Yemenis in Western New York
Gov't threats force plea bargains
By Ellie Dorritie
Buffalo, N.Y.
Four of six young Yemeni men from Lackawanna,
N.Y., charged with "aiding" the al Qaeda organization, have
pleaded guilty. The others may, too. They have little
choice.
Why plead guilty when their lawyers have reportedly said it
is unlikely a jury would convict them?
Because the government has openly threatened to charge the
six--all U.S. citizens of Yemeni heritage--with being "enemy
combatants." That means they could be thrown into a military
prison without trials or legal rights if they don't take the
plea deals.
The government has also openly floated the "hint" that if
the six choose jury trials, they might be charged with
treason--which carries the possibility of execution.
Helping the government step up the pressure, the Buffalo
News referred to the six as "Western New York's al Qaeda
connection" and alleged that "they kept to themselves
information that might have spared 3,000 lives."
There has never been any claim by the Justice Department
that the young men had any prior knowledge about 9/11 or any
connection to attacks of any kind.
Their alleged crime is one of association, not of having
committed any criminal act.
According to the government, the six attended camps in
Afghanistan that the U.S. calls "al Qaeda training camps."
Solely for the "crime" of attendance, the six were charged with
providing material support to al Qaeda.
In their pleas, four of the Lackawanna Six stated that they
did attend a training camp in Afghanistan. They went, they
said, to learn how to fight for Muslim ideals and to renew
their religious roots. They believed they might someday fight
in Palestine or Chechnya. At the camp, they heard anti-American
rhetoric. They learned to use weapons. For this, they face
prison terms.
Federal law experts Professor David Cole of Georgetown
University Law Center and former judge and prosecutor Edgar
Nemoyer both say that this stretches the law too far. They
believe the charge may be unconstitutional, and that this is
why the federal government is pressuring the defendants to
plead guilty.
There are real terror cells in upstate New York and around
the country, but the Bush administration isn't generating a
media campaign against them. They are the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi
members who receive paramilitary training in white-supremacist,
racist militia groups. The White House and Supreme Court have
actually abetted the reactionary anti-abortion movement that
relies on the threat of terror against abortion pro viders.
People in Buffalo are very familiar with this, because Dr.
Barnett Slepian was gunned down here in 1998 by an
anti-abortion terrorist.
Instead, this misnamed "war on terror" is directed against
the Yemeni community in Lackawanna, an economically depres sed
mill town five miles south of Buffalo, and the large Arab and
Muslim population in and around Buffalo as a whole.
Surveillance helicopters fly regularly over Lackawanna. The
FBI makes publicized visits to Buffalo's Grover Cleveland High
School, which has a large English-as-a-second-language program,
to intimidate Arab and Yemeni students.
The constant racist fear campaign against Arabs, Muslims and
South Asians, depicting them as "terrorists," is meant to build
support for the Bush administration's Endless War. In this
climate of hostility, defendants like the Lackawanna Six may
well fear the risk of a jury trial.
Reprinted from the April 17, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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