Lawmaker Questions FBI Materials Purge

The FBI's refusal to identify three Islamic experts involved in purging "offensive" material from training manuals has triggered concerns that the Bureau has delegated this responsibility to Islamist organizations.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., points to the FBI's history of "community outreach" with organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in asking whether people linked to those groups have been involved in training U.S. counter-terror agents.

CAIR and ISNA, who have been among the most vocal critics of the manuals, were named unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007-08 terror-finance prosecutions of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Five senior HLF officials were convicted of participating in a conspiracy to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas and sentenced to long prison terms.

Since 2008, the FBI has had a policy of not dealing with CAIR because of the group's connections with Hamas documented in the HLF case. There is no such ban on dealings with ISNA.

The Washington Examiner reported this week that the FBI still refuses to name the trio of Islamic experts tasked with removing the purportedly objectionable material from the training manuals. Gohmert, vice-chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, suspects that the Bureau is reluctant to provide the information because these experts "were people who cannot be trusted, who could not pass a security check."

ISNA spokeswoman Sarah Thompson said that since September, the organization's president, Imam Mohammed Magid, and other ISNA representatives have participated in meetings about the revisions with Department of Justice or FBI officials on the training issue. One was a Feb. 8 meeting involving FBI Director Robert Mueller and groups that included representatives of ISNA and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

MPAC's website links to a Feb. 8 article which said that the FBI had purged hundreds of terrorism documents as part of its efforts to root out "Islamophobia." As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported at the time, the destroyed material included articles and PowerPoint presentations describing the Muslim Brotherhood's efforts to achieve world domination and presentations defining jihad as "holy war."

For her part, Thompson denied that any of the ISNA representatives had a role in reviewing any of the materials or the standards for judging them.

The subject is likely to be raised when FBI officials testify before the full House Judiciary Committee at a May 9 oversight hearing.

Pentagon to Do "Less with Less"

Washington Times correspondent Rowan Scarborough reports that the Defense Department (DoD) is considering important changes in war planning to conform to President Obama's new strategic guidance.

Issued in January, that document details the key military missions DoD must prepare for, and describes the security environment that U.S. forces will face. It emphasizes working "in collaboration with Gulf Cooperation Council countries when appropriate to prevent Iran's development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies."

U.S. Central Command believes it "can destroy or significantly degrade" Iranian conventional forces in approximately three weeks. This option could be exercised in response to Iranian strikes on U.S. and international ships and attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz, Scarborough writes.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has fought large-scale ground wars since 9/11, Washington "will emphasize non-military means and military-to-military cooperation to address instability and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations," the strategic guidance states.

While U.S. forces in those countries will be prepared to conduct "limited counterinsurgency and other stability operations if required," it stresses that they "will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations (emphasis original)."

The Congressional Research Service (Congress' nonpartisan research arm) said the guidance "appears to call for doing less with less." It includes a willingness "to assume greater risk, without specifying the scope and scale of that risk, to accomplish simultaneous missions."

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said the strategic guidance will result in a "smaller and leaner" force that "will be fragile, flexible, ready, and technologically advanced." The force "will be prepared to confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world," he added.

Many observers remain skeptical of the administration's approach. "The problem is the enemy gets a vote," said Heritage Foundation analyst James Carafano, who said DoD officials were "just rubber-stamping the budget cuts."

"Basically, what they are doing is dumping any scenarios that require long-term commitment of forces on the ground," he said, adding that the new policies "will speed the hollowing out" of the military.

KindHearts Closing Part of Deal with Treasury

The U.S. Treasury Department and an Islamist charity considered "the progeny" of a Hamas-financing network in America have settled litigation over government attempts to freeze the group's assets.

The agreement, announced by the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday, amounts to a do-over for both sides. Ohio-based KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development agrees to shut down operations in exchange for a release of its remaining assets by the government. KindHearts closed down "because further charitable work would be best pursued under other auspices," the agreement says.

Charity officials are free to launch a new organization "to engage in charitable activity in the Middle East or elsewhere" but Treasury takes no position on its operations.

KindHearts opened its doors in January 2002, one month after the Treasury Department froze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

"The purpose of creating the Holy Land Foundation was as a fundraising arm for Hamas," U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis said in 2009, during a sentencing hearing for five former charity officials convicted of illegally routing more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group.

The Treasury Department froze KindHearts' assets in 2006, finding it, too, sent money to Hamas-affiliated organizations in the Middle East. But the government suffered adverse court rulings that it violated KindHearts' due process rights in the way it carried out the freeze.

The settlement, which was signed in late November, comes "without any admission of liability or wrongdoing by either Party" but requires the government pay $330,000 in attorney's fees. KindHearts filed a public notice of its dissolution, around the time a judge in Ohio was notified a settlement had been reached.

The agreement lists four recipients to which KindHearts will send its money – the United Nations World Food Programme, the U.N. Children's Fund, U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees and Mercy Corps. A mosque, Masjid Saad, can accept the charity's physical assets.

Proposal Enhances Honor Crime Scrutiny

Proposed language in a 2013 budget bill before Congress could direct the Justice Department to study the prevalence of honor killings and similar violence in America for the first time.

The language, offered by U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., also seeks recommendations for police and social workers on how to handle such cases. It is expected to pass, writes Nina Shea.

Congress passed legislation last week dealing with violence against women, but the bill contained no reference to honor crimes, which anecdotal evidence suggests is an increasing problem among Muslim Americans.

CBS and CNN each reported on the problem earlier this year, but the issue rarely receives an open discussion.

Honor violence can come from parents who perceive their daughters are becoming too westernized or in other ways shaming the family image. There's been a reluctance to confront the problem due to a misplaced cultural deference. It's one reason there's no sense of scope to the problem.

"Because it does not fit easily into other patterns of domestic violence, honor violence needs to be explicitly addressed in any law aimed at protecting women from violence," writes Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. "Though the Senate's Violence Against Women bill mentions 'domestic violence' 38 times, and makes provisions for such esoteric subsets of domestic violence as those committed by non-Native Americans on Native American reservations, it fails to mention honor violence even once. Amidst its generous funding for a panoply of feminist causes, it does not provide a single dollar toward studying or preventing this unique and growing crime pattern."

She points to an Amnesty International report which defines honor violence as "deeply rooted belief that women are objects and commodities, not human beings entitled to dignity and rights equal to those of men. Women are considered the property of male relatives and are seen to embody the honor of the men to whom they 'belong'. Women's bodies are considered the repositories of family honor."

For more, see the report here.

Bin Laden Death Images Remain Secret

A federal judge ruled Thursday that video and photographs of Osama Bin Laden's death would remain classified, CNN reports. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied the suit against the Department of Defense by Judicial Watch, which had filed a Freedom of Information request for the material.

The judge rejected arguments by the conservative legal group about the administration's "unlawful withholding of requested records," accepting the government's argument that disclosure would violate national security interests. Until now, only a select group of leading congressmen have been allowed to view photos of the arch terrorist's corpse.

"A picture may be worth a thousand words. And perhaps moving pictures bear an even higher value," Boasberg declared in his ruling. "Yet, in this case, verbal descriptions of the death and burial of Osama bin Laden will have to suffice, for this court will not order the release of anything more."

Judicial Watch initially argued that the suit was part of the American people's legitimate "right to know." The legal group also claimed that not wanting to "spike the football" was not a legal reason to withhold government documents, especially when the administration had used previously used the assassination for political gain.

"The court got it terribly wrong," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in response to the rejection. "There is no provision under the Freedom of Information Act that allows documents to be kept secret because their release might offend our terrorist enemies. We will appeal."

Islamist forums debated the authenticity of the administration's claims for months following the assassination, before al-Qaida confirmed bin Laden's death. It is unlikely that the release of the photos would sway stalwart deniers of bin Laden's death, although it may influence jihadi arguments about the mutilation of his corpse.

Annan's Syria Mission Mired in Failure

There are growing indications that U.N. envoy Kofi Annan's mediation efforts in Syria are failing and that the presence of U.N. monitors may actually be making conditions worse.

Monitors toured neighborhoods in Homs and several suburbs of Damascus Monday and Tuesday. After they left, President Bashar Assad's military forces shelled the same areas and attacked civilians suspected of talking to the monitors. Many had their homes burned down or were dragged out of their residences and shot.

Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said U.N. officials are aware of the new accounts of atrocities. "We have credible reports" that "these people who approach the observers may be approached by security forces or (the) Syrian army and harassed or arrested or even worse, perhaps killed," he said.

On Monday, crowds in Hama welcomed a U.N. truce observer team. Following their visit, government troops opened fire on the same city streets, killing dozens. Regime foes say that two days later, as many as 70 more people were killed when soldiers attacked an impoverished residential area of Hama. Many died after shells landed near their homes, causing the buildings to collapse and crush families hiding inside.

As the carnage mounted, Annan told the U.N. Security Council in a closed-door session Tuesday that he had received written assurances last weekend from Syrian Foreign Minister Wallid Moallem that "the withdrawal of massed troops and heavy weapons from in and around population centers is now complete and military operations have ceased." Annan said he was "encouraged" by Moallem's pledge. There are just 15 observers in Syria now; Annan wants to increase the number to 300.

"There is a chance to expand and consolidate the cessation of violence," Annan added. "Observers not only see what is going on, but their presence has the potential to change the political dynamics."

"Those words well captured the delusion of Mr. Annan and those who support his diplomacy. There has been no 'cessation of violence'; numerous Syrians have been killed every day since the supposed U.N. ceasefire went into effect April 1," the Washington Post observed in a scathing editorial. "The observers are not 'changing dynamics' but providing cover and even targets for the regime of Bashar al-Assad."

For a growing number of Syrians, Annan's observers have become a target of ridicule. The New York Times reported that in one northern Syrian province a group of students dressed as UN observers wandered through a crowd of protesters pretending to be blind and with toilet paper stuffed in their ears.

As the carnage continued to mount this week, Obama administration officials acknowledged in Senate Armed Services Committee testimony that the U.N. mission was failing.

"I would say it is failing and that Annan himself is extremely worried about the plan," said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

"60 Minutes" Abets PA Incitement

Incitement against Israel from Palestinian Authority media has continued unabated despite President Mahmoud Abbas' purported commitment to peace.

And the PA continues to take actions that virtually insure increased radicalization by barring West Bank Palestinians from contact with Israeli officials to obtain medical treatment or work. Palestinians have been warned that anyone who violates the ban "will be punished," Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reports.

These actions, he writes, "will only increase bitterness and suffering among Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority is hoping that the anger on the Palestinian street will ultimately be directed against Israel.

A more subtle form of anti-Israel incitement aired Sunday on CBS Television's "60 Minutes." The program broadcast a story claiming that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem was largely to blame for the decline of Christian communities there.

Correspondent Bob Simon fleetingly mentioned that Christians in Egypt and Iraq have been targets of violence. But his focus was on Palestinian criticisms of Israeli actions such as the building of Israel's West Bank security barrier.

"The wall completely surrounds Bethlehem, turning the little town where Christ was born into what its residents call 'an open air prison,'" Simon said. "Palestinian Christians, once a powerful minority, are becoming the invisible people, squeezed between a growing Muslim majority and burgeoning Israeli settlements.

Palestinians in Bethlehem must go through Israeli checkpoints to reach Jerusalem, located seven miles away. Simon interviewed Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, who was allowed to briefly argue that Islamist persecution has played a far greater role than Israeli security measures in driving out Christians. But immediately his comment, "60 Minutes" aired a clip from an interview with a West Bank businessman who scoffed at the notion that Islamist persecution was a problem.

Oren "came off lamely, almost deliberately so, as though he feared appearing impotent less than he did all-powerful," Marc Tracy wrote in Tablet magazine. "From the segment, you would think Islamist parties like, say, Hamas, play a negligible role in contemporary Palestinian politics."

In fact, as Oren pointed out in this Wall Street Journal article last month, in Bethlehem, the city's Christian population grew by 57 percent when it was controlled by Israel. But in 1995, the Palestinian Authority assumed responsibility for governing the city and Christian population numbers plummeted.

"Palestinian gunmen seized Christian homes – compelling Israel to build a protective barrier between them and Jewish neighborhoods – and then occupied the Church of the Nativity, looting it and using it as a latrine," Oren wrote.

Read more about the plight of Christians under the Palestinian Authority here.

Palestinian Faces Death Penalty for Selling Home to Jews

Jewish officials in the West Bank city of Hebron are appealing to the international community to intervene on behalf of a Palestinian who has been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for selling property to a Jew.

The accused, Muhammad Abu Shahala, is a former PA intelligence agent who was convicted following a rushed trial using a confession obtained through torture. Shahala cannot be executed, however, without express authorization from PA President Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen).

"It is appalling to think that property sales should be defined as a 'capital crime' punishable by death," wrote Hebron community leaders David Wilder and Noam Arnon in their open letter to government officials on behalf of Shahala. "The very fact that such a 'law' exists within the framework of the PA legal system points to a barbaric and perverse type of justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages."

The letter was addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and other high-ranking international officials.

The letter added, "It is incumbent upon the entire international community, which views Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority as a viable Middle East peace partner, to publicly reject such acts of legal murder, when the 'crime' is nothing more than property sales. What would be the reaction to a law in the United States, England, France, or Switzerland, forbidding property sales to Jews?"

The United States recognizes the PA as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people and as future leaders of a Palestinian state. Earlier this month, Clinton approved a $147 million economic support package to the Palestinian government despite a hold on these funds by the House Foreign Affairs Committee for the PA's attempts at reconciliation with designated terrorist group Hamas.

Disregarding the PA's diplomatic overtures to Hamas, such support from the U.S. would seem surprising in light of the PA's adherence to undemocratic laws like the one condemning Shahala to death, which has always been part of the PA legal system.

"The PA was established in May 1994. The first law it adopted defined selling land to Jews as a capital offense," notes columnist Caroline Glick. "Shortly thereafter scores of Arab land sellers began turning up dead in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in both judicial and extrajudicial killings."

Wilder and Arnon say action by the international community is needed to save Shahala, not only from a potential death penalty, but to gain "his immediate release from imprisonment, for he has committed no crime."

Chicago Man Pleads Guilty in Bomb Plot

A Lebanese citizen and permanent resident alien accused of plotting to set off a bomb on a crowded street in downtown Chicago pleaded guilty Monday, the Justice Department announced.

Sami Samir Hassoun was arrested in September 2010 after placing a backpack which he thought contained a powerful explosive device on North Side Street near Wrigley Field in Chicago. The bomb was an inert device that had been provided to Hassoun by undercover FBI agents. They began investigating Hassoun after he told an associate he wanted to wage violence for financial gain as well as to undermine the city's political establishment.

In a conversation with an undercover FBI agent, who was introduced to Hassoun as a "good friend" and "brother," Hassoun discussed "a series of escalating violent attacks to damage Chicago's sense of security, its economy, and trust in leadership." He specifically identified "Chicago entertainment establishments, civic buildings, commercial high-rises, and transportation infrastructure as potential targets," the plea agreement said. Possible targets for attack included a biological attack on the city, poisoning Lake Michigan, attacking police officers, bombing the Sears (Willis) Tower, and assassinating the mayor. Hassoun eventually selected to detonate a bomb in the crowded Wrigleyville area of Chicago on a weekend night to inflict maximum casualties. A concert was scheduled at Wrigley Field on the weekend he was arrested, court records show.

The government recommends a 30-year sentence for Hassoun. The court can either impose a sentence of at least 20 years but not more than 30, or reject the sentence. The agreement also requires Hassoun to cooperate with federal authorities in future investigations.

British Muslim Leader Reportedly Facing War Crime Charges

One of Britain's leading Muslim figures, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, will face war crimes charges in relation to Bangladesh's 1971 campaign for independence from Pakistan, The Telegraph reports. The case parallels that of American Muslim leader Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, the president of the New York chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America, who is suspected of being a chief executioner for pro-Pakistani Islamist forces during the independence war.

Mueen-Uddin denies the allegations, calling them "politically-motivated."

But the chief prosecutor for Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal says he has "prima facie evidence of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin being involved in a series of killings of intellectuals" and vows that charges will be filed by June.

During the war, Britain's Mueen-Uddin and America's Khan both were members of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, a South Asian Islamist group founded in Pakistan with branches throughout the region. The two allegedly participated in massacres of intellectuals carried out by the pan-Islamist group, as well as a paramilitary force called the Al-Badr Brigade, which were designed to punish the newly born nation's cultural elite.

Bangladesh has since indicted national Jamaat leaders for their roles in the 1971 killings, proscribed books by the group's founder for their "militancy and terrorism," and repeatedly threatened to ban the organization.

After Bangladesh's successful fight for independence, Mueen-Uddin took British citizenship and became a prominent Muslim activist there. In 1989, he led protests against Salman Rushdie's controversial book, The Satanic Verses. Around the same time, he helped found the extremist Islamic Forum for Europe, said-to-be Jamaat-e-Islami's European wing, which has advocated for a Sharia state in Europe.

He also became the director of Muslim spiritual care provision in Britain's National Health Services, helped to set up the U.K.'s dominant Islamic organization, the Muslim Council of Britain, and became a trustee of the major British charity Muslim Aid. He threatened to sue The Guardian in 2009 after a columnist wrote about the allegations against him. The newspaper issued a subsequent apology for part of the column.

Although Khan put his roots down in America, he also remained connected to Jamaat-e-Islami-linked organizations. He joined the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which was founded according to Jamaat-e-Islami's extremist ideology by South immigrant members who moved to the United States. Uzzaman was the national leader of the group from 2000-2001, and is currently the president of the organization's New York branch.

Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom has an extradition treaty with Bangladesh. It is unclear what would happen should formal charges be filed. The charges being discussed carry the death penalty.

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