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Sunday, September 05, 2004

Rabih Haddad

Long-time blog readers and/or Ann Arborites will remember the case of Rabih Haddad. He was a local Islamic leader and a co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation. He was arrested on December 14, 2001 at his home in Ann Arbor, and held without charges for a year and a half before being deported to Lebanon last summer. The Detroit Free Press has an article about some new information which came out of the 9/11 Commission. Their conclusions seem mixed, but in the end they seem to exonerate Haddad and suggest that his arrest and deportation were unnecessary parts of a witchhunt. (The article isn't that clear, and probably isn't telling the whole story. If someone finds better info, please send it to me!)

Here are a few paragraphs from the artice:
Nevertheless, the 9/11 commission concluded that the government was justified in going after Global Relief.

"There may not have been a smoking gun proving that these entities funded terrorism," the report says, "but the evidence of their links to terrorist and jihadists is significant."

But the report also says, "the government's treatment of BIF and GRF raises substantial civil liberty concerns."

In "criticizing them," the report says, "we should remember that in BIF and GRF, the total political will, prosecutorial and investigative talent and resources of the U.S. government have so far failed to secure a single terrorist-related conviction."


The World Socialist Web Site followed the Haddad story pretty closely--you can find their stories here.

I had a bunch of posts about Haddad in my 2002 archive; search for "Haddad." Posts since then are here and here and here and here and here and here .