Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 110 Black People

Jul 9, 2012 Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

Report on Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers January 1 – June 30, 2012.

This report was produced for the “No More Trayvon Martins Campaign”, demanding a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice. This is the 2nd Major report of the Campaign.

Download this report as a PDF using this link.

A human rights crisis confronts Black people in the United States. Since January 1, 2012, police and a much smaller number of security guards and self-appointed vigilantes have murdered at least 110 Black women and men. These killings are definitely not accidental or random acts of violence or the work of rogue cops. As we noted in our April 6^th, 2012 “Trayvon Martin is All of US!” Report (see http://mxgm.org/trayvon-martin-is-all-of-us/), the use of deadly force against Black people is standard practice in the United States, and woven into to the very fabric of the society.
The corporate media have given very little attention to these extrajudicial killings. We call them “extrajudicial” because they happen without trial or any due process, against all international law and human rights conventions. Those few mainstream media outlets that mention the epidemic of killings have been are unwilling to acknowledge that the killings are systemic – meaning they are embedded in institutional racism and national oppression. On the contrary, nearly all of the mainstream media join in a chorus that sings the praises of the police and read from the same script that denounces the alleged “thuggery” of the deceased. Sadly, too many people believe the police version of events and the media’s “blame-the-victim” narratives that justify and support these extrajudicial killings.
However, we have studied each of the reports of these deaths — including false, implausible and inconsistent claims by police and witness reports that contradict police reports. From this study and many peoples’ experience, we must reject the corporate media’s rationalization for the horrible fact that in the first six months of this year, one Black person every 40 hours was executed. This wanton disregard for Black life resulted in the killing of 13 year-old children, fathers taking care of their kids, women driving the wrong cars, as well as people with mental health and drug problems.
This report documents how people of African descent remain “without sanctuary” throughout the United States. Nowhere is a Black woman or man safe from racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance, and overriding suspicion. All Black people – regardless of education, class, occupation, behavior or dress – are subject to the whims of the police whose institutionalized racist policies and procedures require them to arbitrarily stop, frisk, arrest, brutalize and even execute Black people.
Invasive policing is only one aspect of the U.S. states comprehensive containment strategies to exploit Black people and to smother resistance. To contain the upsurge of the Black liberation movement of the 1960’s and 70’s and protect the system of white supremacy the institutional forces of racism have worked through governments at every level to destabilize the Black community via community divestment, massive employment discrimination, outsourcing, gentrification and other forms of economic dislocation. In addition, schools, housing, healthcare, other social services and transportation in Black communities have been denied equitable provision and distribution of public goods and resources.
The U.S. state maintains and reinforces these economic injustices with the militarized occupation of Black communities by the police and a web of racist legislation like the “war on drugs”, discriminatory polices like “three strikes” and “mandatory minimum” sentencing. The result is a social system that mandates the prison warehousing of millions of Black people and extrajudicial killings where the killers act with impunity and more often than not are rewarded and promoted for murder. The oppression and police occupation of Black communities parallels the brutalization, denial of human rights and killings being committed by the Israeli occupying forces in Palestine, and the persecution of Afrodescendants in Columbia and the Indigenous peoples of Brazil over the past several years. Nothing short of the structural integrity and survival of the Black community is at stake when we consider the historic record.
For those who doubted the framing of the “Trayvon Martin is All of Us!” Report, this 6^th month update proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the institutionalized violence of white supremacy is not only alive and well, but is, in fact, intensifying. To complete the picture, we must take into account the extrajudicial killings and other repressive policies directed at other targeted peoples and communities such as Indigenous peoples, Latinos, Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants. These, in conjunction with the oppression of Black people, demonstrate that the U.S. government remains committed to maintaining the system of white supremacy created by the aggressive and illegal European settler-colonies that first established the national-state project.
This crisis can only be stopped through decisive action. First, the Black community must organize its own self-defense. Second, we must build a broad, mass movement capable of forcing the government to enact transformative legislation based on our demands. The fundamental transformative demand must be for a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice to eliminate institutional racism and advance the struggle for self-determination. The Black community itself will determine the specific contents of The Plan, drawing from the foundation of CERD (the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Racial Discrimination) and the DDPA (Durban Declaration and Programme of Action).
We call on everyone who believes that decisive action must be taken by Black and other oppressed peoples to confront and defeat national oppression and white supremacy to join us in developing an independent, mass movement for human rights that builds power in our communities and will have the capacity to force the Federal authorities to implement a comprehensive National Plan of Action for Racial Justice.  You can join us immediately by helping us secure 1 million signatures to our petition (see http://mxgm.org/trayvon-martin-is-all-of-us/), organizing Copwatch and People’s Self-Defense campaigns, fighting for elected Police Control Boards, the demilitarization of our communities, and the reinvestment of the military and security budget into community reinvestment and social programs amongst other suggestions provided in our “Local Struggles” paper (see http://mxgm.org/no-more-trayvons-campaign/). We also encourage communities to organize their own grassroots crisis intervention, domestic violence prevention/control and mediation teams so families in crisis do not become so desperate for help that they compound their problems by calling 9-1-1 and inviting the police into their homes.
We also call all organizations and individuals who agree with the demand and framework for a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice to help us build the National Alliance for Racial Justice and Human Rights (NARJHR) as a structure that will help us develop and implement a comprehensive national plan that centers oppressed peoples’ right to self-determination and the full realization of our human rights.
For more information about the Report or any of these action proposals, contact Kali Akuno at kaliakuno@mxgm.org.
FOOTNOTES
¹ The figures for the number of Palestinians killed in 2011 can be found at http://www.ochaopt.org/poc.aspx?id=1010002.  Figures for Afro-Colombians can be found at http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2322/, http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/PCNonFTA-April12.pdf and http://news.afrocolombians.com/news/?sectionid=8.  Figures on Indigenous peoples killed in Brazil can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/world/americas/in-brazil-violence-hits-tribes-in-scramble-for-land.html.
² To read the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination see http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm. To read the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action see http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/ddpa.shtml.

Highlights from the Report

110 Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers between January 1 – June 30, 2012

1. These executions primarily destroy Black communities’ future and spirit by stealing the lives of our youth. Of the 110 lives taken:
• 13 or 12% were children under 18 years old.
• 20 or 18% were 18-21 years old, just entering adulthood.
• 45 or 41% were 22-31 years old.
• 17 or 15% were 32-41 years old.
• 9 or 8% were 42-51 years old.
• 4 or 4% were over 52 years.
• 2 or 2% were of undetermined age.

71 Per Cent of the Lives Lost Belonged to People from the Ages of 13 to 31.
2. These executions happen nationwide: from north to south; east to west; in rural towns and large metropolitan areas. Like in the years of lynching, there is no geographic sanctuary. Yet some cities—especially in the South– execute Black people without trial in numbers disproportionate to the size of their Black populations. Here are the cities with 2 or more executions.

States where Black People were killed by Police (January through June 2012)

US Cities - Extrajudicial Killings of Black People

Search:

U.S. City Name	Number Executed (Jan-June 2012)	Black Population (2010 Census)	Ratio of Deaths per Million Black People
New York City	9	2,228,145	4
Atlanta Metro (includes Clayton County)	9	399.505	23
Dallas	8	308,087	26
Chicago Metro (includes Calumet City & Dolton)	7	915,436	8
New Orleans	5	213,918	23
Jacksonville	4	252,421	16
Baltimore	4	403,998	10
Cleveland (includes Maple Heights)	3	227,451	13
Memphis	3	414,828	7
Tulsa	3	65,771	46
Saginaw	2	38,800	52
Miami	2	481,812	2
Birmingham	2	155,791	13
Dothan	2	21,286	94
Fayetteville	2	84,040	24

3. A significant proportion of the 110 were killed because they suffered from mental health problems or were intoxicated and behaved in ways the police allegedly could not control.
   • 24 people or 22% might be alive today if community members trained and committed to humane crisis intervention and mental health treatment had been called rather than the police.
4. What is the relationship between “stop and frisk” policies and procedures and racial profiling and these deadly encounters? This report documents how these encounters were initiated. Encounters that began because the “suspect was engaged in suspicious behavior or looked suspicious or was driving suspiciously” show how often racial profiling leads to death.
• 43 (39%) of police accounts explicitly cite “suspicious behavior or appearance” or traffic violations (“driving while Black”) as the reason for their attempt to detain the person who they eventually killed.
• 20 (18%) deadly encounters began with calls to 9-1-1 to seek help in resolving “domestic disturbances”. These included family members seeing assistance in dealing with mentally troubled people.
• 11 (10%) people who had violated no law or had not been involved in any harmful behavior were killed.
• That leaves only 36 people or 33% killed in the course of police investigating activity they define as “criminal”.
5. Most of the people executed were not armed.Here is the breakdown:
   • 47 had no weapon at all at the time they were executed.
   • 40 were alleged by police to have weapons (including a cane, toy gun and bb gun) but this allegation is disputed by witnesses or later investigation. Police are infamous for planting weapons or deciding that a cell phone, wallet or other harmless object is a gun.
   • 21 were likely armed
6. Police and other executioners typically justify their murders by reporting that the “suspect” ran away, pointed a gun or crashed into them with a car and therefore they had to use deadly force to defend themselves.
• In the first half of 2012, police alleged that 38 of the people they executed attempted to run away from them.
• 20 of the people who were murdered allegedly pointed guns at officers and/or attempted to crash into them. Reports often do not mention if the officers were wearing uniforms or if the “suspects had any way of knowing their assailants were not civilians.
7. Regardless of how these encounters begin, whether they involve activity that violates the laws of the state or the laws of basic human decency, no one should be sentenced to death without a trial.In most countries, even with a trial, capital punishment is considered barbaric. So the use of deadly force is always “excessive” (and extrajudicial by international human rights standards) except in certain circumstances.
   • 15 cases in this report or less than 14%, if the facts reported are true, involve situations where the “suspect” shot and wounded and/or killed the police and/or others while the police were on the scene. Although it would have been preferable to stop them with non-lethal force, the use of lethal force in these circumstances can not be considered excessive. But in the remaining 95 cases, killings were extrajudicial, that is, they used lethal force with no legitimate justification and violated peoples’ basic human rights.

Cases of Extrajudicial Killings of Black People (January through June 2012)
8. On gender: In the first half of 2012, only 5 out of the 110 executed people were women. Two were accused “car thieves”, two were “innocent bystanders” and one was beaten and smothered by police because they could not calm her emotional agitation. Please note: the most glaring way that women’s oppression enters the picture is in the high number of deaths (18%) that result from mothers, wives, lovers or other family members who call the police because they are desperate for help with their troubled, often frightening, kids and partners. Grassroots community crisis intervention and mediation would lighten the burdens that single mothers and survivors of domestic violence carry and also build towards more community self-reliance. As one mother whose emotionally troubled son said, “calling the police to calm a mentally ill child is like calling an undertaker to deliver a baby.”
9. The “justice system” gives impunity to murderers. The names of a few of the 110 people on this death roll have become nationally-known rallying cries for justice: like Trayvon Martin and Remarley Graham. Their murders have sparked massive mobilizations, media commentary, calls for government intervention, lawsuits and endless legal wrangling. However, after the initial announcements in local news media, the lives of most of those who were executed are forgotten. The standard procedure in most jurisdictions is for police involved in fatal shootings to be given paid “desk-duty” while the department conducts an investigation of itself. The press applauds their fine records while it screams about the criminal records of the deceased. Almost all killer cops are routinely exonerated and quickly return to the street. Grieving families who invariably ask the modest question, “why did he have to die?” are ignored. If there is some demonstrated community outrage the case may be further investigated. The legal system almost never charges these executioners and even if they do, the killing continues. A number of families seek legal redress through the civil courts and seek financial restitution. After years of litigation a tiny minority may gain some solace from a financial payment. And the executions continue.
   • 37% of the Black people who were executed in the first half of 2012 seem to have been totally forgotten. A careful internet search could not find their names after an initial flurry of news about their killings.
   • 6 security guards and self-appointed law enforcers (including Trayvon Martin’s killer and the Tulsa murderers) have been charged.
   • 3 killer cops have been charged: one for vehicular homicide-DUI, two for manslaughter (Remarley Graham’s killer and Christopher Brown’s killer).
   • That is, in 95 cases of extrajudicial killings, the legal system has only charged 9 people, less than 10%. The outcome of these charges is still pending.
10. A note on the research process:
The data for this report was collected by meticulously combing the internet during the last ten days of June 2012. In addition to searching on “police-involved shootings”, “police killings of Black people”, etc., we also went to the websites of the local press, blogs and police departments in the 100 cities and towns with the largest Black populations and followed wherever the links led. In the course of these searches, we found the names of an additional 14 people killed before March 31, who we hadn’t found during the research for the first quarterly report. Those names appear here. There is, as far as we know, no national database that tracks these killings. Wikipedia has posted a very incomplete list and also detailed the other databases available. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
This report covers the deaths of 110 Black people: 54 from January thru March and 56 from April thru June, 2012. In other words, despite the huge mobilizations after the Remarley Graham and Trayvon Martin murders, the killing continued at an even faster pace. We do not believe the 110 deaths listed here are all the Black people killed by police and security guards. There are no doubt more—especially in places that do not have an active internet media presence. We found the names of an additional 15 people killed by police whose race we could not confirm. There were countless others who were in critical condition from police shootings, but the press never reported on whether they survived. With time, we estimate another 30 to 40 cases might emerge. For more information on any given case, you can type “shooting of name, date, place” in your search engine. For more information on this Report or to contribute updated information, please contact arlene_eisen@sbcglobal.net.

“The Report on Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers January 1 – June 30, 2012”, was produced by Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). Special assistance was given by Ajamu Baraka.

The undercover persecution of Muslim Americans

13 April 2012 Maureen Clare Murphy

The Electronic Intifada

US authorities are exaggerating the threat of terrorism while persecuting Muslims.

(Justin Lane / Newscom)

Khalifah al-Akili, a 34-year-old Muslim American from the Pittsburgh area, was to publicly claim that he was the target of an FBI sting operation at a press conference last month. Had he not been arrested at his home one day before the press conference was to take place, al-Akili would have described how he was harassed and stalked by undercover FBI operatives, one of whose identity was exposed after a Google search of his phone number returned results linking him to another undercover entrapment case in New York state.

Authorities claim that al-Akili “had made radical Islamic statements and that police had uncovered unspecified jihadist literature at his home,” as the Guardian’s Paul Harris reported (“‘Taliban sympathiser’ arrest prompts new questions about FBI tactics,” 26 March 2012).

Al-Akili is currently in detention, charged with a firearms code violation related to a seven-second video of him firing a gun at a shooting range.

Shortly before his arrest, al-Akili reached out to civil liberties groups, national Muslim organizations and the media with his claim of being targeted in an FBI entrapment plot. The timing of his arrest before the press conference hosted by the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms has caused some, including his lawyer, to suspect that his arrest was timed to prevent him from getting his story out.

Story of entrapment

At the press conference, al-Akili would have narrated how several months ago, he met a man who called himself Shareef, who would attend dawn prayers at an area mosque and, according to a National Coalition statement, would “with increasing frequency [turn] the conversation to fighting.” Shareef would repeatedly ask al-Akili to help him obtain a gun, which al-Akili refused to do (“Arrest of Muslim One Day before He Was to Participate in a NCPCF Press Conference,” 21 March 2012).

Shareef promised to help al-Akili finance a restaurant if al-Akili would do something for him, “which al-Akili understood to mean some ‘act of violence against others,’” according to the statement. Al-Akili tried to avoid the man, but this proved difficult as Shareef lived only two blocks away.

The National Coalition adds: “When Shareef offered to introduce al-Akili to a man he called his ‘brother,’ al-Akili tried to evade the meeting, but as he was walking back to his apartment from the store one night, Shareef pulled his vehicle up to al-Akili. A man got out of the passenger side, introduced himself as Mohammed, and said that he wanted to talk to al-Akili over coffee. Al-Akili made excuses, but when he got home the phone began to ring; it was Shareef and Mohammed downstairs, wanting to come in. Al-Akili pretended not to be at home.”

Mohammed would again appear out of nowhere, insisting that al-Akili meet him. Al-Akili took down his phone number and would eventually run a Google search of it. This is how he found out that Mohammed was actually Shahed Hussain, an undercover FBI operative.

According to an interview that al-Akili gave to the Times Union newspaper shortly before his arrest, when al-Akili asked Hussain whether he was an FBI informant, Hussain quickly ended the call and within a day, Shareef had vacated his apartment and vanished without a trace (“FBI informant in upstate stings, including Albany, surfaces in Pittsburgh case,” 17 March 2012).

Federal convict to FBI darling

When al-Akili ran a Google search of Mohammed’s phone number, he had found a reference to the Newburgh Four, a group of African American Muslim men who were convicted on the basis of testimony and secret recordings made by undercover informant Shahed Hussain.

The four men, from an impoverished community in upstate New York, are currently serving lengthy prison sentences for participating in a plot to blow up Jewish targets and fire a Stinger missile at US military planes.

Not exactly self-starters, the Newburgh Four were more likely motivated by financial gain than ideology. As Paul Harris reported in the Guardian last year, great material rewards including $250,000, free vacations and new cars were promised by Hussain to the alleged conspirators for their cooperation in the plot designed and encouraged by Hussain (“Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI ‘entrapment’ tactics”).

Hussain even paid for the food and rent of one of the men, as the Associated Press reported (“Was too much offered?,” 22 September 2010).

The men, all with serious troubles including jail time and mental health problems, may have believed they were playing Hussain — when Hussain gave one of them a camera to use for surveillance work related to the alleged plot, the camera was promptly sold. And when the same man, James Cromitie, tried to back out of the alleged plot, “Hussain said his overseas terrorist ‘brothers’ might cut his head off,” according to the Guardian.

For his services, Hussain, “the sole personal witness for the FBI,” earned $100,000.

Before setting his sights on Newburgh, Hussain was the government’s chief witness in the prosecution and conviction of two Muslim men in Albany, New York for money laundering to fund terror. As the Times Union reported in 2006, a loan promised by Hussain to one of the convicted men was the basis of the money laundering charges (“Informant for FBI is freed”).

According to the paper, Hussain has been involved in the arrest and prosecution of more than a dozen persons.

It was exposed during the Albany trial that the FBI recruited Hussain after he was arrested in December 2001 for taking bribes of several hundred dollars each as part of a ring to illegally give drivers licenses to immigrants who couldn’t pass the written examination. It was also revealed that he may have been involved in a homicide in Lahore, Pakistan.

Role of undercover informants begs scrutiny

Hussain isn’t exceptional as far as undercover FBI agents go — only that he was exceptionally bad at providing effective cover in the al-Akili case (al-Akili told the Times Union that Hussain and his colleague “were ‘too obvious’ and requested receipts even for small items they purchased like coffee and donuts”).

A groundbreaking study by Mother Jones magazine and the Investigative Reporting Program published last year examined the prosecutions of more than 500 defendants in terrorism-related cases in the US. The investigation found that “nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants,” motivated by money or “the need to work off criminal or immigration violations” (“The Informants,” September/October 2011), as in the case of Hussain.

Furthermore, “Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur — an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.” Indeed, the report found that “With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.”

Because so few domestic terrorism cases actually go to trial — the specter of terror means juries almost always return guilty verdicts, so defendants usually take plea deals — the role of undercover FBI operatives in domestic terror cases rarely comes under scrutiny.

“No real hunt”

Rare insight into the FBI’s policy regarding undercover operatives was provided after ex-informant Craig Monteilh came forward about his role in the infiltration of Muslim communities in Orange County, California.

Monteilh, who served time for passing fraudulent checks, told the Guardian last month that the FBI even “gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting,” and to record their “pillow talk” (“The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: ‘There is no real hunt. It’s fixed’”).

Monteilh’s provocateur tactics ironically prompted the community he was spying on to get a restraining order against him and he was reported to the FBI. The Guardian reports that Monteilh is now part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the FBI, and has “joined forces” with the people he once targeted “to campaign for their civil liberties.”

Monteilh told the Guardian: “The way the FBI conducts their operations, it is all about entrapment … There is no real hunt. It’s fixed.”

Persecution of Muslims despite low threat

The study of domestic terrorism prosecution published by Mother Jones notes that “Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI’s No. 1 priority, consuming the lion’s share of its budget,” and the bureau now boasts “a roster of 15,000 spies — many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States.”

However, a February report on “Muslim-American Terrorism in the Decade Since 9/11” by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found that the scale of so-called homegrown Muslim-American terrorism “does not appear to have corroborated the warnings issued by government officials” for the year 2011.

Finding a “relatively low level of radicalization among Muslim-Americans,” the report adds that the US government’s predicted surge in “homegrown Islamic terrorism” has not materialized and that the decline in prosecutions for funding terrorism, which makes up the bulk of domestic terrorism cases, “is particularly notable in view of the heightened scrutiny that terrorism financing now receives from law enforcement agencies.”

Yet the extent to which the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have set Muslims in their sights is shocking. The Associated Press has published an explosive series of reports on leaked documents showing the New York Police Department’s mapping of Muslim communities and spying on student groups.

And last month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act demonstrating that the FBI in San Francisco used a mosque outreach program to gather intelligence on Muslim organizations and their constituents “without any suspicion of wrongdoing” (“FBI FOIA Docs Show Use of “Mosque Outreach” for Illegal Intel Gathering”).

On my blog for The Electronic Intifada, I have covered a domestic terrorism case in which three young men in North Carolina received decades-long prison sentences for providing material support to terror groups — even though government prosecutors failed to identify the specific terror groups to which the men are supposed to have provided support.

Conversely, high-profile public figures have established close ties with and are providing advocacy to the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group on the US State Department’s designated foreign terrorist organization list. The US government is even providing training to this designated terrorist organization, according to a report by The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh (“Our men in Iran?,” 6 April 2012).

Incidentally, reporter Chris Hedges and others are challenging the Obama administration in court about whether “civilian activists and journalists should not fear being detained under a new anti-terrorism law” (“Lawyers tested in court over anti-terrorism act,” Reuters, 29 March 2012).

Of course, foreign policy is the driving force behind the development and application of anti-terror legislation, as the historic and contemporary targeting of Palestinian leaders and solidarity activists in the US reinforces. Opposition to the increasingly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are frequently used against defendants in terror trials, who are sometimes prosecuted after having refused to become informants themselves, as in the case of Tarek Mehanna, who received a 17.5 year prison sentence yesterday for various trumped-up terror charges. As the ACLU of Massachusetts commented last month, “if you are Muslim and criticize US foreign policy, you too can be prosecuted — unless you agree to play the FBI’s game” (“Double standards distort the judicial process”).

The result of all this is that US Muslims like Khalifah al-Akili face lifetime sentences behind bars without having committed any acts of violence or harm as the government’s relentless drive to get terror convictions goes unchecked. Meanwhile the the civil liberties of entire communities are violated, burning whatever trust those communities may have had in the law enforcement that should be there to protect them, not go after them.

Maureen Clare Murphy is managing editor of The Electronic Intifada.

The undercover persecution of Muslim Americans

13 April 2012 Maureen Clare Murphy

The Electronic Intifada

US authorities are exaggerating the threat of terrorism while persecuting Muslims.

(Justin Lane / Newscom)

Khalifah al-Akili, a 34-year-old Muslim American from the Pittsburgh area, was to publicly claim that he was the target of an FBI sting operation at a press conference last month. Had he not been arrested at his home one day before the press conference was to take place, al-Akili would have described how he was harassed and stalked by undercover FBI operatives, one of whose identity was exposed after a Google search of his phone number returned results linking him to another undercover entrapment case in New York state.

Authorities claim that al-Akili “had made radical Islamic statements and that police had uncovered unspecified jihadist literature at his home,” as the Guardian’s Paul Harris reported (“‘Taliban sympathiser’ arrest prompts new questions about FBI tactics,” 26 March 2012).

Al-Akili is currently in detention, charged with a firearms code violation related to a seven-second video of him firing a gun at a shooting range.

Shortly before his arrest, al-Akili reached out to civil liberties groups, national Muslim organizations and the media with his claim of being targeted in an FBI entrapment plot. The timing of his arrest before the press conference hosted by the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms has caused some, including his lawyer, to suspect that his arrest was timed to prevent him from getting his story out.

Story of entrapment

At the press conference, al-Akili would have narrated how several months ago, he met a man who called himself Shareef, who would attend dawn prayers at an area mosque and, according to a National Coalition statement, would “with increasing frequency [turn] the conversation to fighting.” Shareef would repeatedly ask al-Akili to help him obtain a gun, which al-Akili refused to do (“Arrest of Muslim One Day before He Was to Participate in a NCPCF Press Conference,” 21 March 2012).

Shareef promised to help al-Akili finance a restaurant if al-Akili would do something for him, “which al-Akili understood to mean some ‘act of violence against others,’” according to the statement. Al-Akili tried to avoid the man, but this proved difficult as Shareef lived only two blocks away.

The National Coalition adds: “When Shareef offered to introduce al-Akili to a man he called his ‘brother,’ al-Akili tried to evade the meeting, but as he was walking back to his apartment from the store one night, Shareef pulled his vehicle up to al-Akili. A man got out of the passenger side, introduced himself as Mohammed, and said that he wanted to talk to al-Akili over coffee. Al-Akili made excuses, but when he got home the phone began to ring; it was Shareef and Mohammed downstairs, wanting to come in. Al-Akili pretended not to be at home.”

Mohammed would again appear out of nowhere, insisting that al-Akili meet him. Al-Akili took down his phone number and would eventually run a Google search of it. This is how he found out that Mohammed was actually Shahed Hussain, an undercover FBI operative.

According to an interview that al-Akili gave to the Times Union newspaper shortly before his arrest, when al-Akili asked Hussain whether he was an FBI informant, Hussain quickly ended the call and within a day, Shareef had vacated his apartment and vanished without a trace (“FBI informant in upstate stings, including Albany, surfaces in Pittsburgh case,” 17 March 2012).

Federal convict to FBI darling

When al-Akili ran a Google search of Mohammed’s phone number, he had found a reference to the Newburgh Four, a group of African American Muslim men who were convicted on the basis of testimony and secret recordings made by undercover informant Shahed Hussain.

The four men, from an impoverished community in upstate New York, are currently serving lengthy prison sentences for participating in a plot to blow up Jewish targets and fire a Stinger missile at US military planes.

Not exactly self-starters, the Newburgh Four were more likely motivated by financial gain than ideology. As Paul Harris reported in the Guardian last year, great material rewards including $250,000, free vacations and new cars were promised by Hussain to the alleged conspirators for their cooperation in the plot designed and encouraged by Hussain (“Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI ‘entrapment’ tactics”).

Hussain even paid for the food and rent of one of the men, as the Associated Press reported (“Was too much offered?,” 22 September 2010).

The men, all with serious troubles including jail time and mental health problems, may have believed they were playing Hussain — when Hussain gave one of them a camera to use for surveillance work related to the alleged plot, the camera was promptly sold. And when the same man, James Cromitie, tried to back out of the alleged plot, “Hussain said his overseas terrorist ‘brothers’ might cut his head off,” according to the Guardian.

For his services, Hussain, “the sole personal witness for the FBI,” earned $100,000.

Before setting his sights on Newburgh, Hussain was the government’s chief witness in the prosecution and conviction of two Muslim men in Albany, New York for money laundering to fund terror. As the Times Union reported in 2006, a loan promised by Hussain to one of the convicted men was the basis of the money laundering charges (“Informant for FBI is freed”).

According to the paper, Hussain has been involved in the arrest and prosecution of more than a dozen persons.

It was exposed during the Albany trial that the FBI recruited Hussain after he was arrested in December 2001 for taking bribes of several hundred dollars each as part of a ring to illegally give drivers licenses to immigrants who couldn’t pass the written examination. It was also revealed that he may have been involved in a homicide in Lahore, Pakistan.

Role of undercover informants begs scrutiny

Hussain isn’t exceptional as far as undercover FBI agents go — only that he was exceptionally bad at providing effective cover in the al-Akili case (al-Akili told the Times Union that Hussain and his colleague “were ‘too obvious’ and requested receipts even for small items they purchased like coffee and donuts”).

A groundbreaking study by Mother Jones magazine and the Investigative Reporting Program published last year examined the prosecutions of more than 500 defendants in terrorism-related cases in the US. The investigation found that “nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants,” motivated by money or “the need to work off criminal or immigration violations” (“The Informants,” September/October 2011), as in the case of Hussain.

Furthermore, “Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur — an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.” Indeed, the report found that “With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.”

Because so few domestic terrorism cases actually go to trial — the specter of terror means juries almost always return guilty verdicts, so defendants usually take plea deals — the role of undercover FBI operatives in domestic terror cases rarely comes under scrutiny.

“No real hunt”

Rare insight into the FBI’s policy regarding undercover operatives was provided after ex-informant Craig Monteilh came forward about his role in the infiltration of Muslim communities in Orange County, California.

Monteilh, who served time for passing fraudulent checks, told the Guardian last month that the FBI even “gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting,” and to record their “pillow talk” (“The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: ‘There is no real hunt. It’s fixed’”).

Monteilh’s provocateur tactics ironically prompted the community he was spying on to get a restraining order against him and he was reported to the FBI. The Guardian reports that Monteilh is now part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the FBI, and has “joined forces” with the people he once targeted “to campaign for their civil liberties.”

Monteilh told the Guardian: “The way the FBI conducts their operations, it is all about entrapment … There is no real hunt. It’s fixed.”

Persecution of Muslims despite low threat

The study of domestic terrorism prosecution published by Mother Jones notes that “Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI’s No. 1 priority, consuming the lion’s share of its budget,” and the bureau now boasts “a roster of 15,000 spies — many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States.”

However, a February report on “Muslim-American Terrorism in the Decade Since 9/11” by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found that the scale of so-called homegrown Muslim-American terrorism “does not appear to have corroborated the warnings issued by government officials” for the year 2011.

Finding a “relatively low level of radicalization among Muslim-Americans,” the report adds that the US government’s predicted surge in “homegrown Islamic terrorism” has not materialized and that the decline in prosecutions for funding terrorism, which makes up the bulk of domestic terrorism cases, “is particularly notable in view of the heightened scrutiny that terrorism financing now receives from law enforcement agencies.”

Yet the extent to which the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have set Muslims in their sights is shocking. The Associated Press has published an explosive series of reports on leaked documents showing the New York Police Department’s mapping of Muslim communities and spying on student groups.

And last month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act demonstrating that the FBI in San Francisco used a mosque outreach program to gather intelligence on Muslim organizations and their constituents “without any suspicion of wrongdoing” (“FBI FOIA Docs Show Use of “Mosque Outreach” for Illegal Intel Gathering”).

On my blog for The Electronic Intifada, I have covered a domestic terrorism case in which three young men in North Carolina received decades-long prison sentences for providing material support to terror groups — even though government prosecutors failed to identify the specific terror groups to which the men are supposed to have provided support.

Conversely, high-profile public figures have established close ties with and are providing advocacy to the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group on the US State Department’s designated foreign terrorist organization list. The US government is even providing training to this designated terrorist organization, according to a report by The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh (“Our men in Iran?,” 6 April 2012).

Incidentally, reporter Chris Hedges and others are challenging the Obama administration in court about whether “civilian activists and journalists should not fear being detained under a new anti-terrorism law” (“Lawyers tested in court over anti-terrorism act,” Reuters, 29 March 2012).

Of course, foreign policy is the driving force behind the development and application of anti-terror legislation, as the historic and contemporary targeting of Palestinian leaders and solidarity activists in the US reinforces. Opposition to the increasingly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are frequently used against defendants in terror trials, who are sometimes prosecuted after having refused to become informants themselves, as in the case of Tarek Mehanna, who received a 17.5 year prison sentence yesterday for various trumped-up terror charges. As the ACLU of Massachusetts commented last month, “if you are Muslim and criticize US foreign policy, you too can be prosecuted — unless you agree to play the FBI’s game” (“Double standards distort the judicial process”).

The result of all this is that US Muslims like Khalifah al-Akili face lifetime sentences behind bars without having committed any acts of violence or harm as the government’s relentless drive to get terror convictions goes unchecked. Meanwhile the the civil liberties of entire communities are violated, burning whatever trust those communities may have had in the law enforcement that should be there to protect them, not go after them.

Maureen Clare Murphy is managing editor of The Electronic Intifada.

Mass Black Incarceration Ending? Don't Hold Your Breath

Dec. 27, 2011 Black Agenda Report

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

It’s been two generations since the beginning of modern mass Black incarceration. Prison populations, which only doubled from 1925 to 1972, increased more than seven-fold over the next 38 years, with Blacks accounting for ever higher proportions of inmates. The latest statistics do not indicate that white people “have reconsidered – or even acknowledged – their extraordinarily broad support for placing more Black people in captivity over the past 40 years than at any time since slavery.”

Mass Black Incarceration Ending? Don't Hold Your Breath

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Half of the states reported decreases in their prison populations.”

For the first time since 1972, the total number of people held in U.S. prisons has gone down. And, for the second year in a row, the number of persons under supervision – such as parole – by state departments of correction, decreased.

Does this mean the beginning of the end of mass Black incarceration in the United States? Not hardly. That would require an historic reversal of a nationwide policy to find new places to put Black people who refused to stay “in their place,” in the wake of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. There is little in the current American political conversation that indicates white people have reconsidered – or even acknowledged – their extraordinarily broad support for placing more Black people in captivity over the past 40 years than at any time since slavery.

It takes the government almost a year to tabulate the past year’s prison statistics, so the latest numbers are from 2010. They show about 7.1 million people under some kind of correctional supervision – one out of every 33. That’s down 1.3 percent from 2009, the year that saw the first decrease in supervision in two generations. The total population in state and federal prisons – not counting local jails – stood at 1.6 million inmates, down six-tenths of one percent. State prison populations decreased by almost 11,000, and local jails by almost 19,000, but federal prison populations grow by eight/tenths of one percent, to almost 210,000 inmates. That was, however, the smallest percentage increase in a generation – since 1980.

Half of the states reported decreases in their prison populations, with California and Georgia shrinking the most.

“Twenty-four states and the federal prison system increased their inmate populations.”

Speculation on why prison populations have, at least temporarily, peaked, centers on the financial crisis. It is true that states are experiencing unprecedented difficulties paying their bills. Some states have clearly responded to their fiscal crises by finding ways to incarcerate fewer people. Michigan reduced its prison population by 6,000 inmates in three years, mainly by decreasing the number of inmates who wind up serving more time in jail than they were originally sentenced to. California is under court order to cut its prison population by 30 percent, or 40,000 inmates. But the court order came too late to have a significant effect on 2010 prison numbers.

Only half the country has seen any decrease, at all. Twenty-four states and the federal prison system increased their inmate populations, with Illinois, Texas and Arkansas leading the pack. And states have found other ways to cut down on inmate costs without putting fewer people in prison, through wholesale privatization of prisons, and imposition of draconian fees on prisoners, probationers and parolees.

The Pew Research Center on the States cites programs that divert some offenders to probation, and accelerated release of low-risk inmates. However, studies have shown that such diversion programs tend to serve disproportionately white offenders. Therefore, it is highly premature for anyone to speculate that the era of mass Black incarceration may be ending. For the foreseeable future, one out of eight of the world’s prison inmates will continue to be African American.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

A Witness for Troy Davis: a Legalized Lynching

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011
From: blackaugustrebellion@gmail.com

Thomas Ruffin, Jr., Esquire © October-November 2011

“Stand Up! Testify! We Won’t Let Troy Davis Die!”
The militant chant of hundreds of mainly black, but also many white, protesters
marching on the state capitol building to a somber NAACP-Amnesty-International
prayer vigil in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, the night before the Troy Davis execution
on September 21, 2011.

On September 21, 2011, I witnessed the legalized lynching of my client,
Troy Anthony Davis, who died by “lethal injection” shortly before his
forty-third birthday. A funny man, and, indeed, a religious and
politically sensitive black man, Troy Davis assumed a very public role that
he never wanted: that of facing execution for a crime someone else
committed. Before then, he braved through the ordeal of being falsely
accused and tried in Savannah, Georgia, for the senseless murder of a white
police officer. After being convicted and sentenced to death in August
1991, Troy realized that, notwithstanding this nation’s simplistic claims
of equality and fairness, American courts do not provide an invisible
barrier called “justice” as protection for the wrongly accused, especially
those who are black and poor. After all, in the United States, poor
people, especially blacks and Latinos, face imprisonment and suffering,
including execution, at a rate vastly disproportionate to our numbers in
American society.

For example, in Georgia, where black males make up no more than about 15%
of the state’s population, black men comprise about 48.4% of Georgia’s
death row. In fact, in Georgia, where black people in general constitute
about 30% of the state’s population, we make up about 61.5% of Georgia’s
prison population. That is to say, about 33,669 of Georgia’s prison
population are black. After a close reading of history, we should not be
surprised. After all, from 1882 through 1923, white mobs in Georgia
publicly lynched 458 people, 95% or 435 of whom were black people of
African descent. Afterwards, from 1924 through the present, Georgia
“legally” executed 471 people, 74.9% or 353 of whom were black. Most, if
not all, of the executed, like the lynched victims before, never received
the protections in the law that well-to-do whites receive in Georgia.
However, in a system based in its origins on a form of white capital
supremacy, elected policy makers and other such elites seldom worry about
adequate legal protections for blacks and the poor.

In fact, in the United States, black people of African descent, or rather
those born in this country and whose first language is English, comprise an
estimated 12.2% to 13% of the American populace. However, black males make
up about fifty percent of the American prison population and, as of January
1, 2011, about 41.8% of America’s total death row population. To be sure,
for every 100,000 black males living in the United States on June 30, 2009,
about 4,749 were imprisoned. Hence, a total of perhaps 1,021,000 black men
(not including Hispanic black men) were imprisoned in June 2009. As of
August 27, 2011, federal prisons incarcerated about 217,582 people, about
37.9% of whom were black. As a matter of fact, by January 1, 2011, the
federal government imprisoned sixty-seven people on its death row, about
50.7% or thirty-four of whom were black men.

For similar examples, we should look at Maryland and Virginia, two
mid-Atlantic states. In Maryland, where black males make up about 14% of
the state population, and where the total black population constitutes no
more than about 28% of the state populace, the total prison and jail
population equals about 23,285 people, with about 77% of that number being
black. In the meantime, Maryland’s death row imprisons five men, 80% or
four of whom are black. Similarly, in Virginia, where black people
constitute about 20% of the state’s population, we make up about 68% of the
state’s prison and jail population of about 35,564. Furthermore, black
men, who constitute about 10% of Virginia’s population, make up at least
45.4% of the condemned on Virginia’s death row. In sum, for every 100,000
black people in Maryland, 1,579 live in Maryland prisons or jails. As for
Virginia, for every 100,000 black people, 2,331 are imprisoned by the
Virginia commonwealth. In contrast, for every 100,000 white people in
Maryland, merely 288 are incarcerated by the state. Similarly, for every
100,000 white people in Virginia, merely 396 are imprisoned by the
commonwealth.

This pattern of racial bias persists throughout much of the United States,
at least where black people make up a sizable percentage of the state
population. In North Carolina, where black people make up about 21.5% of
the population, we make up about 51.5% of its death row population and
about 64% of its prison population. In South Carolina, where black people
constitute 29.5% of the populace, we comprise about 52.4% of the state’s
death row population and about 69% of its prison population. While these
and other examples from the south may be instructive, little difference
will come from a review of the north. In Ohio, for example, where black
people constitute about 11.8% of the population, we make up about 51.5% of
Ohio’s death row. Similarly, we make up about 52% of the state’s prison
population. Likewise, in Pennsylvania, where black people make up about
10.8% of the population, we provide a little more than 60.7% of the state’s
death row population and about 56% of its prison population.

Despite these numbers, black people do not commit most of the crimes in the
United States. As a matter of fact, black people never committed most of
the felony or misdemeanor offenses in the United States. Rather, we simply
faced in a racially disparate fashion deliberate targeting by American
police. In fact, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report
titled Race of Prisoners Admitted to State and Federal Institutions,
1926-86, black people, in 1926, during some of the harshest conditions of
so-called “Jim Crow” or apartheid segregation, constituted no more than
about 21.4% of the American prison population. By 1950, the percentage
increased to 29.7%. Apparently, the trend towards focusing the
government’s police powers on black communities for prosecution and
imprisonment gradually increased over the last century, probably as
lynch-law and racial segregation waned while more discreet forms of
oppression became preferable. Over the years, this racially bigoted
pattern of policing resulted in a number of injustices.

At the end of the day, these injustices included the wrongful prosecution,
the twenty-two-year imprisonment, and, ultimately, the legalized lynching
of Troy Anthony Davis. As a result, many of us proclaim as an act of
solidarity that “I am Troy Davis”. Meanwhile, the insidious nature of the
machine that poisoned Troy to death can best be identified by the
politicians, the judges, the lawyers, the police, the prison employees, the
lobbyists, and the contractors who benefit from the system and who make
sure that it functions. These people long for a morally acceptable forum
for their constituencies’ blood lust. While never admitting to racial
bias, they can never escape the statistics that outline their collective
ambition for racially disproportionate executions. Nor can they credibly
dispute the sworn recantations by seven of the nine surviving witnesses
who, at first, testified against Troy Davis in August 1991 on the murder
charge, but who later confessed that they lied at trial against Troy and
often did so because of illegal pressures or suasion from local police. In
addition, the Georgia politicians and judges who maintain the death penalty
ignored the sworn proof offered by additional eyewitnesses who saw Officer
MacPhail’s murder, or who heard a confession to the crime, and who
ultimately disclosed under oath that Sylvester “Red” Coles, a police
informant, actually committed the murder or confessed to the crime, not
Troy Davis.

For those offended by Troy’s murder, we should honor the words “I am Troy
Davis” by working to abolish the American death penalty, and we should
insist upon achieving that goal within three to five years of Troy’s
execution. While pursuing this goal, we should also eliminate racially
disparate imprisonment in American society. As a partial remedy to the
fiscal troubles of the United States, we should demand that racially
disparate imprisonment and policing come to an end within three to five
years, if not immediately. As a matter of conscience and sound public
policy, the two causes must be linked. After all, the scourge of America’s
death penalty must end, and the pervasive system of police state apartheid
must be crushed into nonexistence, if the United States would atone for its
biased prosecutions against those who, because of incarceration, embody the
words “I am Troy Davis”.

At the end of the day, racial minorities should not be targeted for prison.
Innocents and the poor should not be legally lynched on America’s death
row. The American police state, with its history of racial slavery and
other forms of oppression, should not be trusted with seemingly unlimited
power to torment the poor and peoples of color. In other words, the
enforcement of the law should not be based upon its violation by the state.
Hence, if constitutional precepts such as “due process” and “equal
protection of the law” mean anything, then racially disparate prosecutions
and callous indifference to innocence should not be the norm. We should
oppose these evils until they no longer exist. In his last words, Troy
Davis issued more or less this same mandate late at night on September 21,
2011, while strapped down to a gurney in a rural Georgia prison. Many of
us heard Troy’s mandate. The question before us today is whether we will
fulfill it.

Racism in the Close Supervision Units (CSCs)

A recent admission from the manager of a brutal control-unit at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes, euphemistically called the “Close Supervision Centre” (CSC), that prisoners suffering with mental illness are being held there has raised serious questions about the selection process for a unit that was supposedly created to hold only the most dangerous, subversive and unmanageable prisoners in the jail system.

Information provided by Kyle Major, a prisoner currently in the Woodhill CSC, would indicate that it isn't just the mentally ill that have been erroneously labelled “control problems” and sent to the CSC; it seems that ethnicity and a particular brand of religious faith also qualifies one for a place in the CSC.

Of the 23 prisoners currently held in the CSCs at Woodhill and Wakefield prisons at least 12 of them are of the Muslim faith, which begs the obvious question as to why such a numerically tiny proportion of the overall prison population in England and Wales are so dispropotionately over-represented in the CSCs?

The existence of racism in the prison system and indeed the wider criminal justice system has long had an evidential basis and ethnicity influences one's chances of receiving a prison sentence if convicted of a criminal offence and also the quality of one's treatment once inside the prison system. Cultural conditioning amoungst an overwhelmingly white prison staff is largely responsible for perceiving black prisoners as intrinsically “difficult” and potentially “disruptive”, and for those black prisoners who frequently complain or question their treatment the
label of “control problem” is quickly applied and the attendant repessive measures vigorously applied. Skin colour and ethnic identity in prison has always influenced and determined the degree of punishment inflicted if behaviour and attitude towards authority is an issue. When Islamphobia is thrown into the mix then repression against a targeted group of prisoners can assume a deadly edge.

For some time prison staff have been leaking stories to the media about “Muslim prison gangs” recruiting followers and creating disruption in the prison system, and the prison authoritites have publicly revealed the existence of a police / prison service intelligence unit dedicated to monitoring the activities of “Muslim extremists” within the prison population. The image created is of large gangs of black and Asian Muslim prisoners spreading their nefarious influence amoungst other prisoners and actively recruiting potential foot soldiers for terrorist activities in the outside community. Although there is no real evidence to support the scenario created it does provide a context for the victimization of Muslim prisoners and their over representation in brutal prison control units like the “Close Supervision Centre”.

If, as appears to be the case, some prisoners are being “selected” for the CSCs princibly because of their Muslim faith (or “terrorist idelolgy”) then a condition of their “progression” out of the CSC and return to the mainstream prison population would inevitably be their abandenment of that faith; failure to comply would result in an indefinite stay in conditions of strict solitary confinement and clinical physical isolation. At Woodhil prison the Iman is not allowed to enter the CSC or talk with the Muslim prisoners held there, which re-affirms the belief of these prisoners that their faith is the principle reason for their current location. Prison Service order 51 states quite clearly that “All establishments enable prisoners to participate in corporate worship and other religious activities that encourage their spiritual and personal development whilst in custody”. Clearly this does not apply to Muslim prisoners held in the CSCs. Neither it seems does Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance”. Stripped of even this basic human right, over 50 percent of the prisoners currently being held in the CSCs are being punished for embracing and being identified with a religion that the prison authorities view as a threat to “good order and discipline”. If there is a growing militancy amoungst young Muslim prisoners then the behaviour and attitude of racist prison staff is an important
contributory factor in that, as is the psychological and physical brutalisation of Muslim prisoners in the CSCs.

No-one would dispute that in a chronically overcrowded prison system there are serious problems of control and safety, but none of that is remedied by targeting on the basis of race and relgion a specific group of prisoners and subjecting them to treatment that clearly breaches their basic human rights. A similar sort of racist targeting of black Muslim prisoners in the U.S. during the 1960s provoked the catastrophe of the Attica Prison uprising and the virtual wholesale segregation of the prison population along the lines of race and religion. There are clear signs that such a phenomenon is now happening in some English Maximum-Security prisons.

In terms of the prison “Close Supervision Centres” there is clear evidence that racism is influencing the selection process and fashioning the units into weapons of repression and abuse against “Muslim troublemakers”. It's therefore the duty of anti-racist groups and individuals to campaign for their closure.

John Bowden
Shotts Prison
November 2011

Press Conference at 2:00 p.m. Today on FBI anti Muslim Training

Shurah Council of Greater Cleveland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Greater Cleveland Shurah Council will join CAIR, other Muslim organizations and
Muslim leaders in a press conference to call for an investigation into FBI training
which teaches mainline Muslims are terrorists and other Islamophobic statements.

(CLEVELAND, OH, 9/21/11) –The Greater Cleveland Shurah Council will join
representatives from the Islamic Community, the Council on American Islamic
Relations, and the International Council for Urban Peace, Justice and Empowerment to
call for an investigation into the extent of FBI training which targets mainline
Muslims as terrorists, calls the Prophet Muhammad a cult leader and attempts to
undermine the credibility of the Quran. “At the Bureau’s training ground in
Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a
Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot
be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers
is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran
continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of
Allah.” (WIRED Magazine) One cannot be a devout Muslim unless they believe in the
Quran as the unalterable word of Allah.
At no time, should an agency of the federal government engage in religious bigotry
and target a religion as a source of evil, attack the credibility of its scriptures
in an attempt to create hatred against a religion. This training in bigotry and
prejudice by a federal law enforcement agency feeds the climate of Islamophobia that
has led to murder, Quran burnings, mosque bombings and desecrations, demonstration,
harassment of Muslim owned businesses and Muslims in general. There is no excuse
for this training and it should not be tolerated. We are calling on all people who
believe in the principles this country to stand
with us and call for an investigation. If this type of training in bigotry is
allowed to continue-who will be targeted next?

WHAT: News Conference about Biased Training offered by Federal Law Enforcement

WHEN: Wednesday, September 21, 2:00 p.m.

WHERE: The Council on American-Islamic Relations Cleveland & Northern Ohio Chapter
2999 Payne Avenue, Suite 220, Cleveland, Ohio 44114 (Asia Plaza, 2nd Floor)

CONTACT: Amir Khalid A. Samad at (216) 673-9551, Imam Yusuf Ali at (216) 431-1992
Imam Mutawaf Shaheed at (216) 431-1992.

NYPD monitored where Muslims ate, shopped, prayed

By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press August 31, 2011

NEW YORK (AP) — From an office on the Brooklyn waterfront in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, New York Police Department officials and a veteran CIA officer built an intelligence-gathering program with an ambitious goal: to map the region's ethnic communities and dispatch teams of undercover officers to keep tabs on where Muslims shopped, ate and prayed.

The program was known as the Demographics Unit and, though the NYPD denies its existence, the squad maintained a long list of "ancestries of interest" and received daily reports on life in Muslim neighborhoods, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The documents offer a rare glimpse into an intelligence program shaped and steered by a CIA officer. It was an unusual partnership, one that occasionally blurred the line between domestic and foreign spying. The CIA is prohibited from gathering intelligence inside the U.S.

Undercover police officers, known as rakers, visited Islamic bookstores and cafes, businesses and clubs. Police looked for businesses that attracted certain minorities, such as taxi companies hiring Pakistanis. They were told to monitor current events, keep an eye on community bulletin boards inside houses of worship and look for "hot spots" of trouble.

The Demographics Unit, a team of 16 officers speaking at least five languages, is the only squad of its kind known to be operating in the country.

Using census information and government databases, the NYPD mapped ethnic neighborhoods in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Rakers then visited local businesses, chatting up store owners to determine their ethnicity and gauge their sentiment, the documents show. They played cricket and eavesdropped in the city's ethnic cafes and clubs.

When the CIA would launch drone attacks in Pakistan, the NYPD would dispatch rakers to Pakistani neighborhoods to listen for angry rhetoric and anti-American comments, current and former officials involved in the program said.

The rakers were looking for indicators of terrorism and criminal activity, the documents show, but they also kept their eyes peeled for other common neighborhood sites such as religious schools and community centers.

The focus was on a list of 28 countries that, along with "American Black Muslim," were considered "ancestries of interest." Nearly all were Muslim countries.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week that the NYPD does not take religion into account in its policing. The inclusion of American black Muslims on the list of ancestries of interest suggests that religion was at least a consideration. On Wednesday, Bloomberg's office referred questions to the police department.

How law enforcement agencies, both local and federal, can stay ahead of Islamic terrorists without using racial profiling techniques has been hotly debated since 9/11. Singling out minorities for extra scrutiny without evidence of wrongdoing has been criticized as discriminatory. Not focusing on Muslim neighborhoods has been equally criticized as political correctness run amok. The documents describe how the nation's largest police force has come down on that issue.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the department only follows leads and does not simply trawl communities.

"We do not employ undercovers or confidential informants unless there is information indicating the possibility of unlawful activity," Browne wrote in an email to the AP.

That issue has legal significance. The NYPD says it follows the same guidelines as the FBI, which cannot use undercover agents to monitor communities without first receiving an allegation or indication of criminal activity.

Before The Associated Press revealed the existence of the Demographics Unit last week, Browne said neither the Demographics Unit nor the term "rakers" exist. Both are contained in the documents obtained by the AP.

An NYPD presentation, delivered inside the department, described the mission and makeup of the Demographics Unit. And a police memorandum from 2006 described an NYPD supervisor rebuking an undercover detective for not doing a good enough job reporting on community events and "rhetoric heard in cafes and hotspot locations."

At least one lawyer inside the police department has raised concerns about the Demographics Unit, current and former officials told the AP. Because of those concerns, the officials said, the information gathered from the unit is kept on a computer at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, not in the department's normal intelligence database. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence programs.

The AP independently authenticated the NYPD presentation through an interview with an official who sat through it and by reviewing electronic data embedded in the file. A former official who had not seen the presentation said the content of the presentation was correct. For the internal memo, the AP verified the names and locations mentioned in the document, and the content is consistent with a program described by numerous current and former officials.

In the two years following the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD Intelligence Division had an unusual partnership with Lawrence Sanchez, a respected veteran CIA officer who was dispatched to New York. Officials said he was instrumental in creating programs such as the Demographics Unit and met regularly with unit supervisors to guide the effort, all while on the CIA's payroll.

Both the NYPD and CIA have said the agency is not involved in domestic spying. A U.S. official familiar with the NYPD-CIA partnership described Sanchez's time in New York as a unique assignment created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

After a two-year CIA rotation in New York, Sanchez took a leave of absence, came off the agency's payroll and became the NYPD's second-ranking intelligence official. He formally left the agency in 2007 and stayed with the NYPD until last year.

Recently, the CIA dispatched another officer to work in the Intelligence Division as an assistant to Deputy Commissioner David Cohen. Officials described the assignment as a management sabbatical and said the officer's job is much different from what Sanchez was doing. Police and the CIA said it's the kind of counterterrorism collaboration Americans expect.

The NYPD Intelligence Division has unquestionably been essential to the city's best counterterrorism successes, including the thwarted plot to bomb the subway system in 2004. Undercover officers also helped lead to the guilty plea of two men arrested on their way to receive terrorism training in Somalia.

"We throw 1,200 police officers into the fight every day to make sure the same people or similarly inspired people who killed 3,000 New Yorkers a decade ago don't come back and do it again," Browne said earlier this month when asked about the NYPD's intelligence tactics.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat who represents much of Brooklyn and sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, said the NYPD can protect the city without singling out specific ethnic and religious groups. She joined Muslim organizations in calling for a Justice Department investigation into the NYPD Intelligence Division. The department said it would review the request for an investigation.

Clarke acknowledged that the 2001 terrorist attacks made Americans more willing to accept aggressive tactics, particularly involving Muslims. But she said Americans would be outraged if police infiltrated Baptist churches looking for evangelical Christian extremists.

"There were those who, during World War II, said, 'Good, I'm glad they're interning all the Japanese-Americans who are living here,'" Clarke said. "But we look back on that period with disdain."

Law and racism: legitimation and co-constitution of social structure

February 24, 2011 Broken Fence

Does the law play merely a superstructural role in the generation and maintenance of racism or is it generative of the infrastructure of racism? Is the primary function of the law legitimation or does the law primarily function through direct intervention into social relations? In reviewing antidiscrimination law, many scholars have pointed to the tendency of the law to simply mask extant patterns of inequality through the rhetoric of formal equality (Harris 1993; Gotanda 1991; Freeman 1977; Dunson III 2001; Emens 2009; Berg 1999). This ‘masking’ function of antidiscrimination law is a means through which the law serves to discursively legitimate status quo maldistributions of resources and power, while at the same time offering forceful protection to the established order from legal and political challenges. This might serve to imply that the role of the law is primarily superstructural – that it offers legitimation and stability – in relation to deeper structures that generate basic social relations (e.g. empire, capitalism, patriarchy).

However, such a view misses the contexts in which the law becomes an active collaborator in producing inequality, rather than simply stabilizing external patterns. By paying attention to the legal practices involved in the production of spaces of exception, tax policy, and criminal justice, we can see that the law can co-constitute structures of domination, oppression and inequality in addition to legitimating and stabilizing them. If the law seems merely superstructural in one circumstance, and structurally constitutive in another, than perhaps another logic is in operation. Those contexts in which the law appears superstructural are the same contexts that might offer challenge to white supremacy and other structures of oppression. Those contexts in which the law appears as forceful and co-constitutive of social structure are those in which it buttresses or exacerbates existing patterns of inequality. The common thread is support for status quo power arrangements, and the law deploys either an active constitutive mode or a passive mode of legitimation and stabilization depending on context.

Critical scholarship on antidiscrimination law and legal remedies to racism offer insight into the discursive and legitimating mode of legal action. Alan Freeman argues that the law primarily worked as a means to legitimate and stabilize racial disparities in a moment of crisis. The embrace of a ‘perpetrator’ centered perspective centered on identifying harm and intent to cause harm foreclosed the possibility of a ‘victim’ centered perspective centered on the actual conditions of disparity (1977). He argues that the law had the contradictory goal of holding out the discursive promise of racial equity while foreclosing the real possibility of attaining justice. Formal equality and race neutral colorblindness serve as a legitimating mask that suggests that the state rebukes racism while strictly limiting the boundaries of actual remedial action. Neil Gotanda suggests that the precept of a colorblind constitution requires substantial intellectual and performative gymnastics that result in the erasure of the historical meaning of race and racism. He argues that a contradictory practice of “nonrecognition” (Gotanda 1991:6), combined with a move toward formal definitions of race and an insistence on the “unconnectedness” (1991:41) of race to extant patterns of inequality reinforces white supremacy through legitimating racism as a thing of the past.

Cheryl Harris argues that we can read the legal history of whiteness and property together; that they are co-constitutive. She argues that contemporary claims to remedial action are being weighed against the settled expectations of white people’s privilege, and that white people have won legal protection for their investments in whiteness. As such, the courts have legitimated and reinforced extant hierarchies. Perhaps more than Gotanda and Freeman, Harris suggests that racial law itself has helped to constitute the frameworks through which privilege and exclusion operate (1993). In the context of colorblind or unconnected formal-race jurisprudence (Gotanda 1991; Freeman 1977), we see the function of the court as primarily legitimating status quo power distributions. In the context of whiteness as property or status-race in the pre civil-rights era, we see the court actively engaging in creating and reinforcing white supremacist social structure. In these cases then, the mode that sees the court as primarily legitimating operates only in the context of the possibility of social change to white supremacy. Anti-discrimination law in particular serves to suggest equity while refusing to challenge. Property (as Harris suggests) and other sectors of the law are far more direct in their intervention.

Derek Gregory suggests that spaces of exception and colonial occupations are characterized not so much by the suspension of law but through an elaborate legal performance. He suggests that we can’t see law in this context as merely offering the cover of legitimacy for the necropolitical (Mbembe 2003) regimes these spaces contain, but that these legal performances themselves render spaces as both interior to sovereignty and exterior to it simultaneously (2006:414). The law co-constitutes this social structure of extreme racial domination in partnership (and perhaps inseparably bound with) imperialism and biopolitical governance. Indeed the constitution of the space of exception and its governance is by necessity legal and by necessity racist (Foucault 2003:258; Mbembe 2003). The law here does far more than offer legitimation, it actively builds social structure.

Similarly, the racial maldistribution of wealth which affirmative action policies seek to at least suggest challenge to, are at least partially co-created through legal action. The establishment of the Bush-era tax cuts (and the precipitous decline in tax rates following the end of World War II) served to promote a massive upward transfer of wealth (Hacker and Pierson 2005). Similarly, the rapid privatization of public goods such as public housing has created windfall opportunities for corporate tax evasion, thus enabling a different stream of upward wealth transfer (Guthrie and McQuarrie 2005). In both cases, legal performance directly intervened into the fabric of social structure and buttressed already existing hierarchies.

Similarly, criminal law regularly intervenes directly and forcefully into social structures and actively builds a stigmatized underclass (Alexander 2009). Criminal law though, shows us how both discursive superstructural work and material structural work often go hand in hand in legal action. On the one hand, the enormous racial disparities in incarceration rates (Western 2006) produced by racist policing practices (Williams 2007; Parenti 2003), sentencing policy (Schlesinger 2011) and the targeting of racialized practices and spaces (Bobo and Thompson 2006; Mele 2004) naturalizes difference and legitimates and reinforces white supremacy (Wilderson III 2007). On the other, these same legal practices actively build structures of white supremacy through creating exclusive stigmas (Pager 2007) and dramatically diminishing the life chances of people of color (Western 2006; Gilmore 2007). In moments in which the legal system aligns with white supremacy, we see both the legitimation of Black subordination and the active building of structures that perpetuate white supremacy.

It is only then in moments in which the legal system potentially aligns itself against white supremacy that we see it function primarily with the discursive function of legitimation. The non-intervention that characterizes anti-discrimination law, coupled with its discourse of fairness and race neutrality, serves to ignore patterns of racial inequity. In this situation in which it ignores the problem, the court is compelled to engage in performances that communicate that it is in fact doing all that can be done to correct the problem, or that the problem of racism has been effectively dealt with (Freeman 1977:1117). This is a rare instance in which the court intentionally avoids action. In a range of other modes of legal action including criminal law, tax law, and the production of spaces of exception, the law actively engages in expanding or reinforcing white supremacy while at the same time engaging in communicative performance that seeks to naturalize power arrangements. When the capacity to act against white supremacy has developed, the courts choose non-intervention. When the capacity to buttress white supremacy arises, they actively engage. In both circumstances legal action involves the communicative task of legitimation.

Works Cited

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