In Michigan, anti-terrorism effort goes public Haddad case forces rare glimpse of secret U.S. campaign
Washington Post
May 6, 2002
By Dan Eggen and Kari LydersenWhen three immigration agents knocked on his apartment door in Ann Arbor, Mich., in December, Rabih Haddad already had his attorney on the phone.
Earlier on Dec. 14, federal agents raided the Illinois offices of the Global Relief Foundation, the Islamic charity that Haddad had helped found, freezing its assets and accusing it of funding terrorists. That afternoon, they took him into custody. Haddad, 41, has been in jail ever since.
In court papers, U.S. officials have accused him of having contact with groups and individuals associated with the al Qaeda terrorist network. But they have not charged him with a terrorism-related crime, and they have declined to provide details of the allegations to him or to his legal team. They have held him on the comparatively minor charge of overstaying his visa.
Haddad's attorneys and supporters, including Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), say he is a gentle man, a Muslim who has worked to bring together people of different faiths. They say he is a victim of an overzealous Justice Department that has targeted innocent Arab and Muslim men since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Haddad's case is like those of hundreds of other post-Sept. 11 detainees, except in one important aspect: At least part of his fight is being waged in public. Last month, federal judges ordered that documents and hearing transcripts from Haddad's immigration case be made public. When the Justice Department reluctantly complied, Haddad's case became the first of the Sept. 11-related prosecutions to be unsealed.
The case provides a striking example of the government's controversial, secretive campaign of arrests and detentions since Sept. 11. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other U.S. officials say the effort is aimed at capturing suspected terrorists and disrupting future attacks, yet none of the hundreds of immigrants detained has been publicly charged with crimes related to terrorism. Among activist groups concerned about the treatment of those swept up in the dragnet, the Haddad case has become a cause célèbre.
"How I long for those peaceful evenings I used to spend with my family huddled around a huge bowl of buttered popcorn watching a movie or just talking and teasing," Haddad wrote recently to one of those groups. "It's been four months now, and there still doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel."
The government says that domestic imagery in no way describes the Haddad they know or the organization he represents.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, the government has alleged, Haddad was "directly linked with and observed at multiple overseas locations that housed and supported terrorist organizations associated with the al Qaeda network" and was seen "in the company of leaders and members of al Qaeda-related terrorist organizations."
But among more than 1,000 pages of documents -- motions, filings, transcripts and hundreds of petitions from Haddad's supporters -- that is all there is from the government about his alleged links to terrorists; the evidence, prosecutors say, is classified.
In the absence of details, the two portraits of Haddad remain unresolved.
A detainee's background
This much can be gleaned from the released court documents and interviews with people who know Haddad:He was born in Beirut in 1960, to a Presbyterian father and Greek Orthodox mother. He became a Muslim in the 1980s. He first entered the United States in 1980, when he began engineering studies in Nebraska. He spent about 14 of the next 22 years here, interrupted by travels back to Lebanon and elsewhere, including Pakistan and Kuwait.
Haddad has told authorities that from 1988 to 1992, he was a humanitarian aid worker in Peshawar, Pakistan, which served as the base for Muslim guerrillas who fought the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. War-torn and flooded with refugees, Peshawar was awash in both aid workers and militants who later joined al Qaeda or the Taliban militia.
"I converted to Islam wholeheartedly and I was looking for the best way to please my God," Haddad testified at a December hearing. "I thought this would be one of the best ways . . . helping others and doing good."
After returning to the United States in 1992, Haddad joined with several others to found Global Relief in Bridgeview, Ill. Before the government closed it in December, it ranked as the second-largest Islamic aid organization based in the United States, with programs in more than 20 countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Pakistan and the West Bank.
Global Relief reported donations of more than $5 million in 2000 and said it used the money to provide food, health care and other emergency services, according to court documents filed by the group.
Haddad served as the group's chairman, traveling frequently around the United States to raise money for Muslims in need in the Balkans and the Middle East, according to court records and officials. He has testified that he was not paid by the group, which would have violated his immigration status, but lived off zakat, or alms, from fellow Muslims.
According to released court documents, early efforts to hold Haddad on the immigration charge focused on his unlawful possession of a shotgun and on varying explanations of how he supported himself financially.
In court, he said he had the shotgun because he was an avid bird hunter and member of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society. An application for a subsidized apartment in Ann Arbor listed Global Relief as his employer, but he testified that he lied on the application because "if you tell them that your source of income is charity, nobody is going to let you live there."
The seeds of his current immigration troubles were sown when he last entered the country, in 1998. Haddad was granted a six-month tourist visa, and then a six-month extension. The Immigration and Naturalization Service said his visa has expired, and he is awaiting a hearing to decide whether he should be deported.
His wife, Kuwaiti national Salma Rashaid, and three of the couple's four children also face deportation for overstaying their visas. They, unlike Haddad, are free on bond awaiting hearings. A fourth child was born in the United States and is considered a U.S. citizen.
Days after he was arrested, and for months afterward, Haddad was held in 23-hour solitary confinement, with limited contact with his attorneys or family. The proceedings in his immigration case were sealed under broad secrecy rules Ashcroft ordered after Sept. 11.
For months, Conyers, the American Civil Liberties Union and several Michigan newspapers fought in court to open those proceedings. The Justice Department and INS contended that doing so would jeopardize national security. But after a U.S. District Court judge and a three-judge appellate panel ruled against them on the issue last month, prosecutors said they no longer believed that.
However, their suspicions of Haddad and Global Relief remained intact.
Suspicions denounced
As part of a crackdown on charities suspected of funneling money to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the Treasury Department froze Global Relief's assets while the Justice Department launched a grand jury investigation of the organization in Chicago. About the same time, NATO forces raided a Global Relief office in Kosovo and said the group "is allegedly involved in planning attacks against targets in the USA and Europe."Global Relief's name was also included on a U.S. list of groups suspected of having ties to terrorism that was circulated after the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, officials said.
Federal prosecutors in Detroit did not directly accuse Haddad of involvement with terrorists until March 1, 2 1/2 months after his arrest, when they included descriptions of a sealed FBI declaration in papers opposing his release. The description implies that a grand jury is examining more serious allegations.
The same Chicago grand jury handed up an indictment on Tuesday against the leader of another Islamic charity that was shuttered at the same time as Global Relief.
Enaam Arnaout, executive director of the Benevolence International Foundation, was charged with perjury for stating in court papers that he and his group had never aided Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors allege that he and his group have been intimately connected with bin Laden for years, moving large sums of money to fund al Qaeda operations around the world.
A senior Justice Department official said prosecutors have not ruled out using a similar strategy against other groups, including Global Relief. But the government has not provided Haddad or his attorneys details of the alleged evidence against him, other than declaring in court papers that it shows "him to pose a threat to persons and a danger to the national security."
People who know Haddad say they cannot believe it.
Religious leaders who have known him in Ann Arbor -- including a rabbi and a minister who testified on his behalf -- describe him as a gentle man who spoke out against terrorism and worked to bring together adherents of different faiths.
Imam Mufap Algalaieni of the Islamic Center of Ann Arbor said Haddad emphasized that "Islam came for peace, to spread peace and harmony among people. And he stood strongly against violence."
No other Global Relief leader has been arrested or detained. Roger C. Simmons, a Frederick, Md., attorney representing the group, said the allegations against it and Haddad are unfounded.
"It's unbelievable the lengths the government is going to undermine this upstanding organization," Simmons said. "These aren't radicalists in any sense of the word. They are decent people. Their whole mission for 10 years has been the converse and opposite of violence."
Nazih Hassan, president of the Islamic Center of Ann Arbor and a friend of Haddad's, said there were many shady characters in western Pakistan as the Soviet war wound down. He noted that the United States, which provided support to the anti-Soviet militants, had many advisers there.
"To say he met people who later on might have become terrorists or talked to terrorists is ridiculous," Hassan said. "It's not even guilt by association. It's guilt just by being in the region."
As the two sides hold their separate views of Rabih Haddad, the man himself has been moved to Chicago, where he is to testify before the grand jury investigating Global Relief.
Kari Lydersen reported from Ann Arbor.
(c) 2002 The Washington Post Company