[Pnews] Shifa, from Prayers to Plexiglass

[Prisoner News]

    Perspectives: Shifa, from Prayers to Plexiglass
    <http://lawatthemargins.com/perspectives-shifa-from-prayers-to-plexiglass/>

April 5, 2014

By S. Sadequee <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuQAmAQnGQ0#t=32>
*http://lawatthemargins.com/perspectives-shifa-from-prayers-to-plexiglass/*

My family's connection with my brother dates back to the time when my 
parents, grandmother, two siblings and I were stationed among the masses 
of people dressed in two-piece seamless white linen. We were meditating 
in the Arabian desert of Arafat under the scorching heat at the holy 
pilgrimage in 1985. We joined thousands of pilgrims sweltering in the 
blazing sand under white tents thirsty for cool breeze but all raised 
their hands up in prayers. My parents wanted a child, and they prayed 
that day for a son.  Melting in supplication with the worshipers, we 
implored God to bestow upon us a little brother. We were all ecstatic 
when my little brother was born in Northern Virginia in 1986.

He became the jewel of our family because he was the manifestation of 
our prayers, my mother's prayers, grandmother's prayers, delivered to my 
family, humbling my parents to their relationship as human beings to the 
sacred universe.

Shifa's wellbeing behind bars is always confining our minds, especially 
my parents as they are unable to be there for him. This is a punishment 
for us that began with his illegal kidnapping and incarceration. The 
horrid Bureau of Prison in Atlanta made us visit him through a video 
monitor and headphones when he was in solitary confinement for over 
three years before his trial had even begun. When we were allowed 
contact visits once or twice a year for holidays after many requests, 
the prison forced us to see him in orange jump-suit shackled with chains 
in his feet and hands. The iron manacles did not allow him to open a 
soda can or eat anything we bought him from the vending machine.

As a teenager Shifa was an avid reader delving into books of poetry, 
religion and spirituality, and history.  He attended a Muslim high 
school in Canada, taking classes in religious and classical Arabic 
studies. Soon after, in 2001, he returned to Bangladesh to live with my 
parents and finish high school. He fell ill from environmental pollution 
in Dhaka so my parents decided to keep him at home where they 
home-schooled him. When he returned to the US in 2004, Shifa was active 
in social justice activism and the anti-war movement. He worked with our 
sister Sonali in a women's rights organization to end violence against 
women and children. Community members in Atlanta also knew him for his 
gentleness and warmth.  He volunteered in conferences about ending 
violence and sexism sponsored by Atlanta men's organization.  My brother 
also volunteered with organizations like WAND---a national organization 
whose mission is to /empower women/ to act politically, /reduce 
militarism and violence/ and redirect excessive military spending 
towards unmet human and environmental needs.

A year before Shifa was arrested, law-enforcement agents harassed my 
immediate and extended families and friends in US, Canada and 
Bangladesh. In late December 2005, ICE agents marched into our Roswell 
home in Georgia, flaunting their guns at my mother and sister-in-law to 
find out whether we had any guns or weapons in our home.  The women 
became confused and terrified unable to understand their reasons for 
such behavior and questions. My mother held a legally obtained permanent 
residency in the US at the time.  But, the agents arrested my mother 
that day for violating some immigration regulations and placed her in 
removal proceedings.  Not knowing what would happen with her deportation 
case, we were living with uncertainty and feared she might be deported 
and not allowed to see her son again.  The government later withdrew her 
deportation case in 2011, two years after my brother's trial ended.

However, the most shocking and numbing moment for my family was when my 
brother went missing.  Shifa went to Bangladesh in the summer of 2005 to 
get married.  On his way at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York 
City, FBI agents interrogated him but let go.  In April 17, 2006, he was 
kidnapped and went missing for days.  We later learned that the FBI 
picked him up and brought him to Brooklyn, NY, aboard a "secret" CIA 
rendition aircraft through Alaska. He was stripped off his clothes and 
wrapped in a plastic-like material on the flight.

At a press conference in Bangladesh, my father requested the help of 
journalists and the public in finding his son. The Bangladesh government 
at the time kept silent. In New York, Shifa was charged with making a 
"false statement" to the FBI but the case was later dropped. In August 
2006 the US government transferred Shifa to Atlanta on "terrorism" 
related charges. No government agencies communicated about his arrest to 
my father and his wife in Bangladesh or to my family in Atlanta. The 
case stemmed from "evidence" from 2004 and 2005 when Shifa was 18 and 
19.  Shifa was not permitted to see the evidence against him until a few 
months of before his trial. The "secret" evidence against Shifa included 
online chats between teenagers and religious literature that he had 
translated from ancient Arabic texts to English for Tibyan Publication.

While Shifa was awaiting trial, he was staying in a solitary confinement 
cell that was approximately 8 feet by 12 feet for over three years. He 
was in that cell for at least 23 hours per day. Many days he remained in 
the cell for 24 hours. He could not have normal pens or pencils. He 
could not make phone calls to his family, except on rare occasions. He 
had never been charged with even a minor offence, yet he had served 
three years in the most onerous prison conditions that this country had 
to offer. During this time, an inmate assaulted and attacked him, which 
left my brother traumatized and his health markedly deteriorated.

The official charges against Shifa included "supporting" a foreign 
terrorist organization (Laskar-e-taiba, LET) in Pakistan by sharing 
videos of tourist sites in Washington, DC with his online friends. 
However, LET was not listed and designated as a foreign terrorist 
organization by the US State Department at the time Shifa was 
apprehended but added to the list two weeks after his arrest.  There 
were /no acts /of "terrorism" charges against Shifa. There were /no 
/"plotting"/ /of terrorist activities charges against him.

Shifa is one of the first young Muslim men to represent himself at his 
own trial in the federal court.  He addressed the court throughout his 
four year legal proceeding and challenged the court directly.  The 
prosecution took advantage of Shifa's lack of knowledge of the law, and 
submitted evidence that had no connection to him at all. The majority of 
government witnesses were FBI agents who did not participate in the 
online chats between teenagers but were allowed to present and 
"interpret" evidence. No actual participants from the chats were brought 
to testify.  Jurors prejudicial towards Islam and Muslims were chosen 
for the trial with some jurors, according to media reports as well, 
caught sleeping as evidence was being presented.

Shifa was sentenced to 17 years. The results of the devastating and 
oppressive events that this violent legal ordeal communicates to us are 
that the court presiding over my brother's case had its own imagination 
of what is a Muslim and who belongs to the Muslim faith. In sentencing 
him, the court pronounced itself an "expert" of Muslim religion. It had 
its own definition of "Muslim" and felt the need to judge religious 
expression and practice of my brother and declare and differentiate 
between "true" and "good" Muslim from a "bad" Muslim.

I remember when we first went to visit my brother in the Communication 
Management Unit <http://ccrjustice.org/cmu-factsheet>-CMU in Marion, 
IL.  Driving to this prison make us feel as if we are approaching a 
serene and colorful quaint terrain. We pass by still lakes, watching 
people fishing quietly in the water. Wild birds with open wings are 
soaring in the velvet blue sky. We are in the middle of a resting area 
for migratory birds and a home for hundreds of plants and animals. It 
makes me feel that this prison must be more beautiful and humane than 
the horrendous ones in other places. Passing through the abandoned 
checkpoint and crossing over the intersection of Justice and Prison 
Road, the massive ghoulish compound emerges with its two huge towers, 
looming over the calm green space. The thorny prison fences threaten the 
wandering birds. Visitors are instantly under the microscope of guards 
from the shadowy towers, in addition to surveillance cameras all over 
the facility. Upon viewing the scenic landscape, one wouldn't know that 
industrial and manufacturing activities take place on the refuge near 
the prison. During WW II, our government used this national safe haven 
to make explosives and even today still produces "military ordinance 
production." The ominous walls of Marion CMU hide in the middle of a 
national wild life sanctuary in Southern Illinois.

This prison is like a portal to some unknown land. We have to follow the 
ritual of security check and cross many iron borders before we can see 
my brother. Showing our identification cards, filling out forms, taking 
off our shoes and jackets, and walking through the metal detectors are 
routine procedures that we have to endure. We always worry whether our 
bodies will set off an alarm. We are always thrilled when we pass the 
security test but inhibit our emotions, because visitation regulations 
can change arbitrarily and without prior notice. We have to restrain our 
emotions and behave politely. It's like an exercise in humility but it's 
forced on us, constraining us from being our real selves. Then they 
brand our wrists with an invisible ink and we are processed by a blue 
laser beam. It makes us feel as if we have been turned into cattle--we 
have somehow become the property of the prison, a prisoner.

A supervisor always escorts us, like the guards escort inmates, when we 
enter the passage with the white hall lined with panel windows as guards 
watch our every move. Going through one steel door after another, we 
approach an interior that gets darker and darker when we arrive at the 
general population room where convicted murderers, drug dealers, and 
other offenders are allowed to visit their families with physical 
contact.  A booth where guards watch us on television screens is 
stationed here in this room, but we don't visit my brother here. We have 
to cross another heavy door. Our visit and conversations with my brother 
occur over phones, while prison officials watch us on a video and 
document our speech and behavior. Federal agents simultaneously monitor 
us and eavesdrop on our conversations remotely from Washington, DC.

We enter the visitation room through the steel gate where the pernicious 
glass-wall separates us from my brother. As we walk into the room, the 
guard in blue uniform closes the menacing iron door and locks us in. 
This room is eerie, dingy, and small. There are no windows or doors to 
see or go outside. There are no bathrooms here. There are no vending 
machines to buy water or soda. However, two cameras always watch us--- 
study our bodies and movements. It feels like the dark walls are closing 
in, and there is no way out.  Shifa always waits on the other side of 
the Plexiglas. He welcomes us---me, my mother, and my sister who flew in 
from Atlanta---with the biggest smile stretched across his cheeks and 
the longest Muslim greeting in Arabic. His smiles chase the darkness 
away. His hair is falling down to his ears and a full bushy beard 
covering his face. He is in khaki uniform, wearing a white skull cap and 
glasses. My brother brightens up the morose room with his poised grin 
and graceful warmth. We are very thrilled to see him, but especially my 
mother. She is filled with joy to see her son and very anxious to talk 
to him, to hear his voice. She takes her seat between my sister and me, 
picks up the new white phone placed between three broken, useless black 
wall phones.

The CMU prison guards watch and document every move, word, and action of 
my brother and all inmates around the clock. Unlike other prisons where 
the Warden is in charge of daily operations, CMUs are under the Director 
of Federal Bureau of Prison in Washington, DC. They are "secret" prisons 
in our beautiful mid-western prairies of Indiana and Illinois, 
established during the second term of George W.  Bush. They are 
"self-contained general population" units used to punish, monitor 
inmates, and restrict their spiritual and religious life twenty four 
hours a day.  My brother's emails, phone calls, personal letters, and 
family visitations are all monitored. His interaction and all 
communications of other inmates with the outside world are limited and 
restricted. Family members cannot embrace their loved ones inside these 
prisons. These units have been cleverly labeled by the government as 
"general population" however, inmates in these sections do not actually 
have the same privileges as those inmates in the regular general 
population. Supposedly a see-through wall barring family members from 
hugging each other can help protect American citizens and national 
security. It is very puzzling to me how banning my mother and other 
families of prisoners from natural human contact and fulfilling the need 
for familial closeness and physical human connection with our loved-ones 
can protect our nation. Unless of course, the intention isn't to protect 
national security but use that language to fashion something else.

The government is not only punishing my brother and our family; they are 
also punishing all citizens and extracting money from the public. A 2010 
Congressional Report on CMUs 
<http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2010justification/pdf/fy10-bop-se.pdf> 
indicated that our government spent some $14 million in tax dollars of 
American citizens to ensure that these few inmates in CMUs and their 
families are punished and do not have familial communication or physical 
contact with their loved ones. How is it possible that so many 
Americans revolted at the news of Guantanamo Bay but continue to sponsor 
and pay for these CMU internment camps known as the "Guantanamo North 
<http://www.npr.org/2011/03/03/134168714/guantanamo-north-inside-u-s-secretive-prisons>" 
that constitutes the American prison-industrial complex? The level of 
security and inhumane restrictions on the interactions at these prisons 
seem absurd considering how the Muslim prisoners in these units 
committed /no acts of violence/. I wonder whether the only purpose for 
housing peaceful Muslims in CMUs is to create an image to make the world 
believe that "terrorists" exist, when these few men have not committed 
such acts as proven by courts. Why are so many tax dollars spent to make 
sure Muslim women and children suffer and can never hug their 
loved-ones, kiss their forehead, when many Americans are suffering from 
hunger and homelessness every day.

See Letter from Congress on CMUs 
<http://ccrjustice.org/files/Congress_Ltr_BOP_CMUs.pdf>

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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