Looking out for “A” & “T”

Saurav, who co-writes on the new blog Detained, updates us on the situation of the 16 year-old Bangladeshi and Guinean girls that the FBI recently detained, ostensibly as potential suicide bombers. My original posting about this mentioned that the family was not economically capable of fighting the government and Detained elaborates.

As you may have read recently in the New York Times and a number of other publications, two Muslim teenage girls have been detained. One is from Guinea, and the other is from Bangladesh. The government is using immigration law to jail these 16 year olds without charging them with a crime, holding secret proceedings against them without giving them access to the evidence that is being used against them, and slandering them in the media as “suicide bombers” without providing proof.

In fact, an FBI official told The New York Daily News, “Nobody here believes they are wanna-be suicide bombers.” Another official at the Department of Homeland Security commented, “We’re not spun up about this case.” So why, then, are these young women in jail, cut off from their families? Why are their lives being ruined? This is an insane injustice.

Please open your hearts to both families. The family of A., the young Guinean woman, is in urgent need, and owes money to their lawyer. They have also lost their income, as the father has also been detained on immigration violations. As we learn more details about her situation, we may find they have other needs as well.

The young Bangladeshi woman, T., and her loved ones also face an enormous challenge. Her family needs to raise approximately $10,000 in the next three months just to get by. There are three children. The vast majority of the money would go towards housing, because the family has had to give up their apartment out of fear of surveillance or other threats to their safety. The remainder of expenses are for food, transportation and any legal expenses (although the lawyer is currently doing the case for free). Visits to the lawyer and to the detention center take 3 hours each way and cost money. It may also be necessary to fundraise for airline tickets for some family members in the future. There’s enough money available right now from various sources to cover them for a few days, but their situation could become dire very soon.

The April 12 editorial page of the New York Times included a scathing commentary on this situation:

The government calls the girls an “imminent threat,” and says it has “evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.” But it has not described the evidence, insisting that national security requires that much of it remain secret. Because the girls are here illegally, they have been put into a deportation system that affords them far fewer rights than ordinary criminal suspects have. There is no definite limit on how long they can be held.

No one wants to leap to conclusions about a government case in such an important area. But the record is not reassuring. Last year, the government wrongly jailed Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who is a Muslim, for two weeks after the F.B.I. mistakenly matched his fingerprint to one found at the scene of the Madrid train bombing. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department rounded up hundreds of Muslim men who were here illegally and detained them for months, often in deplorable conditions. The department’s inspector general later found that the F.B.I. had made “little attempt to distinguish” those with terrorism ties from those without. Shortly after 9/11, federal authorities detained a Nepalese tourist for three months in a tiny cell after he inadvertently included an F.B.I. building in a videotape of the sights of New York for folks at home.

If you would like to make a monetary contribution to this family’s legal expenses than you can do so using the following information:

CAIR-NY, a leading Islamic civil liberties organization that is involved in helping these two families and many others, has an Emergency Family Fund. To contribute to the fund, you can mail checks written to:

Emergency Family Fund / CAIR NY
c/o 9-11 relief program / Adem Carroll, ICNA
166-26 89th Avenue
Jamaica, NY, 11432
Donations are tax exempt


If you would like to direct your contribution to A and T and their families, please write that on your check. Otherwise, surplus donations to the fund will be used for the Emergency Family Fund for detainee families more generally. For more information, please contact Brother Adem at 718-658-7028 or visit Detention, the blog.

18 thoughts on “Looking out for “A” & “T”

  1. Saurav… any chance you can post some of the details of the arrest on/near the header of the Detained-site? I ask only because identities are vague and circumstances abstract for obvious reasons and, because there’s a lot of information to go through, in terms of text and news, for specifics.

    Granted I and everyone else can read, but I went to the site to grab a quick summary to forward via email and ended up doing some searching and summarizing–maybe you could just list the detention center, when-where-how of the arrest and which news publications have commented?

  2. One great thing about these blogs is that you are never more than two clicks away from a Hamas supporting psychopath or an America hating crazed blogger who links to organisations seeking to create a global Khalifa (wiping out Jews, Hindus, Americans)

    Isnt it wonderful how the left has made common cause with out and out religious fascists?

    I would feel uneasy associating with anyone who linked to VHP or RSS and I feel the same about these websites.

  3. sd,

    i forgot i took the news articles off the individual posts. if you click through to the main blog, you’ll see about 8 or 9 media pieces that detail the arrests, etc., to the extent that we know about them: Detainment. The New York Times articles are particularly rich in detail, although I think they tend to give the government a little too much credit.

    Mr. Suspicious, Skepticism is always welcome in my book, but keep in mind that if you choose to be skeptical without looking into it further and thereby do nothing, a couple of teenage women are languishing in jail, separated from their families, called “terrorists” by the government in public without public evidence, and otherwise made miserable. You can click through to the CAIR-NY website or the ICNA website, which administer the EFF, and find out if you feel like you’re supporting the global jihad or just a couple of teenagers.

    Just as a sample of what’s on the ICNA page right now: “ICNA Condoles Pope’s Death” Sounds like the jihad, doesn’t it?

  4. Saurav

    The Jihad is real brother. These girls might be innocent, they might not be. If they are innocent I hope they are released soon. In the meantime, some people have your ass targeted for being a double infidel: American, and Hindoo.

    If I can click to Hamas and extreme right wing Islamic extremists from any one point by hitting a couple of links, I am always going to be suspicious.

    But hey, if we are being open minded and fair about this, I hear that the RSS does a lot of good work and charity for the poor too.

  5. Al Mujahid

    I was not referring to CAIR’s website, which I havent visited. I was referring to a few clicks on the comments page from one of Saurav’s blog entries, which led me to a site containing rabid America hating rhetoric with a set of links leading to various wonderful extremist pages.

    Man, I have to hold my nose when reading that kind of stuff, and it does not do the defenders of civil liberties any favours. I have always wondered why right wing Jihadi lunatics are fine by some people, whilst right wing Hindutva psychos are not.

    It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  6. Al Mujahid

    If you want I can show you how to get to Hamas’s website in three easy clicks from Saurav’s blog.

  7. Go to Saurav’s blog

    Click Here.

    Scroll to the entry for Friday, April 15, 2005 with the title: Some Notes On the Most Recent Times Article

    Click on ‘Comments’, then go to the homepage of the contributor who calls himself ducktapefatwa

    In the top right hand corner click on the link called Tapu and peruse to your hearts content lots of lovely extreme right wing Islamic fundamentalist organisations, including Hamas.

    Alright, I lied, its actually four or five clicks.

    Make of that what you will. I see this as an issue of the facelessness of the state and its injustices that can be resolved through the mechanisms of the state. Putting yourself in close proximity to psychopaths who think it is because America is the anti-Christ and on a par with Nazi Germany is demented, especially because we know that they want to act on their psychosis. Plus, it does no favours in gaining sympathy for the girls.

  8. Just to bring it back to the topic at hand, if people could give money and keep up with what’s going on with these teenagers, it would be great. I’m happy to attempt to answer any questions anyone has or point you to other people.

  9. Mr Suspicious, you should be worried about whether there is a direct link from any of the posts in the blog to a terrorist website. If someone who comments on the website has a link to a site which has a link to Hamas, it is not a reflection of the blog.

  10. Wow – Mr Suspicious is suspicious because a commenter on a webpage linked to this one has a webpage, that links to another webpage, that consists only of links to Islamic fundamentalist sites such as Hamas Online, Al-Jazeera, Ananova, Daypop, and Reuters??? that’s pretty meta.

    Additionally, ductapefatwa was writing a commentary on living wage – not on how Hamas is TeH ShiZ and how everyone should join.

    Those who leave comments on any blog are not necessarily representative of the views of the person who owns the blog. Additionally, blog owners have no responsibility to check to see if people who are leaving comments might possibly have offensive links on their own personal sites. Most of us have day jobs, and although we can click through and find that “Joe B.” is really linking his comment to freeonlinegambling.com and delete it, clicking every link on Joe B’s legitimate website to make sure HE is not linking to offensive sites is a little insane.

  11. For a second, I thought people over here were playing “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.

    Wait, I think we are!

    Didn’t CNN, FOX, and MSNBC link to Al Jazeera, who linked to some other website, who linked to some terrorist website? Holy cow, don’t White House press releases get published on CNN, FOX, and MSNBC? White house all the way too… GOOD LORD! It couldn’t be!!!

  12. Abhi, I am glad you have made a post on this subject. After 9-11 thousands of immigrants were locked up from Middle Eastern countries and South Asia including India (some were Sikhs and Hindus Gasp!) However after being locked for months, after being denied access to lawyers and family, all of a sudden, half of them were released a day before Ass-Croft was to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Anyway it has been almost 4 years since 9-11 and guess how many people out of those 5,000 have been charged with terrorism ? ZERO, NADA, SIPHER ! Out of the 5000, around 2 or 3 are being detained as material witnesses to a crime. The Inspector General had a scathing report chastising the prisons and Justice Departmenton the abuse of these immigrants. So I am not that surprised that similar things are happening to these girls.

  13. Don’t overlook your local mosque and immigrant services agencies – they may be involved already, and if they’re not, you can be the one to tell them about the girls – might lead to a few more small donations here and there, and it all adds up!

    Mr Suspicious, I think you might need a group hug. And maybe some Peeps. You know they have an 18 month shelf life… 😉

  14. Without playing 6-degrees of islamofascists, CAIR itself is worth taking a look at. The founder of the Texas chapter was recently convicted on terrorism-related charges. Other high-ups have also been charged.

  15. whatever,

    Can you source your point? It’s something that’s obviously an important issue. However, given what’s at stake here–two women’s wellbeing and rights, I think you need to provide some sourcing. I’m not disputing what you’re saying on the facts–I just don’t want an unsubstantiated claim to sit out there without understanding exactly what you’re referring to.