Please don’t forget Uzair Paracha!
Please WRITE HIM AT:
UZAIR PARACHA 54896-054
FCI TERRE HAUTE
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 33
TERRE HAUTE, IN 47808
FCI TERRE HAUTE
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 33
TERRE HAUTE, IN 47808
And don’t forget his father, Saifullah Paracha, still in Guantanamo!
Below profile written by Lisa Goldstein, a Cageprisoners intern.
Uzair Paracha grew up in both the United States and Pakistan. He was never perceived as having anti-American sentiments.
Attitude
According to his brother, Mustafa, Uzair,
“was a typical teenage guy. I mean, he wore his pants incredibly
low. He hung out with girls. He loved to drive, he loved driving. He
was into western music, he had over one hundred and fifty to two hundred
CDs. He had like branded clothes. He used to go to the States like very
six months, almost every six months. He loved the place, he went for
like four months at time sometimes.”
His father’s business partner even commented, “”He very clearly
knew I was Jewish…we had friendly talks on religion and he never has
shown any animosity at all to Jewish people or to America. The opposite —
he spoke very highly of America.”
Background
After spending much of his childhood in the United States, Uzair
resettled in Pakistan with his family in the mid 1980s. In February
2003, Uzair travelled to the US on behalf of his families’ business; he
intended to help market apartments in Karachi to American-Pakistani
families.
Majid Khan
According to the government’s narrative, while in the U.S., Uzair
provided substantial help to Majid Khan, the only U.S. resident
currently held in Guantanamo Bay. Majid Khan, who held asylum status in
the U.S., returned to Pakistan in 2002 to visit his wife without giving
the required notice to American immigration authorities.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad
Khan was purportedly trained by Khalid Sheik Mohammad to support
and plan terrorist attacks against the United States and Israel,
including a specific plan to simultaneously blow up underground storage
tanks at several gas stations. It was actually Khalid Sheik Mohammad who
gave Uzair’s name to interrogators, after his own arrest in Pakistan.
Arrest
On March 28, 2003, Uzair was arrested with Khan’s driver’s license,
social security card, and bank/credit cards in his suitcase. The key to
the post office where Khan’s immigration documents were sent was also
on his key chain.
Detention
Uzair was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center, and made
extensive confessions during three days of questioning by New York
counterterrorism agents. While at the time he said that his father had
told him about Khan’s terrorist ties, he now maintains that he made a
false confession because he felt pressured by American agents.
Trial
During Uzair’s trial, the prosecution argued that Uzair agreed to
pose as Mr. Khan while on his business trip in New York, in order to
give immigration authorities the impression that Khan had not left the
U.S. He posed as Khan while on the phone with immigration authorities,
used Khan’s bank cards, and also agreed to obtain travel documents for
Khan and bring them back to Pakistan. The prosecution also maintained
that Uzair was promised $200,000 from al Qaeda in exchange for helping
Khan, to be invested in his Uzair’s family business.
The question of whether Uzair provided help to Khan with or without
the knowledge of his terrorist ties is central to his case. According
to Farhat Paracha, Uzair’s mother:
“He had made a mistake yes, but I’m sure he has done it out of
naivety, what he has done is, he did help Majid Khan, wherever he is, I
don’t know the person. And Uzair says this person came to him and
promised he would invest $200,000 in his father’s real estate business,
must be the same as we’re doing now completing the apartments, and that
boy must’ve told him he would buy some of our properties and he said you
are going to the States I have an immigration problem and you just take
my identity and because he did not know it was false I’m sure. I
thought it was a harmless paper for a business associate.”
During his trial, Uzair denied that he ever intended to facilitate
the movement of someone involved in terrorism. He recanted the
confessions made just after his arrest, insisting that “he thought he
was doing a harmless favor for one of his father’s business associates…
and that the confession was the result of sleeplessness, exhaustion and
fear in three days of interrogation.”
Conviction
Interestingly, prior to his trial, Uzair was offered a plea bargain
with a 22 month sentence attached; he turned the plea bargain down and
insisted on his innocence. Uzair’s trial lasted two weeks, and the jury
deliberated less than six hours. He was convicted on November 23, 2005
of five counts: conspiracy to provide and providing material support to
the al Qaeda foreign terrorist organization; conspiracy to provide and
providing funds, goods, or services to al Qaeda; and identification
document fraud committed to facilitate an act of international
terrorism. In July 2006, Uzair was sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Expert Testimony
Uzair appealed his conviction, claiming that the so-called “expert
testimony” of Evan Kohlmann should not have been admissible in court. In
recent years Kohlmann has testified against several Americans,
including Sabri Benkhala, Ali al-Timimi and Ali Asad Chandia. At the
moment, the Daubert test is used to rule on the admissibility of
both scientific testimony and expert testimony from non-scientific
fields, including historians. Daubert assesses “the relevance and reliability of the expert’s theory” using several factors, including:
(1) Whether [it] has been subject to peer review and publication;
(2) Whether it has attracted widespread acceptance within the scientific community;
(3) Whether the theory or technique has been tested
Evan Kohlmann
As one scholar points out, however “a historian’s methodology does
not involve testing a hypothesis and then replicating the test to check
the hypothesis… rather, it may involve choosing whether to rely on a
certain source to arrive at a universe of facts supporting a particular
historical interpretation”. Kohlmann’s testimony has come under fire
from a wide range of academics. The judge in Uzair’s case even admitted
that “Kohlmann’s methodology is not readily subject to testing and
permits of no ready calculation error rate”, but allowed the testimony
on the basis that “it is more reliable than a simple cherry-picking of
information from websites and other sources”!
Furthermore, “it has never been shown that Kohlmann has ever
published anything that has been formally peer reviewed, and it is
unlikely that he has because he has never conducted any post-graduate
research.” This
is especially important given that “being subject to peer review is an
important aspect of whether a witness can be considered an expert and
Kohlmann was challenged again on this point in several subsequent cases
with no success”.
Indeed, rather drawing on established facts or proven
methodologies, during his testimony Kohlmann tends to simply insinuate
connections between Osama Bin Laden and the accused, thereby relying on
the deeply entrenched fear and Islamophobia of the jury to convict the
defendant. He is rarely asked to testify based on his knowledge of the
particular individual on trial:
What in particular Kohlmann tends to “bring to life” is
connections linking defendants to Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. This, in
the political climate of the United States greatly increases the
prosecution’s chances of a conviction. As one US defence attorney
explains: “If a jury in the US finds any connection between your client
and Osama bin Laden, you’re going to get convicted.”
Appeal
In July 2008, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Uzair’s
conviction, ruling that the District Court did not err by allowing
Kohlmann’s testimony in his case.
False confession
Unfortunately, the inclusion of Kohlmann’s testimony was not the
only procedural impropriety in Uzair’s case. Uzair’s initial confession
was included in the trial, despite the fact that his lawyer maintained
that is was made under duress:
Defense attorney Edward Wilford accused the FBI of denying
Paracha food and sleep, and of strip searching him during endless hours
of questioning – “the ideal conditions to create a false confession.”
Though well-educated, his client lacked the street smarts to stand up
for himself, the lawyer said… Paracha “was a dupe in every sense of the
word,” Wilford said…
Key witnesses
Uzair’s lawyers did not only have to defend his case with a
confession made under duress; they were also unable to interview two key
witnesses, Majid Khan and another accused al Qaeda operative, Ammar
al-Baluchi. At the time of Uzair’s trial, both men were believed to be
held in secret U.S. detention. However,
“citing national security concerns, the government did not allow
Mr. Paracha’s lawyers to have any contact with the two Qaeda suspects…
the government never [even] officially confirmed that the two men [were]
in United States custody.”
Prosecutors did give the defence portions of statements taken from
two men, although they did not disclose where the men were being
interviewed or by whom.The statements from Khan and al-Baluchi specified that,
Swift program
It is also important to note that the $200,000 transferred to
Paracha from Khan, was identified using the Swift program, which was
initiated under President Bush.
Swift has been described by government officials,
It allows treasury officials to utilize broad administrative
subpoenas to access records, rather than requiring individual
court-approved warrants or subpoenas.
According to the New York Times, the program,
“grew out of the Bush administration’s desire to exploit
technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and [reflects
an attempt] to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers
to the government’s access to private information about Americans and
others inside the United States”.
In speaking about Swift, one former senior counter terrorism official notes,
“The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you’re sitting, troubling…the potential for abuse is enormous.”
Sentencing
Uzair’s trial was marred by several procedural improprieties, but
it’s also important to question whether the sentence he was given is
fair or just.
Despite Uzair’s purported efforts to assist Khan, he never
successfully entered the United States, and there is very minimal
evidence to show that he was actually planning to blow up gas
stations. Is Uzair’s thirty year sentence justifiable, given that
absolutely no one endured harm as a result of his actions?
Prison
Finally, since his imprisonment, Uzair has sometimes been treated
with disdain and disrespect by guards, a situation mirrored in the cases
of many other Muslims convicted of terrorism charges. According to
Uzair’s sister, Zahra:
“Just because he is being detained in the US does not mean that
he’s safe from mistreatment. In fact, while still in the Metropolitan
Correctional Center he was praying in his cell and the guard called him.
He couldn’t answer because he was in the middle of Salat. (prayer)….and
they took it as a sign of opposition. So they restricted his visits and
phone calls for 6 months. They always made sure that his phone calls
were never more than 15 minutes but they would never make sure that he
got the phone call every month. After his conviction, he was shifted to
Colorado, he was allowed to make a half an hour phone call every month…”
Consequences
What does the United States government gain by sentencing men like
Uzair to thirty years? If the accounts of Uzair’s friends and family are
true, he was simply a naive young man who acted in the interests of his
family’s business, without a full realization of the consequences of
his actions. How will his treatment within the United States judicial
system shape his perceptions of his once-beloved country? What does his
treatment within the judicial system say to Muslims around America who are patriotic, and want to be seen as so?
If you know Uzair Paracha or his family and friends, have
any more information or simply want to help, then please contact
Cageprisoners’ Americas caseworker: abbasi.cageprisoners@gmail.com
This profile was written by Lisa Goldstein, a Cageprisoners intern.
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