.

As Benjamin Franklin put it, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither."

Maggie Mitchell Salem is a political and communications consultant based in Washington, DC. Previously, she was director of communications at the Middle East Institute and a special assistant to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.