Despite government efforts to isolate and terrorize these six individuals, many have spoken out in their support, especially among the several thousand Yemeni immigrants who live in Lackawanna, New York. Reporting from the industrial town, one reporter noted that "many people say the government is trying to find the men guilty by association." Others argue that "the Lackawanna men have been cast as criminals because of their religion and their travels, not because of some crime they committed or even plotted to commit."

Some have pledged their houses and bank accounts to secure the release of the jailed men.

Justice Department officials admit that they have no knowledge that any of the men were planning a specific or imminent attack of any kind, or that any had weapons or had ever participated in a violent act.

The prosecutors’ arguments revolve around the fact that the six men traveled to Pakistan in the spring of 2001 to study Islam, and the statement by two of them that they spent some time in Afghanistan. Also put forward as "evidence" is an e-mail message sent July 18, 2002, by Mukhtar al Bakri, one of the defendants, entitled "The Big Meal," in which he wrote, "The next meal will be very large" and "this thing will be very strong."

Bakri was seized and beaten by police in Bahrain at a party celebrating his wedding. The cops "kicked in the door, ran him to the ground, beat him and threw him in prison," stated Bakri’s lawyer, John Molloy. He was then turned over to the FBI for an interrogation in which the U.S. federal police got him to state that he had been to Afghanistan.

The case against the six U.S. citizens is being organized at the highest levels of the Justice Department, according to reports in the capitalist media. In a highly unusual move in a federal case, the six men are being held simply on the basis of a criminal complaint. Normal procedure is for an indictment to be handed down after secret grand jury proceedings. Then, and only then, would the defendants be arrested.

Instead, government officials simply incarcerated the men, orchestrated a frenzied campaign in the big-business media aimed at justifying this trampling on their constitutional rights, and only now will present their case to a grand jury.

In another development, the U.S. immigration police has been instructed starting October 1 to register and keep tabs on all men ages 16 to 45 who enter the United States from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen.

The previous month the Justice Department began applying this regulation to visitors from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya. Individuals are required to provide fingerprints, photographs, and details about their stay in the United States. Registration is required on arrival or departure. Those staying longer than a month must be interviewed at an immigration office and notify the INS within 10 days of any change of residence, employment, or academic institution.

In the first lawsuit of its kind, Hady Hassan Omar, originally from Egypt, who was arrested and held in detention for 73 days in the wake of the September 11 attacks, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government over the mistreatment he suffered in a Louisiana prison.

Omar, 23, from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was detained by FBI agents because he had purchased an airline ticket on the same Kinko’s computer that was used by one of the airline hijackers. Omar states that he was subjected to numerous invasive body cavity searches, interrogations, harassment and ridicule by the guards, was refused contact with a lawyer, and was not allowed to pray or eat according to Islamic traditions. After the authorities failed to pin a "terrorist" charge on him, they then charged Omar with overstaying his tourist visa.
 
 
Related article:
Guilt by association  
 
 
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