Stranded US Citizens

I met Mohammad Ismail and his son Jabir Ismail in their village of origin Behboudi, not too far from the town of Hattiyan. They are both U.S. citizens and residents of Lodi. When I met them on March 11 of this year Jabir told me he had completed his Hafza (memorizing Quran); father and son were getting ready to go back to the US. I asked them if they were aware of the difficulties they might face when entering the US. When I asked them that question what I had in my mind were possibilities of hold up at the US port of entry and grueling interrogation. I never thought they would be on some kind of a no-fly list and would not be allowed to fly back to their country of citizenship.

Demain Bulwa broke this story in San Francisco Chronicle:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/26/MNGQ5KPVV91.DTL

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Saturday, August 26, 2006 (SF Chronicle)
2 Lodi residents refused entry back into U.S.
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer


(08-26) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- The federal government has barred
two
relatives of a Lodi man convicted of supporting terrorists from
returning
to the country after a lengthy stay in Pakistan, placing the U.S.
citizens
in an extraordinary legal limbo.
Muhammad Ismail, a 45-year-old naturalized citizen born in Pakistan,
and
his 18-year-old son, Jaber Ismail, who was born in the United States,
have
not been charged with a crime. However, they are the uncle and cousin
of
Hamid Hayat, a 23-year-old Lodi cherry packer who was convicted in
April
of supporting terrorists by attending a Pakistani training camp............

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So, what is going on?
Presumably there is a “no-fly list” that “anti-terrorism officials” can put suspected ‘terrorists’ on? If you are unlucky to be on that list you cannot fly. You can probably fly from one terrorist county to another, for example Venezuela to Syria, or Iran to North Korea, but you cannot come closer to the US or countries that the US has influence on.
But then other questions:
What is the legality of that ‘no-fly list’?
Under what suspicion people are put on that list?
What toll free number to call to find out if you are on that no-fly list?
If someone gets on that list by ‘mistake’, what is the procedure to get off the list?

Are answers to all the above qeustions written down somewhere so that there can be some kind of accountability of public servants? Or is it asking too much in these trying times when teeming bands of terrorists are lurking in shadows ready to attack us and our government is hell-bent to protect us?

OK, sarcasm aside what do I see here?

I see mistrust at both ends. That the FBI is distrustful of bearded young men with skull caps, is a given. Lodi Muslim community’s distrust of FBI and the US Government is a little hard to understand, but go to Lodi a couple of times, talk to Muslim community members there, and you would see their point of view. They believe they have been punished without a crime. They believe Hamid Hayat is completely innocent. They believe they have been cheated by FBI. They believe FBI sent a spy who trapped the dumbest person among them. They believe FBI can tire you with interrogation, can record hours and hours of conversation, can then put together a “proof” of lying to FBI, and can then arrest you for that ‘crime’. Most probably this is the reason why Jabir is evading an interrogation by FBI in Islamabad. And who can blame him?

Interrogation:
What is your name?
My name is Suleiman.
Is that it, ‘Suleiman’, or you have another name too?
My name is Suleiman Ahmad.
But you told us your name was Suleiman, and now you are telling us something different. Do you know that lying to federal agents is a crime punishable by law?

[Though in most of the Muslim world the J name is written as ‘Jaber’, in Pakistan it is mostly written as ‘Jabir’. I have to find out how younger Ismail spells his name. Another clarification: In Muslim faith people are generally not given any of Allah’s ninety-nine names (Jabir, Qadir, Hakim, Rahman, Raheem, etc.); instead, the prefix ‘Abdul’ (one who worships) is added to one of the 99 names in calling a person, so a man can be called Abdul Rahman (one who worships Rahman), but not Rahman; this logic is most evident in the name Abdullah (one who worships Allah). Having said all this, lately I have seen cases when people do go by Rahman, Hakim, Qadir, etc.]