Wednesday, December 30, 2009

CAIR Video: ‘Middle Eastern’ Passengers Detained, Released in Ariz.
Right Wing Renews Calls for Profiling: ‘There Should be a Separate Line to Scrutinize Anybody with the Name Abdul’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CAIR Calls for FBI Hate Crime Probe of Texas Murder
White supremacist allegedly shot convenience store owner

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 12/28/2009) -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the FBI to investigate a possible bias motive for the murder of a Texasconvenience store owner, allegedly shot to death by a suspected white supremacist.

Surveillance video showed that the store owner, 50-year-old Naushad Virani, was shot during a robbery Friday night in Liberty County, Texas. Local authorities are investigating whether the murder was a hate crime. When arrested, the alleged killer told deputies: “When I saw that all of you were white I decided to give up and not fight.” He also reportedly admitted that he shot the store owner.

The suspect in the case has a lengthy criminal record and is believed to be a member of a white supremacist group. He has many tattoos, including a Nazi SS symbol on the right side of his neck. A CAIR representative in Texas is in touch with the family of the victim.

SEE: Alleged White Supremacist Jailed in Killing (Houston Chronicle)
Sheriff: Capital Murder Suspect Admitted to Crime

“While robbery may have been a motivating factor in this case, the FBI should join local law enforcement authorities in examining racial and religious hatred as a possible motive for the murder,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.

He said a Sikh youth apparently mistaken for a Muslim was recently attacked in Texas. The alleged attackers reportedly told the victim: "I'm going to **** you up in Iraq, I'm going to **** you up in Afghanistan, I'm going to **** you up over here."

SEE: Sikh Youth Attacked in Texas

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

CAIR: Mich. Muslims to Condemn Al-Qaeda Involvement in Airline Attack

(SOUTHFIELD, MI, 12/28/09) On Tuesday, December 29, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), along with Nigerian-American Muslim leaders, will hold a news conference in Southfield, Mich., to condemn Al-Qaeda’s reported involvement in a failed attack on a plane arriving in Detroit on Christmas Day.

SEE: Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility for Failed Terror Attack

WHAT: Muslims to Condemn Al-Qaeda Involvement in Failed Airline Attack
WHEN: Tuesday, December 29, 9:30 a.m. (Eastern)
WHERE: 21700 Northwestern Highway, Suite 1199, Southfield, MI
CONTACT: CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid, 248-842-1418, E-Mail: dwalid@cair.com

“It is the responsibility of mainstream Muslims in America and worldwide to repudiate those whose unlawful and un-Islamic actions tarnish the beautiful faith of Islam,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

News conference participants will also address concerns about possible profiling of West Africans and Muslims at airports.

On Sunday, CAIR called on airline passengers, crews and security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious profiling in the wake of the attempted bombing. The Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy group reported two incidents, one in Arizona and one in Michigan, in which innocent passengers were targeted based either on their national origin or on otherwise ordinary behavior.

SEE: CAIR Video - Passengers Should Not Succumb to Fear, Stereotyping

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.


CA: INFORMANT TELLS OF ROLE IN FBI INVESTIGATIONS - TOP
By Salvador Hernandez, Orange County Register, 12/30/09

Since he was a teen, Craig Monteilh has pretended to be someone he wasn't Russian, Muslim, a white supremacist…

His role as an informant in state prison provided early training, says Monteilh, who is African-American, but light skinned. After being arrested for grand theft in 2002, he was sentenced to state prisons in Tehachapi and Chino. There, he pretended to be Caucasian to blend in with white supremacists.

Six years later, he would be involved in the case of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a Tustin man arrested on suspicion of lying on immigration forms about ties to terrorist organizations. Monteilh's name and picture would appear in several news reports. In a court hearing, an FBI agent says that Niazi was recorded in a conversation calling Osama bin Laden "an angel" and that an informant had been behind the recording.

Days later, Monteilh emerged as that informant.

The revelation raised questions about the FBI's tactics. Muslim leaders said the bureau was planting informants who were inciting violent and jihadist conversations. Since then, relations between Muslim organizations and the FBI have soured, leaders say.

Meanwhile, the FBI has repeated that it does not profile suspects, and while it has refused to comment on specific allegations, Monteilh's role or investigative techniques, a spokeswoman has said the FBI has followed criminal leads when investigations lead them there.

In multiple interviews with The Orange County Register, Monteilh detailed cases he worked with federal investigators and how he went from informing on inmates he befriended in prison to being involved with counter-terrorism…

By July 2006, Monteilh alleges he was working as an informant for the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force, pretending to be a man named Farouk al-Aziz. In that role, Monteilh says he was instructed to infiltrate local mosques and gain the trust of local religious leaders. (More)

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VIDEO: CAIR REP DEBATES AIRPORT PROFILING ON FOX'S 'O'REILLY FACTOR' - TOP

CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper debates the issue of airport profiling on Fox's “O'Reilly Factor."

View the video.

SEE ALSO:

CAIR-CA VIDEO: QUESTIONS RAISED OVER AIRPORT PROFILING - TOP

View the video.

The director of the Bay Area Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, Zahra Billoo, tells ABC7 when airport screeners focus on anyone who looks Middle Eastern or Muslim, the screeners may miss more important indicators.

"If someone is in line and they look shifty, if they look like they have a suspicious package, if they're behaving in a way that concerns people around them, if they're acting out of the ordinary, then that is a reason to profile them. If someone is speaking a different language, that is not generally a reason to profile an individual," says Billoo.

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Video: CAIR-LA COMMENTS ON AIRPORT PROFILING - TOP

Click here to watch the video.

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CAIR: FAILED ATTACK REIGNITES RACIAL PROFILING DEBATE - TOP
Agence France-Presse, 12/30/09

A foiled bid by a Nigerian to blow up a U.S. airliner is reframing the delicate debate about racial profiling in the United States, where men from the Middle East have been foremost under the scanner.

U.S. government guidelines prohibit authorities from singling out people on the basis of race or ethnicity. But with airports struggling to scan snarling queues of passengers since the Christmas Day plot, many say it is naive to deny that security officers consider race as a factor.

Critics of racial profiling say that the case of 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to ignite explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight, showed the pitfalls of judging by appearance.

"Half of Nigeria isn't Muslim, so what do you do then? Do you ask if they're Muslim?" saidIbrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pressure group.

"If you've got a Nigerian passport, do you say, 'If you're Christian, come on through; if you're Muslim, come with me?'" he said. (More)

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VIDEO: CAIR BLASTS METRO AIRPORT TERROR ATTACK - TOP

View the video.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) -- Nigerian-American and other Michigan Muslim leaders have condemned al-Qaida and its claim of responsibility for the Christmas attack on a Detroit-bound plane.

SEE ALSO:

LOCAL NIGERIANS AND YEMENIS CONDEMN DETROIT FLIGHT ATTACK - TOP
Catherine Jun, The Detroit News, 12/29/09

Southfield -- Area Muslims, representing the local Nigerian and Yemeni communities, gathered to condemn the failed terrorist attack aboard a flight headed to Detroit on Christmas Day and send a message to al-Qaida supporters that their actions are not condoned by Islam.

"Killing and targeting civilians is unacceptable in Islam," said Dawud Walid, executive director of Michigan's Council on American-Islamic Relations, at a press conference convened this morning in the local chapter's office in Southfield.

He was flanked by three area Muslim leaders: Imam Kazeem Agboola, head of the Muslim Community Center in Detroit; Noa Fasina, secretary of the center; and Ibrahim Aljahim, president and CEO of Arab American Outreach. (More)

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CAIR: WAS STORE OWNER'S DEATH HATE CRIME? - TOP
KPRC-TV, 12/29/09

LIBERTY, Texas -- The motive behind the Christmas Day killing of a grocery store owner is being questioned, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday.

Liberty police said Stevie Walder, 31, fatally shot Naushad I. Virani, 51, during a robbery at the Ridgewood Grocery Store in the 4300 block of North Main.

"There is video surveillance from the store that our investigators have," Officer Hugh Bishop said. "That video, along with other evidence, led us to the suspect."

Walder is a suspected white supremacist. Photos on his MySpace page show he has a tattoo of a swastika on his left arm and various other tattoos on other parts of his body.

"We know he was an active member of a group," Bishop said. "We just haven't nailed down which one yet. Right now it's looking like the Aryan Brotherhood."

Virani was Muslim. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has asked the FBI to investigate whether Virani's religion was a motive in the killing. (More)

SEE ALSO:

WOMAN SUES ATLANTA POLICE OVER HIJAB DISPUTE - TOP
Associated Press, 12/29/09

ATLANTA -- A Muslim woman is claiming in a federal lawsuit that she was dismissed from the Atlanta Police Department's civilian honor guard because she refused to remove her traditional headscarf. (More)

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CAIR-MI: DPD INQUIRY INTO FBI SHOOTING READY BY JAN. 31 - TOP
By Sean Delaney, Press & Guide Newspapers, 12/30/09

DEARBORN -- A local police chief is defending his decision to withhold the release of an autopsy report on Detroit Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was killed Oct. 28 in a gunfight with the FBI at a Dearborn warehouse.

“While I understand the emotions surrounding the case and the sensitivity of the information, I’m standing by my decision,” Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad said Monday.

Haddad told the Press & Guide he asked the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office to delay releasing the report until after the Dearborn Police Department has completed its investigation into the Islamic leader’s shooting, despite concerns from several civil rights groups about a possible cover-up of facts surrounding Abdullah’s death.

“If I thought there was something in the report that people didn’t already know, I’d release it,” he said. “We’re not hiding anything. We just want to make sure that there are no gaps in the information. Once the case is closed, we will disclose everything.”

He said the inquiry into Abdullah’s death could be concluded by Jan. 31.

But the department’s refusal to release the information immediately has several civil rights groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) concerned about a potential cover-up.

“If the autopsy is being suppressed to media and advocates, this would be very disturbing indeed and will raise even more suspicion in regards to the shooting of the imam,” said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid. “Transparency would be the best measure for restoring public confidence in the process.”

Walid and other civil rights leaders have called for an independent investigation into the imam’s death, citing concerns about whether excessive force was used during the Oct. 28 raid at a warehouse in Dearborn, where agents attempted to arrest Abdullah on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. (More)

CA: INFORMANT TELLS OF ROLE IN FBI INVESTIGATIONS - TOP
By Salvador Hernandez, Orange County Register, 12/30/09

Since he was a teen, Craig Monteilh has pretended to be someone he wasn't Russian, Muslim, a white supremacist…

His role as an informant in state prison provided early training, says Monteilh, who is African-American, but light skinned. After being arrested for grand theft in 2002, he was sentenced to state prisons in Tehachapi and Chino. There, he pretended to be Caucasian to blend in with white supremacists.

Six years later, he would be involved in the case of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a Tustin man arrested on suspicion of lying on immigration forms about ties to terrorist organizations. Monteilh's name and picture would appear in several news reports. In a court hearing, an FBI agent says that Niazi was recorded in a conversation calling Osama bin Laden "an angel" and that an informant had been behind the recording.

Days later, Monteilh emerged as that informant.

The revelation raised questions about the FBI's tactics. Muslim leaders said the bureau was planting informants who were inciting violent and jihadist conversations. Since then, relations between Muslim organizations and the FBI have soured, leaders say.

Meanwhile, the FBI has repeated that it does not profile suspects, and while it has refused to comment on specific allegations, Monteilh's role or investigative techniques, a spokeswoman has said the FBI has followed criminal leads when investigations lead them there.

In multiple interviews with The Orange County Register, Monteilh detailed cases he worked with federal investigators and how he went from informing on inmates he befriended in prison to being involved with counter-terrorism…

By July 2006, Monteilh alleges he was working as an informant for the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force, pretending to be a man named Farouk al-Aziz. In that role, Monteilh says he was instructed to infiltrate local mosques and gain the trust of local religious leaders. (More)

-----

VIDEO: CAIR REP DEBATES AIRPORT PROFILING ON FOX'S 'O'REILLY FACTOR' - TOP

CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper debates the issue of airport profiling on Fox's “O'Reilly Factor."

View the video.

SEE ALSO:

CAIR-CA VIDEO: QUESTIONS RAISED OVER AIRPORT PROFILING - TOP

View the video.

The director of the Bay Area Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, Zahra Billoo, tells ABC7 when airport screeners focus on anyone who looks Middle Eastern or Muslim, the screeners may miss more important indicators.

"If someone is in line and they look shifty, if they look like they have a suspicious package, if they're behaving in a way that concerns people around them, if they're acting out of the ordinary, then that is a reason to profile them. If someone is speaking a different language, that is not generally a reason to profile an individual," says Billoo.

---

Video: CAIR-LA COMMENTS ON AIRPORT PROFILING - TOP

Click here to watch the video.

---

CAIR: FAILED ATTACK REIGNITES RACIAL PROFILING DEBATE - TOP
Agence France-Presse, 12/30/09

A foiled bid by a Nigerian to blow up a U.S. airliner is reframing the delicate debate about racial profiling in the United States, where men from the Middle East have been foremost under the scanner.

U.S. government guidelines prohibit authorities from singling out people on the basis of race or ethnicity. But with airports struggling to scan snarling queues of passengers since the Christmas Day plot, many say it is naive to deny that security officers consider race as a factor.

Critics of racial profiling say that the case of 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to ignite explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight, showed the pitfalls of judging by appearance.

"Half of Nigeria isn't Muslim, so what do you do then? Do you ask if they're Muslim?" saidIbrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pressure group.

"If you've got a Nigerian passport, do you say, 'If you're Christian, come on through; if you're Muslim, come with me?'" he said. (More)

-----

VIDEO: CAIR BLASTS METRO AIRPORT TERROR ATTACK - TOP

View the video.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) -- Nigerian-American and other Michigan Muslim leaders have condemned al-Qaida and its claim of responsibility for the Christmas attack on a Detroit-bound plane.

SEE ALSO:

LOCAL NIGERIANS AND YEMENIS CONDEMN DETROIT FLIGHT ATTACK - TOP
Catherine Jun, The Detroit News, 12/29/09

Southfield -- Area Muslims, representing the local Nigerian and Yemeni communities, gathered to condemn the failed terrorist attack aboard a flight headed to Detroit on Christmas Day and send a message to al-Qaida supporters that their actions are not condoned by Islam.

"Killing and targeting civilians is unacceptable in Islam," said Dawud Walid, executive director of Michigan's Council on American-Islamic Relations, at a press conference convened this morning in the local chapter's office in Southfield.

He was flanked by three area Muslim leaders: Imam Kazeem Agboola, head of the Muslim Community Center in Detroit; Noa Fasina, secretary of the center; and Ibrahim Aljahim, president and CEO of Arab American Outreach. (More)

-----

CAIR: WAS STORE OWNER'S DEATH HATE CRIME? - TOP
KPRC-TV, 12/29/09

LIBERTY, Texas -- The motive behind the Christmas Day killing of a grocery store owner is being questioned, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday.

Liberty police said Stevie Walder, 31, fatally shot Naushad I. Virani, 51, during a robbery at the Ridgewood Grocery Store in the 4300 block of North Main.

"There is video surveillance from the store that our investigators have," Officer Hugh Bishop said. "That video, along with other evidence, led us to the suspect."

Walder is a suspected white supremacist. Photos on his MySpace page show he has a tattoo of a swastika on his left arm and various other tattoos on other parts of his body.

"We know he was an active member of a group," Bishop said. "We just haven't nailed down which one yet. Right now it's looking like the Aryan Brotherhood."

Virani was Muslim. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has asked the FBI to investigate whether Virani's religion was a motive in the killing. (More)

SEE ALSO:

WOMAN SUES ATLANTA POLICE OVER HIJAB DISPUTE - TOP
Associated Press, 12/29/09

ATLANTA -- A Muslim woman is claiming in a federal lawsuit that she was dismissed from the Atlanta Police Department's civilian honor guard because she refused to remove her traditional headscarf. (More)

-----

CAIR-MI: DPD INQUIRY INTO FBI SHOOTING READY BY JAN. 31 - TOP
By Sean Delaney, Press & Guide Newspapers, 12/30/09

DEARBORN -- A local police chief is defending his decision to withhold the release of an autopsy report on Detroit Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was killed Oct. 28 in a gunfight with the FBI at a Dearborn warehouse.

“While I understand the emotions surrounding the case and the sensitivity of the information, I’m standing by my decision,” Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad said Monday.

Haddad told the Press & Guide he asked the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office to delay releasing the report until after the Dearborn Police Department has completed its investigation into the Islamic leader’s shooting, despite concerns from several civil rights groups about a possible cover-up of facts surrounding Abdullah’s death.

“If I thought there was something in the report that people didn’t already know, I’d release it,” he said. “We’re not hiding anything. We just want to make sure that there are no gaps in the information. Once the case is closed, we will disclose everything.”

He said the inquiry into Abdullah’s death could be concluded by Jan. 31.

But the department’s refusal to release the information immediately has several civil rights groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) concerned about a potential cover-up.

“If the autopsy is being suppressed to media and advocates, this would be very disturbing indeed and will raise even more suspicion in regards to the shooting of the imam,” said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid. “Transparency would be the best measure for restoring public confidence in the process.”

Walid and other civil rights leaders have called for an independent investigation into the imam’s death, citing concerns about whether excessive force was used during the Oct. 28 raid at a warehouse in Dearborn, where agents attempted to arrest Abdullah on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. (More)

Monday, December 28, 2009

U.S. Muslims Try to Counter Radicals' Influence on Youths
[CAIR’s] Hooper said some leaders are discussing an Islamic Peace Corps through which youths could help Muslims in underdeveloped countries.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CAIR Seeks ‘Swift Justice’ in Attempted Bombing of NWA Flight

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 12/27/2009) -- A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called for “swift justice” in the attempted bombing Friday of a Northwest Airlines flight arriving in Detroit.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) told the Detroit Free Press that he was grateful the alleged bomber did not succeed in his attack.

A Nigerian man has been charged with attempting to destroy the plane after he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb as it was arriving in Detroit from Amsterdam.

SEE: Local Nigerian Muslims Condemn Attack (Detroit Free Press)

“Swift justice for the alleged perpetrator is the best way to deter future attacks,” said Walid. “We also need to know why the warnings of the alleged bomber’s father were not acted on to possibly prevent this incident from occurring.”

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

EE: Nigerian-American Muslims Held Convention During Attack Attempt
Dawud Walid, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said today that "we're concerned about any security threats." But he said he's also concerned about profiling of innocent people based on ethnicity and religion…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CAIR: Plane Incidents in Ariz., Mich. Raise Profiling Concerns
Passenger removals may be related to Christmas Day attempted bombing

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 12/27/2009) -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on airline passengers, crews and security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious “profiling” in the wake of the attempted bombing of a flight arriving in Detroit on Christmas Day.

CAIR made that call following two incidents in which innocent passengers were targeted based either on their national origin or on otherwise ordinary behavior.

In Arizona, two “Middle Eastern” men were removed from a US Airways flight in Phoenix and questioned by the FBI after another passenger overheard the men speaking in a foreign language. The men were questioned and released.

SEE: ‘Middle Eastern’ Passengers Removed from Plane in Phoenix

In Michigan, police removed a Nigerian passenger from a flight after he became ill and spent what others considered too much time in the aircraft’s bathroom.

SEE: Detroit-Bound Airline Passenger Was Ill, Not a Threat

“While everyone supports robust airline security measures, racial and religious profiling are in fact counterproductive and can lead to a climate of insecurity and fear,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.