From the Department of Justice | News and Views

Innalhamdolillah.  Indeed, praise and thanks are for Allah.

Say, “Who is Lord of the heavens and earth?” Say, “Allah.” Say, “Have you then taken besides Him allies not possessing [even] for themselves any benefit or any harm?” Say, “Is the blind equivalent to the seeing? Or is darkness equivalent to light? Or have they attributed to Allah partners who created like His creation so that the creation [of each] seemed similar to them?” Say, “Allah is the Creator of all things, and He is the One, the Prevailing.”
The 16th ayat of Surah ar-Raa’d, the Holy Qur’an. Meaning in English by Sahih International, http://quran.com/13/16.

This Monday a terrorist group was thwarted by the Department of Justice (DOJ).  Well, I’d call them a terrorist group.  Calling themselves religious warriors, they were stockpiling weapons, and they had what the Attorney General called “an insidious plan.”  Not only were they going to murder a law enforcement officer, but it is believed that they would attack the officer’s funeral procession with I.E.D.’s!  That’s improvised explosive device for all of us innocent-enough to confuse such terms with L.E.D.’s, etc.  According to the New York Times the IED’s were to be based on devices used to kill American soldiers in Iraq, and the group had been meeting since as early as December 2008.

So, alhamdolillah, it appears that a terrorist attack has been prevented.  That’s good news.

But it’s not how the headlines read.  And the word terrorist or terrorism never appears as a description of the group or its plans in that article.

In an indictment against the nine unsealed on Monday, the Justice Department said they were part of a group of apocalyptic Christian militants who were plotting to kill law enforcement officers in hopes of inciting an antigovernment uprising, the latest in a recent surge in right-wing militia activity.

The court filing said the group, which called itself the Hutaree, planned to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer and then bomb the funeral caravan using improvised explosive devices based on designs used against American troops by insurgents in Iraq.

“This is an example of radical and extremist fringe groups which can be found throughout our society,” Andrew Arena, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a statement. “The F.B.I. takes such extremist groups seriously, especially those who would target innocent citizens and the law enforcement officers who protect the citizens of the United States.”

(Excerpt) “Militia Charged With Plotting to Murder Officers,” by Nick Bunkley and Charlie Savage. Published: March 29, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30militia.html

Nor does the T-word appear in the DOJ press release (though members of a counter-terrorism task force who helped capture the group were thanked):

WASHINGTON – Six Michigan residents, along with two residents of Ohio and a resident of Indiana, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara L. McQuade and FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena announced today.

The five count indictment, which was unsealed today, charges that between August 2008 and the present, the defendants, David Brian Stone, 45; his wife, Tina Stone, 44; his son, Joshua Matthew Stone, 21, of Clayton, Mich.; and his other son, David Brian Stone, Jr., 19, of Adrian, Mich.; Joshua Clough, 28, of Blissfield, Mich.; Michael Meeks, 40 of Manchester, Mich.; Thomas Piatek, 46, of Whiting, Ind.; Kristopher Sickles, 27, of Sandusky, Ohio; and Jacob Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio, acting as a Lenawee County, Mich., militia group called the Hutaree, conspired to oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government. According to the indictment, Hutaree members view local, state, and federal law enforcement as the “brotherhood”, their enemy, and have been preparing to engage them in armed conflict.

(Excerpt) “Nine Members of a Militia Group Charged with Seditious Conspiracy and Related Charges,” DOJ Office of Public Affairs. March 29, 2010. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/March/10-ag-334.html

Why doesn’t DOJ call them terrorists?  It’s pretty clear that DOJ has some kind of problem distinguishing darkness from light.  Sure, they caught these evildoers.  But while DOJ says this group was planning “to levy war” against the US, no mention of the terrorism word.  It cannot be a coincidence that these religious zealots are all Christians.

“Oh no, abu abdAllah! DOJ must shy away from the ‘T-Word’ in its press releases…”  Really?

CHICAGO — A Chicago man who claims to be acquainted with an alleged terrorist leader in Pakistan was arrested today on federal charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization for allegedly attempting to provide funds overseas to al Qaeda, federal law enforcement officials announced. Although the defendant, Raja Lahrasib Khan, a Chicago taxi driver and native of Pakistan who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, allegedly discussed attacking a stadium in the United States this summer, there was no imminent domestic danger, officials said.

The investigation leading to Khan’s arrest is unrelated to a separate investigation that resulted in federal terrorism charges against Chicagoans Tahawwur Hussain Rana and David Coleman Headley in connection with the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and a plot to attack targets in Denmark, the officials added.

Khan, 56, of the city’s north side, was charged with two counts of providing material support to terrorism in a criminal complaint that was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Chicago and unsealed today following his arrest, announced Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The investigation is continuing, they said.

Khan was arrested this morning while working in downtown Chicago without incident by the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. He was scheduled to appear at 3:30 p.m. today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown in Federal Court in Chicago.

“While there was no imminent danger in the Chicago area or elsewhere, these charges, once again, affirm that law enforcement must remain constantly vigilant to guard against domestic support of foreign terrorist organizations. I am deeply grateful to the FBI agents and other members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force for their extremely hard work on this matter,” said Mr. Fitzgerald.

…

The public is reminded that a criminal complaint contains mere allegations that are not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and is entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

(Excerpt) “Chicago Man Charged with Providing Material Support to Al Qaeda by Attempting to Send Funds Overseas,” DOJ Office of Public Affairs. March 26, 2010.  http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/March/10-nsd-326.html

In case you lose count when you read the press release, “terror” as a word and as a word-stem (for terrorist, terrorism, etc) appears 13 times.  I left in the last paragraph out of deference to the presumed innocence of Mr. Khan.  Unlike the Stones family which was discovered with a weapons stash, he was arrested while driving his cab under otherwise innocuous circumstances.  DOJ goes out of its way to say that the public was in no danger from him, just as much as it went out of its way to drop the word “terror.”

The New York Times is a private enterprise.  A business.  It hides behind special constitutional protections, as against defamation, etc., but ultimately it answers to its shareholders.  So its bias in reporting is mostly sad and pathetic.

But the DOJ is supposed to be protecting all Americans all the time.  How can it pretend to protect us from threats if it is biased in identifying the nature of threats and allocating resources to them?  Serious dangers to society like the Stone family — that’s real terrorism!  But it’s Shaykh Dr. Ali at-Timimi, at whose trial prosecutors guilt-tripped the jury with repeated invocations of the horror of 9/11, who has sat in ultra-high security prison for years and years, smeared with the T-word.

There is no semblance of justice in that.

And the tactics used against Shaykh at-Timimi are used over and over again at trial after trial by DOJ against Muslims, and in public relations attacks like the one above in the case of a taxi driver who was apparently never a credible threat against anyone.  Why?  Not for justice’ sake.

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Along the same sad lines:

Christian Rodney Ice was charged with defacing a synagogue in Mobile, AL.  (DOJ press release)  No, that’s his first name.  If a Muslim had na’udhobillah done such a hateful thing, surely DOJ would not mention his faith?

Being fair to Justice:

“Tennessee Man Sentenced to 183 Months in Prison for Burning Islamic Center,” DOJ Office of Public Affairs.  March 25, 2010.

Senior Judge Robert L. Echols of the Middle District of Tennessee today sentenced Eric Ian Baker to 183 months in prison for vandalizing and burning down the Islamic Center of Columbia, Tenn., the Justice Department announced. Baker pleaded guilty on Sept. 18, 2009, to destruction of religious property and using fire to commit a felony.
(Excerpt)

If only Justice were fair to them:

On March 23 and 24 the Attorney General announced that five detainees from the notorious Guantanamo Bay Detention Center were transferred to the custody and Control of Switzerland and Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the Peach State).  Three Uighurs were settled in Switzerland, alhamdolillah, and 2 other undescribed persons were sent to Georgia.  Both countries were thanked in the press releases.  Sadly, not so much as an apology to the persons whose years were stolen from them, who were never brought to trial for any crime, and who were never a threat to America.

In seizing them, in shipping them off in black-hoods and shackles, in keeping them in pens as animals might be kept, and in numerous more insults to mind and body, the US used these men and the other detainees.  Making them targets for fear and outrage, rallying posts for neo-conservatives and hatemongers alike.  Endangering them so much that too many cannot lead normal lives in their home countries.  And how many of them have ever been convicted of any crime?

And how much has America done to make up for what it has inflicted on them?  Well, at least those press releases do not mention the T-Word.