Law is lax when terror suspects are racists
By
David Hoskins
Published Mar 9, 2005 2:59 PM
Speculation is intense surrounding the murder
of the husband and mother of Chicago federal judge Joan Lefkow.
Lefkow
herself had earlier been targeted for assassination by Matt Hale and the white
supremacist World Church of the Creator after she enforced an appeals court
ruling in a trademark case and ordered the group to change its name. She later
levied a $200,000 fine and found Hale in contempt of court for defying the court
order. Hale has been in prison since April 2004 for soliciting the assassination
of Lefkow in retaliation for her ruling.
The U.S. Marshals Service has
been charged with protecting federal judges and prosecutors since 1789. If it is
determined that the Feb. 28 double murder of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey
was carried out as a result of Judge Lefkow's ruling, it would mark the first
time that the U.S. Marshals Service failed to protect the family member of a
federal judge targeted over a case decision. (Quad City Times, March 1)
The FBI is investigating the incident and has maintained that it is far
too early to make assumptions and that a large number of angles must be
investigated. This is despite the fact that a number of individuals representing
disparate organizations, ranging from the progressive Southern Poverty Law
Center to the Zionist Anti-Defama tion League, and including several white
supremacists themselves, believe that individuals sympathetic or affiliated to
Matt Hale and the World Church of the Creator were willing and capable of
carrying out the murders. (Christian Science Monitor, March 3)
Hale's
group, which is also anti-Semitic, incorrectly believed that Lefkow and her
family were Jewish.
Questions remain on how the killers were able to
circumvent the tight government protection and private security system in order
to carry out the murders.
If there was government complicity at some
level, it certainly would not be the first time in racially motivated killings.
United States' intelligence agencies have a history of involvement and
concealment when it comes to terrorist attacks perpetrated by white supremacist
organizations.
For example, it took decades before anyone from the
terrorist Ku Klux Klan was brought to justice for the death of four young girls
as a result of the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
The FBI, which had thoroughly penetrated the Klan, was the main obstacle to
bringing the fugitive terrorists who perpetrated this crime to account.
(Newsweek, July 21, 1997)
By casting a wide net of suspicion, instead of
focusing closer scrutiny on Matt Hale and the white supremacist movement, the
FBI could again provide significant opportunity for a racial terrorist
organization to escape trial.
Meanwhile, the FBI, as an instrument of the
racist state, targets innocent individuals and organizations in other cases.
Case of Cuban Five
The case of the Cuban Five is a prime
example of the U.S. intelligence agencies' perverse sense of priorities. In 1998
agents arrested five Cubans who had carefully collected and provided Cuba with
evidence of terrorist plots planned by right-wing Cuban exile organizations in
Miami. The Cuban government turned over the information to the FBI.
Instead of acting on the evidence to ensure that the terrorist plots were
prevented, the five were charged with espionage and convicted after a trial in
an area infamous for its bias against Cuba. They were held in solitary
confinement for 17 months. Almost seven years later, these five brave Cubans are
still incarcerated in U.S. prisons for attempting to prevent real terrorists
from attacking innocent civilians in the U.S. and Cuba.
For months the
media and the government have been preoccupied with targeting Muslim
organizations and charging them with alleged terrorist ties. Often the usual
liberal judicial processes have been violated as suspects found themselves
detained without charges or the right to counsel. Many are known to have been
tortured.
Nicaraguan hero barred from U.S.
And just recently,
a Nicaraguan woman beloved in her country for risking her life in the struggle
to overthrow the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza was denied a visa by the U.S.
State Department on the grounds that she had been involved in "terrorism." Dora
Maria Tellez led the brigade that liberated the city of Leon during the Nicara
guan Revolution, and later became minister of health. Tellez was recently
appointed as the Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American studies
at Harvard Univer sity, but now cannot enter the U.S. to assume her teaching
post. (Guardian [Britain], March 3)
Meanwhile, the real terrorism legacy
of Birmingham lives on as right-wing extremists suspiciously slip past
government security to carry out the execution of a judge's family members.
And a racist, imperialist foreign policy ensures that the federal
government wastes working people's dollars on investigating charitable
organizations that provide much-needed social programs in places like occupied
Palestine and Lebanon, while real terrorists such as the World Church of the
Creator and the KKK are allowed to roam the streets with impunity.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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