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Jun. 17th, 2005 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexmegami16-year-old Muslim girl from Queens thought to be potential suicide bomber; forced to leave America
It is not known what prompted the authorities to investigate Tashnuba, who says the accusations are false. But in a series of interviews - her first - she said the government had apparently discovered her visits to an Internet chat room where she took notes on sermons by a charismatic Islamic cleric in London, a sheik who has long been accused of encouraging suicide bombings.
An F.B.I. agent, posing as a youth counselor, first confronted Tashnuba in her bedroom, going through her school papers and questioning everything from her views on jihad to her posterless walls, she said. Sent to a center for delinquents in Pennsylvania, Tashnuba said she was interrogated without a lawyer or parent present, about her beliefs and those of her friends, mainly American girls she had met at city mosques.
...
But Tashnuba says that she opposes suicide bombing, that her interest in the cleric was casual, and that the government treated her like a criminal simply for exercising the freedoms of speech and religion that America had taught her.
As she tells it, F.B.I. agents tried to twist mundane details of her life to fit the profile of a terrorist recruit, and when they could not make a case, covered their tracks by getting her out of the country. In fact, the court order of "voluntary departure" that let her leave requires a finding that the person is not deportable for endangering national security.
Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen - allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings.
...
From the beginning, the government framed this case as purely an immigration matter. When a dozen federal agents plucked the girl from her home in a dawn raid on March 24, they cited only the expiration of her mother's immigration papers, telling the family that Tashnuba would probably be returned the next day.
Instead, after two weeks of frantic inquiries by her parents, The New York Times learned that Tashnuba was one of two girls being held, officially on their parents' immigration violations, but actually for questioning by F.B.I.'s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
According to a government document provided to The Times by a federal official, the F.B.I. asserted that the girls presented "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." The document cited no evidence. And in background interviews, federal officials were quick to play down the case as soon as reporters called, characterizing the investigation as a pre-emptive move against potential candidates for recruitment, not the disruption of a plot.
...
Veering between "nice and awful," she said, up to three agents at a time pressed her about possible terrorist ties among her friends, and what they saw as suspicious tendencies in her schoolwork, like class notes about suicide. She said they even criticized the austere décor of the bedroom she shared with her 10-year-old sister.
"The F.B.I. tried to say I didn't have a life - like, I wasn't the typical teenager," Tashnuba said bitterly, fingering her long Muslim dress. "They thought I was anti-American because I didn't want to compromise, but in my high-school ethics class we had Communists, Democrats, Republicans, Gothics - all types. In all our classes, we were told, 'You speak up, you give your opinion, and you defend it.' "
The lesson backfired, she said, when she found herself stubbornly debating the Koran's definitions of jihad with the lead F.B.I. agent: Foria Younis, a Muslim immigrant of a much more secular stripe.
"It got personal," Tashnuba said.
...
A government psychiatrist concluded that she was neither suicidal nor homicidal, and recommended her release. But the agents, Tashnuba said, kept "trying to link me to the psychological state." They zeroed in on the single artificial rose in her bedroom (her little sister's); a psychology course (required by her correspondence program), and an essay she wrote about the Department of Homeland Security (assigned as a writing evaluation by her tutor).
The tutor, Asmaa Samad, recalled the essay as innocuous: "It said nothing derogative, nothing unpatriotic." Tashnuba said agents seized on one part. "I wrote, 'I feel like Muslims are being targeted, they're being outcasted more.'"
But instead of backing away from opinions that the agents seemed to find alarming, Tashnuba said she dug in her heels, especially on her belief in jihad. "If Islam is threatened, you have a right to fight back," Tashnuba declared, citing Koran verses.
...
As the news spread, an advocacy group arranged a lawyer for her. The Bangladeshi general consul in New York pressed the government for an explanation, and Homeland Security replied: The sole reason Tashnuba was being held was her "unlawful presence" in the United States.
The other girl was allowed to return to her East Harlem high school in early May, under strict conditions including an order not to discuss the case. But for Tashnuba, there was no prospect of release, her lawyer, Troy Mattes, said he was told.
Broke and distraught, Tashnuba's mother asked to take "voluntary departure" with her daughter, rather than fight. The government agreed, and an immigration judge issued the necessary order.
It is not known what prompted the authorities to investigate Tashnuba, who says the accusations are false. But in a series of interviews - her first - she said the government had apparently discovered her visits to an Internet chat room where she took notes on sermons by a charismatic Islamic cleric in London, a sheik who has long been accused of encouraging suicide bombings.
An F.B.I. agent, posing as a youth counselor, first confronted Tashnuba in her bedroom, going through her school papers and questioning everything from her views on jihad to her posterless walls, she said. Sent to a center for delinquents in Pennsylvania, Tashnuba said she was interrogated without a lawyer or parent present, about her beliefs and those of her friends, mainly American girls she had met at city mosques.
...
But Tashnuba says that she opposes suicide bombing, that her interest in the cleric was casual, and that the government treated her like a criminal simply for exercising the freedoms of speech and religion that America had taught her.
As she tells it, F.B.I. agents tried to twist mundane details of her life to fit the profile of a terrorist recruit, and when they could not make a case, covered their tracks by getting her out of the country. In fact, the court order of "voluntary departure" that let her leave requires a finding that the person is not deportable for endangering national security.
Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen - allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings.
...
From the beginning, the government framed this case as purely an immigration matter. When a dozen federal agents plucked the girl from her home in a dawn raid on March 24, they cited only the expiration of her mother's immigration papers, telling the family that Tashnuba would probably be returned the next day.
Instead, after two weeks of frantic inquiries by her parents, The New York Times learned that Tashnuba was one of two girls being held, officially on their parents' immigration violations, but actually for questioning by F.B.I.'s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
According to a government document provided to The Times by a federal official, the F.B.I. asserted that the girls presented "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." The document cited no evidence. And in background interviews, federal officials were quick to play down the case as soon as reporters called, characterizing the investigation as a pre-emptive move against potential candidates for recruitment, not the disruption of a plot.
...
Veering between "nice and awful," she said, up to three agents at a time pressed her about possible terrorist ties among her friends, and what they saw as suspicious tendencies in her schoolwork, like class notes about suicide. She said they even criticized the austere décor of the bedroom she shared with her 10-year-old sister.
"The F.B.I. tried to say I didn't have a life - like, I wasn't the typical teenager," Tashnuba said bitterly, fingering her long Muslim dress. "They thought I was anti-American because I didn't want to compromise, but in my high-school ethics class we had Communists, Democrats, Republicans, Gothics - all types. In all our classes, we were told, 'You speak up, you give your opinion, and you defend it.' "
The lesson backfired, she said, when she found herself stubbornly debating the Koran's definitions of jihad with the lead F.B.I. agent: Foria Younis, a Muslim immigrant of a much more secular stripe.
"It got personal," Tashnuba said.
...
A government psychiatrist concluded that she was neither suicidal nor homicidal, and recommended her release. But the agents, Tashnuba said, kept "trying to link me to the psychological state." They zeroed in on the single artificial rose in her bedroom (her little sister's); a psychology course (required by her correspondence program), and an essay she wrote about the Department of Homeland Security (assigned as a writing evaluation by her tutor).
The tutor, Asmaa Samad, recalled the essay as innocuous: "It said nothing derogative, nothing unpatriotic." Tashnuba said agents seized on one part. "I wrote, 'I feel like Muslims are being targeted, they're being outcasted more.'"
But instead of backing away from opinions that the agents seemed to find alarming, Tashnuba said she dug in her heels, especially on her belief in jihad. "If Islam is threatened, you have a right to fight back," Tashnuba declared, citing Koran verses.
...
As the news spread, an advocacy group arranged a lawyer for her. The Bangladeshi general consul in New York pressed the government for an explanation, and Homeland Security replied: The sole reason Tashnuba was being held was her "unlawful presence" in the United States.
The other girl was allowed to return to her East Harlem high school in early May, under strict conditions including an order not to discuss the case. But for Tashnuba, there was no prospect of release, her lawyer, Troy Mattes, said he was told.
Broke and distraught, Tashnuba's mother asked to take "voluntary departure" with her daughter, rather than fight. The government agreed, and an immigration judge issued the necessary order.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 02:57 pm (UTC)...and stupid shit like that. Obviously someone forgot about the Japanese-American "detainment camps" of the WWII era.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 03:11 pm (UTC)Logic? Respect for history? Respect for your own goddamned laws? Who cares about those things?
no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-18 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-18 03:25 am (UTC)