April 6, 2003
Hawash case is cause for alarm
The Bush administration continues to take aim at constitutional rights
We don’t know if Mike Hawash is a patriotic American, a loving family man or a secretive terrorist. But we do know the United States government is absolutely wrong in the way it’s treating him.
Hawash, who was the subject of an Associated Press news story in Thursday’s Mail Tribune, is being held in solitary confinement in a federal prison in northern Oregon. His crime? None. He is being held as a "material witness" for unspecified reasons.
Whether you support the war in Iraq or the war on terrorism or neither, the news about Mike Hawash should give you pause about where our government is headed.
Hawash was grabbed in his workplace parking lot two and a half weeks ago by federal agents dressed in flak jackets and carrying assault rifles. At the same time, similarly equipped federal agents descended upon his wife and three children and searched the Hawash home.
Hawash is a naturalized American citizen who is a Muslim and is of Arab descent. Friends speculate that he was grabbed by agents because he made two $5,000 donations to the Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity that was later investigated for possible links to terrorism.
Hawash, a software designer, told friends before he was seized that he made the donations because the group was doing legitimate charitable work in poor Islamic countries. It’s worth noting that the foundation was recognized as a nonprofit agency by the federal government.
We don’t know the specifics of the Hawash case because the federal government won’t reveal any specifics. Meanwhile, he sits in a federal prison, being held without charges.
Is this the United States the Bush administration wants to create? A country in which citizens are whisked away by agents and held without charges? We hope not, but the track record of this administration suggests that our fears are not entirely unfounded. Consider just a few of the many
assaults committed against individual liberties and government openness by this administration:
The closure of all deportation and immigration proceedings.
Passage of the USA Patriot Act, which gives federal agents the authority to obtain records through secret court orders and expands the government’s authority to snoop in private correspondence and conversations.
A ruling that the Patriot Act gives the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Administration authority to issue secret search warrants involving criminal investigations as well as foreign intelligence investigations.
Plans by the Defense Department’s "Office of Strategic Influence" to plant false information in U.S. and foreign media.
Operation TIPS — Terrorism Information Prevention System — encouraging U.S. citizens to spy on their neighbors.
The proposed Patriot ACT II, which would allow increased surveillance, increased restrictions on access to public documents and increased criminal prosecutions that would affect constitutional guarantees of free speech and free association.
There are more, like Attorney General John Ashcroft’s efforts to remove "excessive restraints" on government surveillance.
And then there’s Mike Hawash — and an estimated 44 others being held under similar circumstances in this country.
George Orwell’s book, "1984," depicted a country in which individual liberties such as freedom of expression and individual privacy were luxuries no longer tolerated by the government. It’s interesting to note that Big Brother’s rules in "1984"
were enacted in the midst and aftermath of war, when the citizenry was too concerned about its safety to be concerned about its freedoms.
