From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Wed Jul 31 2002 - 11:46:36 MDT
For more information on the Ujaama case, there have been a number of
articles at www.rockymountainnews.com, including
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_1283614,00.html.
You can search on "Ujaama" at the top of the page to get up to date
information.
According to this article, Ujaama was not arrested because of his
criticism of the U.S. Rather, he is being held on a material witness
warrant as part of an investigation into the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in
Seattle, which he and his brother attended. This mosque is being
investigated as a front for terrorist activity. The grand jury
investigation is secret and that is why no information is being made
available.
The government claims that Ujaama and his brother scouted out locations
in Oregon for a "jihad training camp". It also says that Ujaama lived
for six years in London and had ties there to a militant shiek named
al-Masri who was supposedly a recruiter for al-Qaida.
Now, I don't feel that these claims, many of which are disputed by
Ujaama, justify holding anyone indefinitely as a material witness.
I don't know how the law reconciles this kind of detention with Ujaama's
constitutional rights. I do know that grand jury investigations are
sometimes conducted in secrecy, which explains why even Ujaama's lawyer
can't say much. It might be acceptable to hold someone for a limited
time under these conditions, a few days until he can testify to the
grand jury, but certainly not for an indefinite period.
However I think that the facts above indicate that there is much more to
the case than was previously reported here based on the lewrockwell.com
web site. This site seems to be a political advocacy site and IMO those
are not good sources of unbiased news.
By the way, James Ujaama is not an Arab immigrant, he is a native born
American citizen, born James Thompson, of African American descent, who
changed his name as is customary when he converted to Islam. So his
rights are much stronger than is the case in many of the terrorism
investigations which are directed against non-citizen immigrants.
Hal
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