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FBI Agents Raid Muslim-Owned Internet Company
WASHINGTON, Sept 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - "Anti-terrorism agents" from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other federal law enforcement agencies, continued Thursday to search the offices of the Muslim-owned InfoCom Corporation, a Texas-based Internet service provider, after raiding its offices early Wednesday morning without any explanation.
"We're executing a search warrant right now as we speak," and the company's servers have been shut off, said special agent Lori Bailey, speaking from FBI offices in Dallas, Texas.
A statement by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI division, said that the search - which is being conducted at the company's premises in Richardson, a suburb north of Dallas - is part of an ongoing, two-year investigation.
But no additional information on reasons for the investigation was available because a federal judge has sealed the search warrant application, Bailey said.
"We are just waiting for them [the FBI] to tell us what this is about," Bayan Elashi, the owner of InfoCom, said in an article on Iviews.com.
InfoCom hosts more than 500 web sites worldwide, both in the Middle East and in the United States, according to a media advisory from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The CAIR advisory also said that, "Islamic leaders say the raid was part of an 'anti-Muslim witch hunt' promoted by the pro-Israel lobby in America."
The company hosts a web portal that services the Middle East, and the FBI search resulted in disruption of satellite television service in the United Arab Emirates, according to reports from Dubai.
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television, a popular and world renowned Arabic news source, has been frequently criticized by Israel for its reporting on the Middle East conflict, according to CAIR's advisory.
CAIR civil rights advisor Ismail Royer said that among those affected were numerous other Qatar-based and Saudi Arabian sites, including that of King Fahd's Qur'an printing complex, and several business and information sites in the U.S. and the Arab world.
The Holy Land Foundation (HLF), an Islamic relief agency based across the street from InfoCom in Richardson, Texas, had its bank account shut down last week without any explanation, according to the Iviews.com article. HLF is one of the largest U.S.-based sources of charitable aid to Palestinian refugees; it has been accused by pro-Israeli groups of supporting Palestinian resistance groups.
Among the domestic web sites whose servers are currently blocked as the "investigation" continues are those of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), whose annual conference took place in Chicago this past weekend, and CAIR's southwest office, as well as its e-mail listserv service, which the organization moved to another server.
The website of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) was also affected.
"We are one of the sites hosted by this company," said MSA president Altaf Hussain, "and the idea is that without knowing much more we're basically labeling it, as CAIR is, an 'anti-Muslim witch hunt'…There are a lot of fairly benign organizations on there."
Hussain said that MSA's site could do nothing but wait before determining their next step.
"Do we just be patient and wait and hope that the company is reinstated, or based on what happened with Holy Land… do we see this as a much bigger and more pressured attempt from the government and [the] pro-Israel lobby to make sure that they go after and attack all web sites that support Palestinians?"
One of the major factors in American Muslim leaders' view of the investigation is that it comes in the wake of an article by self-styled "Middle East commentators" Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, whom have called for certain Islamic websites to be shut down and certain Muslims to be excluded from the White House.
Among the websites they named in an August 13th Wall Street Journal article were the, "Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. These two U.S.-based organizations [with offices in Texas, Illinois and New Jersey] support Hamas politically," Pipes and Emerson allege.
After "excluding the leaders of terror front groups from the White House," the article said, "the federal authorities should use the tools it already has for closing down these Web sites and organizations."
The supposed "leaders of terror front groups" they named included Sami al-Arian, a University of Florida professor and outspoken opponent of the use of secret evidence, under which his brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, was held for more than three years.
Al-Arian's son, Abdullah, who spent this summer as an intern in the White House with Congressman David Bonior (D-Mich), had been kicked out of a White House meeting in June without any explanation. His expulsion was followed by an apology from the president and the Secret Service, but left Muslim leaders outraged and still awaiting an explanation for the act.
Meanwhile, American Muslim leaders are planning a news conference to be held at 1 p.m. CST in front of the InfoCom office at 630 International Parkway in Richardson, according to the CAIR advisory. More information on the investigation and the reasons behind it are expected, along with statements from the several national Muslim organizations that will be present.
Multiple federal entities are involved in the investigation, including the Department of Commerce, the Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs Service and the Secret Service, the FBI division statement said.
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