By Salman Sultan,
Book: Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment after 9/11
Author: Shamshad Ahmad, Ph.D.
Publisher: The Troy Book Makers, Troy, New York 12180 (www.thetroybookmakers.com)
Year: 2009
Pages: xxii + 267
When I first landed at JFK (New York) to attend the Electrochemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. in 1983, the first person I came across after immigration formalities was a Policeman. To my query of making a telephone call to my friend living at that time in New York, he took out a coin of 10c from his pocket and gave me the direction to coin operated telephone booths. I politely declined his offer and thanked him. Later on, I visited USA a few times more and in my last visit in nineties I stayed for six months. What impressed me most were the freedom and almost equal rights of a visitor. I could easily get a driving license, of course, after passing the test, I could read books in the local library and borrow them on my cousin’s card, I could visit and consult literature without hindrance in NIST (earlier National Bureau of Standards), Gaithesberg, etc
After reading ‘Rounded Up’ I am simply shocked. Is it the same USA? It is unbelievable that inhabitants of USA, champion of human rights and land of many civil rights movements, could be made to live in perpetual fear after 9/11. How can enlightened and highly educated people react in such irrational way? An event, which is still shrouded in mystery and which quite a few people consider as an ‘inside job’, triggered unprecedented devastation in the form of loss of human lives and ruined countries around the globe. It also changed the lives of American Muslims who were targeted by FBI and put behind bars through planned sting operations.
A midnight knock at 274 West Lawrence Street, Albany (USA) on August 5, 2004, triggers event which led to search of a mosque after the arrest of two Muslims: one of them Yassin Aref, Imam of Masjid As-Salam, Albany. Professor Shamshad Ahmad, President of Masjid As-Salam, residing at 274 West Lawrence Street, was taken to the mosque by FBI to assist the search. ‘Rounded Up’ is about the sustained and well organized campaign led by Shamshad to defend and try for honourable acquittal of arrested Yassin Aref and Mohammad Mosharref Hossain. How they are charged with carrying out an illegal money-laundering scheme to support terrorism through sting operation devised by FBI employing a Pakistani criminal as a confidential informant and how the prosecution takes refuge under Classified Information Procedure Act blocking information to the defense has been narrated in detail. Sting tapes of 2003 and 2004 have been reproduced as Appendix ‘A’ and ‘B’. Arresting innocent Muslims on the basis of these tapes defies logic and clearly points to the sinister design of FBI to keep itself in business and earn accolades from a paranoid public.
In spite of good defense and formation of Muslim Solidarity Group (MSC) which included intellectuals, humanitarians and activists from the peace movement, labor and religious groups, etc. Yassin Aref and Mohammad Mosharref Hossain were sentenced to 15 years in prison by a jury which was subtly terrified. Doug Bullock, a labor leader, declared “We will not let this government harass our Muslim brothers and neighbours!”
Shamshad Ahmad in his post-sentencing statement tried to make American people think rationally. He said “This trial occurred because of the immense power of the government and its resolve to punish these two men, and through them, to punish the Muslim community locally and nationally. I invite you to think: there are more than six million Muslims in this country, and almost six years have gone by since 9/11, yet not a single Muslim terrorist have even been found here. We are not terrorists. We are part of this society, we share its concerns, and we want to share in its success and prosperity.”
This book has its share of humour and emotions: when FBI agent Jensen along with a security guard took Shamshad away to the mosque he thought “he wouldn’t have to do much to handle me if I misbehaved”, or in mosque press conference “when it came to the question of who would be the official spokesperson for the mosque, contrary to my expectation that everyone’s eyes would turn to me, people suggested that Faisal (Shamshad’s son) should be the one to speak”.
“American non-Muslim women were holding Aref’s three lovely children on their laps as if they were trying to shield them from the powerful and arrogant agents who had decided to prosecute their father. Looking at me while clutching Aref’s youngest son in her lap, one of the women said, “This is persecution, not a prosecution”(p. 155)
‘Rounded Up’ gives an insight into fake encounters (Batla House, Delhi) and witch hunting of Muslims by security agencies in India as well. It seems our intelligence is following studiously FBI.
This book is a must for all those working to uphold justice and human dignity.