US Muslims bear the brunt of anti-terror laws and measures

CAIRO, August 7 (IslamOnline.net) – Being in the wrong place and wrong time, bearing south Asian looks, and above all, carrying a Muslim name, proved time and again a fatal recipe in the United States, enough for facing "terror charges", even if the accused did not know whether she was a Sunni or a Shiite.

Under the heading "Immigrant Caught in a Terrorism Snare", leading US daily The New York Times published a report Saturday, August 7, about the circumstances surrounding the detention of a South African woman since July 14, with investigations still on to look into the background of a US "person of interest".

"If Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed picked mid-July to swim the Rio Grande into the United States from Mexico, as the lack of an entry stamp or visa in her South African passport and the soaking wet jeans in her bag all but blared, it was not a case of great timing or finesse," the NY Times said.

At mid July, the US administration has already issued an anti-terror alert, completing the ingredients for the tragic recipe behind Farida's delimma.

"At the quiet McAllen-Miller International Airport in this sun-baked border town of 106,000 eight miles inland from Mexico, as elsewhere, the Border Patrol and other security agents were on stepped-up antiterrorism alert.

"And with her Muslim name and South Asian features, the petite woman of 48 with long, jet-black hair who presented herself for a morning flight to New York on July 19 was not exactly inconspicuous."

South African Officials Worried

Now, over three weeks after her arrest as a possible terror suspect, linking her fatefully, according to the daily, "to the alarm that the Bush administration sounded against threats of large-scale attacks by Al-Qaeda, the government has yet to charge her with anything beyond re-entering the country illegally, a misdemeanor, and felony counts of mutilating or altering a passport for entry and lying to federal agents."

South African officials, on their part, were quoted by the NY Times, as saying the United States has not sought their help in identifying Farida.

"The San Antonio office of the FBI, which is handling the case, did not reply to messages."

According to the daily, Tshepo Mazibuko, a spokesman for the South African Embassy in Washington, said that Farida - a divorced mother who came to the United States legally in 1996 and lived in Chicago and elsewhere for three years - had not contacted the embassy and that United States authorities had not responded to requests for information about her, including copies of Ms. Ahmed's fingerprints to verify that she is a South African citizen.

"We are definitely worried," Mr. Mazibuko told the paper.

Dream Turned Into Nightmare

Farida's family back home in South Africa was contacted by the paper to weigh in on the case.

Interviewed in their home in Johannesburg by the paper, declined to answer some questions or give many specifics, but said that they had talked to her several times by phone and that she seemed confused about her case.

"They called her a longtime Johannesburg resident once in the auction and furniture business and now unemployed. They said she was not religiously or politically inclined and had no conceivable connection to Al-Qaeda and terrorism. And they said she was not a frequent traveler.

"Farida went to New York, or went to America, to work," Riaz Bassa, a nephew who spoke for the others, told the paper.

"You know, you hear about the American dream, the way people go to other places, to do bigger things. And this is what she wanted to do. She is not linked to Al-Qaeda.

"She is not a religious person. Absolutely not. If you know her, you know that she is not religious. She is not Al-Qaeda. She is a single parent who is very worried about the future of her kid.

"She is divorced from her husband. You know, she has to send the kid to school, pay the school fees and do all this type of thing. And she went to America, she was on the way to New York, yes. She was going to work."

Bassa did not deny that she might have sneaked in.

"She doesn't have an America visa. She got declined before. So this was the route she took."

"I think she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Bassa added.

US Version

The paper said that an FBI. agent, Garry Simmons, testified that Farida had a McAllen address in her phone book and acknowledged having a friend there.

Simmons said agents had found a hotel where the unfortunate woman had recently stayed in McAllen and interviewed a maid who seemed to recognize her.

"As sketched in a four-page FBI. affidavit by another agent, Daniel V. Delgado, and an hour's court hearing, Border Patrol agents at the airport, checking every traveler, saw right away that her passport held no visa or entry stamp.

"It was only later when the wet jeans were found in her luggage and agents found three pages torn from her passport that, the FBI. said, she admitted "she came through the bush" and had removed the pages to eliminate the record of the route of her flights, which took her through the United Arab Emirates, London and Mexico."

Questioning stopped when she asked for a lawyer. Agents said they had her consent to go through her bags, finding the money along with passport-size photos of herself and photos of her daughter, Soraya, and her father, her divorce decree, gambling cards from the Taj Mahal and Caesars Palace in Atlantic City, a British phone card, a cell phone, a digital camera, an address book and an expired Illinois drivers license. Mexican authorities said she had an American Social Security card, as per the paper.

Agent Simmons said he had asked her if she was a Sunni or Shiite Muslim. "She didn't know," he testified.

News of the case threw more doubts and raised concerns by the US-Muslim community that law enforcement agencies were profiling against Muslims in general following the 9/11/2001 attacks.

On July 1, agents raided an Islamic institute in Northern Virginia , with no reasons cited, a move seen by an American Muslim civil rights group as a new fishing expedition.