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Thu 11 Sep, 2003 09:40 am
FBI Agent, Once Involved in Arrests, Helps Clear Records of Men Detained After 2001 Attacks
By Kimberly Hefling Associated Press Writer
Published: Sep 11, 2003
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - An FBI agent who helped arrest eight Egyptian men in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks became the driving force behind clearing their names, an arduous process that eventually led to a rare public apology from the FBI.
FBI Agent Thomas Van Wormer said he felt a responsibility to help the men, whose names cropped up on a far-reaching database - paired with the word "terrorism" - even after they were cleared of suspicion.
The database had nightmarish consequences for the men: One missed two flights home from an overseas trip when his name showed up on a no-fly list. Others had problems getting public housing and immigration cards.
"I want to commend them for the way they acted," Van Wormer said from his office in downtown Evansville. "It made it so you wanted to help them. Their demeanor was to their benefit."
Van Wormer began investigating the men after one of their wives called a law-enforcement hotline set up after Sept. 11, 2001. She said one of the men "would be traveling to Chicago's O'Hare airport, was going to engage in a suicide crash, and that he would be dead on Oct. 12, 2001," according to federal documents.
The woman passed a lie-detector test, but her husband - using an interpreter to take the test - showed some signs of deception, although he did not blatantly lie, Van Wormer said.
The woman then alleged other men were also involved. Authorities became more suspicious when they learned one of the men, Tarek Albasti, had taken pilot lessons.
The men were taken into custody on material-witness warrants and spent about a week in a Chicago detention center. Investigators released the group after deciding the woman's statements were not true. Van Wormer said cultural and language barriers were likely to blame for the man's lie-detector test results.
But the arrests continued to haunt the men because of the database.
Each time they ran into trouble, Van Wormer tried to help. "I felt a sense of responsibility with it," he said.
The woman who made the allegation wasn't charged with any crime, because authorities determined she believed she was telling the truth, based on the lie detector results.
It was unclear why the woman made the claim. One of the men who was detained has said he thinks she was angry when she found out her husband had children back in Egypt and called authorities to get even.
Thomas V. Fuentes, the FBI agent in charge of the bureau's Indianapolis office, apologized to the men April 23 for the problems they experienced after their release.
Van Wormer credits Fuentes with getting a federal court order to clear the men's names. Fuentes is now on assignment in Iraq.
"This is very, very unusual to have their records expunged like this," Van Wormer said.
At least two of the men have moved back to Egypt. Some who stayed have thanked Van Wormer.
Arabs, Muslims Ponder 'Home' Two Years After 9/11
SEPTEMBER 11/RIGHTS:
Arabs, Muslims Ponder 'Home' Two Years After 9/11
IPS North American Team
MONTREAL, Sep 10 (IPS) - Some were arrested without charge and held in jail despite their rights to freedom. Others were sneered at, spat upon or even attacked.
Various reports have detailed how Arabic and Muslim citizens and residents of the United States and Canada -- or people who simply looked like they could be from those groups -- were denied their dignity and due process following the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on Sep. 11, 2001.
Some of them say that after facing an initial barrage of hate they were just as suddenly flooded with support; others that they still struggle to conceive of the nations that treated them with such disdain as ''home'', and some people have given up and are hoping for a day when they can afford to leave.
We present some of their stories here:
Days after terrorists flew planes into U.S. landmarks on 9/11, Usama Sultan, an Egyptian PhD candidate in computational linguistics at the University of Maryland said his students teased him about his name.
"They were joking. They asked when I'd be getting my pilot's license."
The 35-year-old teacher said he took the kidding lightly, but from that day he knew that people would never look at his name -- which he now shares with the world's most wanted man, Usama bin Laden -- in the same way.
But the biggest change in Usama's life has been the feeling that the United States might not be a place where he will live after he obtains his degree, scheduled for next year. He had wanted to live in the country for good.
Other foreign students began talking about how his records perhaps were being passed to U.S. security agents. Many said their phones were being bugged, their emails read and their contacts scrutinised.
Foreign students say they now have to deal with press articles, especially in right-wing publications, urging a security clampdown on some of them, which, Usama said, "makes you feel you are living with sharks".
Roughly 500,000 foreign students attend U.S. colleges and universities. Since 9/11 many have had to register with U.S. authorities and endure the process of constantly proving that they attend their classes regularly. The number of Arab students has fallen by 15 percent.
"They do not torture us," Usama said. But "it is irritating and now if I can live somewhere without that irritation, I'll do" that.
Fatima Najm remembers well the last trip she took to the United States. It was January and she flew to Miami in search of some sun and a break from the Canadian winter.
''While a close friend packed minute swimsuits and pondered the sun protection factor of our chosen suntan lotion, I sat frazzled on the floor because I'd misplaced my character certificates and a package of recent articles," Najm wrote in a recent article in the 'Toronto Star' newspaper.
(A journalist, she used the articles as proof that she was a "legitimate" traveller.)
Her friend ''couldn't understand the panicked search that ensued. She couldn't grasp the nuances of my mother's fears as she helped us locate the missing pieces of paper, without which I would not have left for the airport."
"As a blue-eyed blonde, she could never know the indignity of being profiled as a potential security threat as you take off for a fun-filled vacation. And I am glad, because I wouldn't wish it on anyone.''
Najm became a Canadian citizen this July. Formerly a writer at the Star, she now studies and holds three part-time jobs. She is a Sunni Muslim and a self-described ''moderate''.
She also has some questions for her new country.
Najm starts with the website for CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, where "it mentions Sunni Muslims as the problem (religious extremism) under the heading 'terrorism'," she says in an email interview.
''Surely there are better ways to keep the public informed than to paint us all with the same brush."
"The problem with rhetoric like this," Najm adds, "is that it creates an us-versus-them scenario, so that Canadian Muslims will feel less and less accepted, and will feel more and more resentful."
"How will we craft a cohesive Canadian identity when we are being stereotyped like this? Who will feel welcome as a Canadian?"
James Zogby asked himself similar questions when the phones started to ring the day after the terrorist attacks. The founder and president of the Arab American Institute in Washington DC heard words like "all you Arabs should die".
You feel ''like you're not part of the country anymore," he told IPS. ''My family has been here 100 years. How long do you have to be here to not get these calls?''
''There was alienation, numbness, a feeling that I can't be a part of this anymore, that I should be ashamed, afraid, looking over my shoulder."
''Then came something quite extraordinary -- a backlash to the backlash. I got a call from (Massachusetts Senator) Ted Kennedy, asking what he could do to help ... By the third, fourth day after the crisis, a dozen senators and political leaders had called, sometimes getting quite emotional, asking how to help and protect me and my family.''
''The media became overwhelmingly supportive. People made brownies and potluck lunches for us. As gratuitous as the threats were, equally gratuitous was the overwhelming support ... It made me feel like people were saying to us, in effect, 'this is your country and don't let anyone change this'.''
Zogby points a finger at one particular agency for causing many of the problems faced by members of his community since Sep. 11 -- the Department of Justice. "We have received a great deal of support from churches and others in government," he adds.
But ''even with the bad, in balance, the good has far outweighed it and there has been an extraordinarily strong outpouring of support."
''It has settled into a new set of circumstances that are not as easily definable as one might want to have it be, but it's different, you can feel it, it's just not the way it was.''
Computational Linguistics?
Gak!
BBB, I have to admit that when I finally finish, I will probably be looking for a faculty postion in Canada or Europe.
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