Opposition grows to anti-Muslim campaigns

After a federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., denied bail for the Newburgh Four on June 25, the defendants’ family and friends mapped plans for a campaign to expose the government’s ongoing massive anti-Muslim campaign. The trial is expected to resume in August.

On June 14 Judge Colleen McMahon had postponed the trial, criticizing the government for covering up FBI entrapment of the men. The FBI had induced them to participate in a plot to blow up two Bronx synagogues and shoot down a military plane at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh. The FBI’s role included procuring everything, identifying targets, persuading the men to participate, and offering them cars and large sums of money to go along.

A week later, McMahon said, “I have referred to the case ... in the privacy of my chambers, as the ‘un-terrorism case.’” But for the record she decided for the prosecutors and for Robert Fuller, the FBI agent in charge of the case, who sat in front of her during the bail hearing.

Alicia McWilliams, aunt of defendant David Williams, responded bitterly: “If it’s the ‘un-terrorism case,’” she said to Workers World, “why are they still in jail?” She said the government used these four impoverished African-American men as ploys in a fake war on terror. She added that she asked leaders of the Riverdale Jewish community if they were also angry at being used. “One rabbi told me, ‘You don’t see us out there protesting or in the newspapers or at the trial, but we’re embarrassed.’”

Friends and supporters are planning a forum in Newburgh before the trial resumes and a rally at New York’s City Hall in the near future. The rally will answer one called by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the same spot a year ago to “celebrate the heroes who foiled the terrorists” in Newburgh. Alicia McWilliams wants an apology and wants to vindicate the four framed defendants.

Newburgh is an economically depressed town of 30,000 people about 60 miles north of New York City, on the Hudson River. According to Wikipedia.com, the town’s annual per capita income is about $13,000. Black and Latino/a people make up two-thirds of the population.

Globalization wiped out the town’s once vibrant industrial base, and many river port jobs were lost as shippers changed over to trucks following deregulation in the early Reagan years.

Today in Newburgh there are no jobs, no job training and no re-entry programs for the many young people convicted of victimless criminal offenses, McWilliams said. “If just half the money the FBI spent on the entrapment and sting operation had been used for job programs in Newburgh, this tragedy would have never happened.”

Professor Shamshad Ahmad, who teaches at the State University of New York in Albany and is co-founder of Project SALAM, told Workers World the Newburgh case is similar to “pre-emptive prosecution programs” against hundreds of Muslims all over the country. He is author of a book published in 2009: “Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11.”

In April, the Albany Common Council called on the Justice Department to carry out the recommendation of its own inspector general and establish an independent panel to review convictions of Muslims who have been “preemptively prosecuted.” The inspector general’s report was declassified in July 2009.

Lynne Jackson, speaking for Project SALAM, told Workers World, “We hope passage of this resolution encourages other cities and counties to pass similar resolutions, to show that citizens demand a second look into some of the most unjust prosecutions that withheld classified evidence, such as the Fort Dix Five, the Newburgh Four, Betim Kaziu, Fahad Hashmi and hundreds of other cases.” Jackson extended an invitation to all concerned to attend the National Peace Conference in Albany July 23-25, where there will be a workshop on fighting these unjust prosecutions.

Project SALAM has written numerous letters on this matter to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Albany Common Council member Dominick Calsolaro also notified Obama of the Common Council resolution. To date they have not received a response.