If anyone symbolizes the American Gulag, it is Mohammed Salah.
Salah lives with his wife and three children in the basement of a two-flat in Bridgeview, a suburb of Chicago with a large Muslim population. All of his assets were seized after he was indicted Aug. 20, 2004 on terrorism charges.
Arab-Americans believe Salah and others like him are being targeted because the American government is doing a poor job of catching the real terrorists. Osama Bin Laden, who happens to be a member of the same family that invested in Texas oil ventures with the Bush family, remains on the loose.
Salah’s story is amazing mainly because he wasn’t indicted by the United States until years after he finished a five-year sentence in an Israeli jail in November 1997.
Israel accused Salah of passing money to Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for most of the suicide bombings in Israel. But those terrorist attacks took place while Salah was in jail, and Hamas was not designated as a terrorist organization until after Sept. 11.
According to Salah, he was tortured by the Israelis and forced to sign a confession in the Hebrew language, a language he neither speaks nor reads.
Such tortured confessions are common in Israel, according to pro-Palestinian civil rights organizations.
US Attorney John Ashcroft, who like many in the Bush administration were caught with their pants down on Sept. 11, needed to show the public he was doing something.
Ashcroft has incredulously cited the Salah case as a victory in the “war on terrorism.”
But Salah is not anti-American. He is anti-Israeli. He may or may have political views that I even disagree with. But in the more than 15 years that I have known him, he has never chastised me for my support of nonviolence or my embrace of a two-state solution that recognizes Israel’s right to exist.
Ironically, the leaders of several Arab— and Muslim American organizations have done more to ostracize me because of my outspoken condemnation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Salah’s case has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or Sept. 11, but most Americans couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
Worse, the case against Salah is based on the testimony of an “informant” who worked with Salah and who allegedly has been on the Justice Department payroll for years.
The informant was exposed last year as an unreliable phony. He continues to operate in the Palestinian-American community, discredited even by the FBI.
So why pursue the case?
Salah’s attorneys will appear before a judge in March, when they hope to dismiss the one piece of evidence that remains against him: The Hebrew language confession he signed while in an Israeli jail.
Salah’s attorneys, Michael Deutsch and Matt Piers, are looking for Palestinians in America who were held by the Israelis in the Ramallah or Moscobiya prisons between 1990 and 1996 and who were tortured.
If they can confirm Salah’s claims, the case could be thrown out.
But it will take a lot of courage on the part of any Palestinian living in America to tell the truth. Doing so would expose them to harassment by the government and by Israel if they return to their homeland.
The Salah case is based on lies, exaggerations and distortions, the same things that have fueled this country’s so-far failed “war on terrorism.”
