Accusations by U.S. officials that they were part of an "al Qaeda sleeper cell" have fed a frenzied campaign in the big-business media to justify the trampling of their constitutional rights.

FBI agents arrested one of the six, Mukhtar al-Bakri, at his wedding party in Bahrain. The others being held are Shafal Mosed, 24, Yahya Goba, 25, Sahim Alwan, 29, Yasein Taher, 24, and Faysal Galab, 26.

Federal officials announced September 17 that they are pursuing Kamal Derwish, another alleged member of the group, in Yemen.

Justice Department officials admitted that they had no evidence that any kind of attack by these individuals was imminent, nor that any of them had any weapons, or had ever participated in any violent act.

Their "crime," in the eyes of U.S. officials, stems from the fact that in the spring of 2001 they traveled to Pakistan to study Islamic religion and culture under the auspices of Tablighi Jamaat, a religious group. The organization holds an annual three-day gathering near Lahore, Pakistan, which last year attracted 1 million people.

The law under which they are being charged--the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act--was put into effect in 1996 under the Clinton administration. This act, which was also used to charge John Walker Lindh, makes it illegal to provide "material support or resources" to any group designated by the U.S. government as a "terrorist" organization. "Material support," according to the legislation, encompasses almost anything of value except for medical and religious supplies.

Defenders of constitutional rights point out that the law is based on guilt by association. Under the legislation, U.S. authorities can define terrorism to include a broad range of activities protected by the First Amendment, "including merely writing an op-ed piece or lobbying," noted David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University.

Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Muslim clergyman Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, 40, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, was arrested September 8 by U.S. officials before boarding a plane to the Middle East after an airport screening machine registered traces of TNT in his bags.

"We’re talking molecules here," stated Charles Lewis, a lawyer for Kariye. Lewis asserted that the whole incident was the result of technical mistakes by a machine designed to vacuum particles and pinpoint explosives. No bomb was ever found. More than 100 people from mosques around the Pacific Northwest rallied September 10 in support of Kariye, who is being held on two charges of Social Security fraud.

On September 13 police in Florida closed off a section of a main highway as they stopped and searched two cars being driven by three medical students. They took the action following a phone call made by a woman in Calhoun, Georgia, who said she overheard the students plotting a terrorist attack at a Shoney’s restaurant.

The three individuals--Kambiz Butt, 25, Ayman Gheith, 27, and Omar Choudhary, 23--were detained and interrogated for 17 hours. They later told CNN that the conversation the woman claimed to have heard was actually about "bringing down" a car for school transportation for the next semester.

The three are U.S. citizens, of Jordanian or Pakistani background, who are enrolled at Ross University Medical School on the Caribbean island of Dominica. They were en route to Miami to begin a nine-week internship at Larkin Community Hospital. After the incident became headline news, the president of the hospital, Jack Michel, announced that the students would no longer be welcome to work there.  
 
 
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