newswire

$240k awarded to man forced to cover Arabic T-shirt

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday. Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

"The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling," said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU. Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: "We will not be silent."

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said. Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Source: [Yahoo News]

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Jordanian film shows Zarqawi in different light

AMMAN (AP) Zarqa, a low-income industrial city near the Jordanian capital Amman, is best known as the birthplace of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led a campaign of suicide bombings in Iraq that killed hundreds of civilians before he died in a U.S. airstrike in 2006.

But Zarqa native and filmmaker Mahmoud Massad has sought to portray a very different and more nuanced image of his hometown in his new documentary "Recycle," which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's World Documentary Cinematography award.

This beautifully shot film examines ex-mujaheddin fighter Abu Ammar, who is trying, but failing, to build a normal life. It is a disturbing and bleak portrait of a man struggling to support eight children and two wives on meager earnings he gets from scrounging for recyclable cardboard.

But the film's title also alludes to the masses of unemployed young men in much of the Arab world who become recyclable fodder for militants. Director Massad turns Zarqa's rundown slums into an intriguing web of visuals of the city's underclass, trying to show it is not just a breeding ground for violent extremists.

Source: [International Herald Tribune]

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When We Torture

By Nicholas D. Kristof

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system. Mr. Hajj's fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That's us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America's Image, it couldn't have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

President Bush is now moving forward with plans to try six Guantánamo prisoners before a military tribunal, rather than hold a regular trial. That will call new attention to abuses in Guantánamo and sow more anti-Americanism around the world.

Source: [NY Times]

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Al Qaeda's Western Recruits

By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Mark Hosenball

For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person.

One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter.

Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers.

Source: [Newsweek]

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Jordan sentences 4 to death for U.S. ship attack

AMMAN, Jordan -- A Jordanian military court on Thursday sentenced three Syrians and one Iraqi to death for firing rockets at two U.S. warships in August 2005.

One of the Syrians, Mohammed Hassan Abdullah al-Sihly, is in police custody, but the other two Syrians, Abdul-Rahman al-Sihly and Abdullah al-Sihly, and the Iraqi, Amar al-Samera'i, remain at large and were tried in absentia.

The court acquitted Mohammed al-Sihly's three sons, who also were in police custody, and sentenced five others to various jail terms ranging from two to 10 years. The rockets missed, but the Aqaba Bay incident was the most serious attack on the U.S. Navy since the 2000 bombing in Yemen of the destroyer USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors.

Source: [MSNBC]

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Al Qaeda becoming increasingly reliant on media

By Hassan M. Fattah

AMMAN, Jordan -- On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Omar received the call to jihad. Literally. "There's a present for you," a voice on the other end of the phone said that morning, he recalled. It was a common code whenever his friends and colleagues wanted to share a new broadcast or communiqué from Al Qaeda over the Internet, he said.

Abu Omar, speaking on the condition that only his nickname be used, said he soon went to one of the Internet cafes he frequents in Amman and began distributing the latest video by Al Qaeda, alerting friends and occasionally adding commentary. "We are the energy behind the path to jihad," Abu Omar said proudly. "Just like the jihadis reached their target on Sept. 11, we will reach ours through the Internet."

Abu Omar, 28, is part of an increasingly sophisticated network of contributors and discussion leaders helping to wage Al Qaeda's battle for Muslim hearts and minds. A self-described Qaeda sympathizer who defends the Sept. 11 attacks and continues to find inspiration in Osama bin Laden's call for jihad, Abu Omar is part of a growing army of young men who may not seek to take violent action, but who help spread jihadist philosophy, shape its message and hope to inspire others to their cause.

Source: [NY Times]

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Muslim doctor kicked off United Air flight for praying

A Winnipeg doctor is demanding an official apology and compensation from United Airlines after being kicked off a flight in the U.S. this week, an incident he has characterized as "institutionalized discrimination." Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a Muslim, was escorted off an airplane in Denver on Tuesday. According to Farooq, reciting his evening prayers was interpreted by one passenger as an activity that was suspicious.

Dr. Ahmed Farooq was escorted off a plane in Denver because another passenger found his praying suspicious. "The whole situation is just really frustrating," Farooq said. "It makes you uneasy, because you realize you have to essentially watch every single thing you say and do, and it's worse for people who are of colour, who are identifiable as a minority."

Farooq said the allegation came from a passenger who appeared drunk and had previously threatened him during the trip. When flight personnel were alerted, the 27-year-old radiology resident and two colleagues -- a man and a woman -- were taken off their flight. They had been returning from a conference in San Francisco.

Source: [CBC News]

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Al-Qaida in Iraq's al-Zarqawi 'terminated'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi and seven aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said. "Al-Zarqawi was terminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told reporters.

At the White House, President Bush hailed the killing as "a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror." But he cautioned: "We have tough days ahead of us in Iraq that will require the continuing patience of the American people."

Source: [MSNBC]

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Jordan arrests Al-Qaeda member in Iraq

AMMAN (AFP) Jordan has arrested a senior member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's militant group whose confessions will be broadcast on state television, a senior official said. "The Jordanian intelligence services have arrested an important figure in the Al-Qaeda in Iraq organization led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his testimony will be broadcast by Jordanian television on Tuesday evening," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official declined to elaborate on the identity of the detainee or the manner of his capture. But another Jordanian official hailed the suspect's arrest as "one of the most important foreign operations ever carried out by the Jordanian intelligence services."

Triple suicide bombings of luxury Amman hotels claimed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq last November killed 60 people, many of them wedding guests, sparking a wave of anger with the militant group among Jordanians.

Source: [Yahoo News]

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Jordan airs confessions of Hamas 'plotters'

By Randa Habib

(AFP) Three suspected members of Palestinian Islamic group Hamas confessed on Jordanian television of plotting to kill senior officers of Jordan's intelligence service. In a 14-minute segment that began with footage of a weapons cache a commentator said had been "seized over a period of time," the detainees said they had been involved in surveillance operations and assassination plots.

The "leader of the group," Ayman Naji Daraghmeh, 34, spoke of his links to Hamas, his "frequent trips to Syria" and his "surveillance on an intelligence officer at his home who was to be a target." Daraghmeh said he had been arrested on April 18 and that he had been the one who informed investigators of a weapons cache in northern Jordan.

He was among 20 people arrested in a recent sweep that also turned up caches of Iranian-made Katyusha rockets, as well as other weapons. A second suspect, Ahmad Abu Rabieh, 27, said he had been arrested on May 6. Rabieh said Daraghmeh had told him they were going to attack a bus carrying members of the intelligence service. He said he had monitored the bus "three or four times and I told Daraghmeh the schedules."

Source: [Yahoo News]

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