Prisons Are Creating Terrorists In Our Midst

Prisons Are Creating Terrorists In Our Midst

Yehudit Barsky

Forward

September 30, 2005

American prisons have become prime recruiting grounds for incubating prospective terrorists.


Radical Islamic inmates have established their own system of indoctrination and recruitment under the cover of religious practice, a phenomenon known as "prison Islam." Inmates who practice prison Islam generally adopt Muslim names and establish a cohesive social group of fellow Muslim prisoners who support and defend one another against other inmates.

Once they leave prison, they maintain contact as part of a social support group. Radical Muslim organizations provide a similar support structure from outside of prison by providing imams to indoctrinate the inmates, extremist Islamic literature, and a community that released inmates are encouraged to join upon their release.

A window into the serious dangers and extent of this terrorist challenge was revealed by the recent indictment of four radical Muslims affiliated with Jami'at Al-Islam Al-Sahih, a terrorist organization that was founded in Sacramento State Prison in 1997 by Kevin James, an African-American convert to radical Islam.

James preached that it was a duty for each member of his organization to kill the enemies of Islam, which he defined as Jews, supporters of Israel and members of the American military. James recruited other Jami'at Al-Islam Al-Sahih members while in prison. One of the recruits, Levar Washington, recruited Gregory Patterson, another radical convert to Islam, and Hammad Semana, a Pakistani, into the group.

James reportedly directed Washington to recruit five other members for the group who would be trained in covert operations. The recruits would seek to acquire guns with silencers and to either find a contact to construct bombs for them or learn how to build bombs that could be remotely detonated.

To help finance the attacks, the four men reportedly carried out 11 gas station robberies. They were reportedly plotting attacks in Los Angeles against two synagogues, the Israeli consulate, the El Al office and American military facilities. The terrorism was timed to occur on this year's anniversary of September 11 or during the High Holy Days, which begin next week.

Public attention was first drawn to the issue of terrorist recruitment in American prisons after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when it became known that Al Qaeda operatives Richard Reid and Jose Padilla had become converts to radical Islam while in prison. Once released, they carried through on their prison indoctrination by seeking out Al Qaeda.
Dealing with the problem of recruitment for radical Islam in prisons has become more urgent as it has become apparent that many Muslim prison chaplains are part of the problem rather than the solution. A particularly glaring example is former New York State prison chaplain Warith Deen Umar, who praised the September 11 attacks to his prison congregants.


Unfortunately, many other chaplains either turn a blind eye to the radical activities of Muslim inmates or actively promote radicalism rather than transform them into future productive members of society.

Until 2001, the organization that administered the Islamic prison chaplaincies was the Islamic Society of North America, a Saudi-controlled group that promotes Islamic extremist ideology. In 2003, the Bureau of Prisons placed a hiring freeze on accepting chaplains endorsed by the society and by other Islamic organizations until it receives information from the FBI in order to determine whether any of the organizations should still be used as endorsers. That measure deals with the issue of chaplains hired in the future but does not do anything about the ones who are still in place.

Now that we have seen with the Los Angeles indictment one more example of the threats posed by the incubation of terrorists in our prison system, what can be done?
First, the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI must step up their efforts to monitor the entire prison system. Second, a reevaluation of existing Muslim prison chaplains should take place. Those who are found to be perpetuating radical ideology should be dismissed. Third, radical Islamic literature should be removed from prison libraries. Such materials should be replaced with classical works of Islam, including mainstream translations of the Koran, Hadith and standard works of Islamic theology. Fourth, new Muslim chaplains should not be certified as chaplains unless they have also been trained as counselors who will be able to work toward the rehabilitation of inmates. Muslim prison chaplains should be a force for transforming inmates into productive members of society. Fifth, future endorsements of Muslim chaplains should be given by Muslim organizations that are unequivocally anti-extremist, and the reviews of materials to be distributed in prison should be conducted in conjunction with these moderate groups.


The issue of terrorist recruitment in prisons has received scant attention in the four years since September 11. The recent arrests in California should serve as a wake-up call to confront a problem that is creating terrorists in our very midst.

Yehudit Barsky is director of the Division on Middle East and International Terrorism at the American Jewish Committee.


http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=838493&ct=1468229

 

this is what comes, a natural consequence, of not restricting so called rights for those who deserve to have their freedoms curtailed. when you're locked up, you (used to) forgo certain 'rights and privileges', but in this liberal lawsuit nation, everyone's so scared of being sued there's oftentimes more rights for those in prison than for those obeying the law.
theres certain things, that when you commit them, you even give up your human rights (or should): murder, terroism, and the like...but everyone must be treated equal, everyone must be given freedom of speech, religion, foot massages, blah blah, etc......it's killing the human race faster than any single terroist act ever will...

 

This is not a new thing - we have had White power groups in prison - Black power - all the way back to the IWW in the 1020 -1930's. To date no homegrown terrorist group has accomplished much in the way of effective action.
I do not like the idea of restricting rights to those "who deserve them". We did that remember - only white males deserved rights. We have the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in the world. Most of them inside for drug crimes - some of them there for political crimes.
When you take away any man's freedom, you make it that much easer to take away your own.

 

yes, some are in for drug crimes, some for political reasons...and most are in because they're goddamn ignorant lazy bastards who don't deserve to walk again among free men. we're all born equal-our actions thereafter determine where we end up...

 

To put it in a term most folks can understand....The very nightmares of Islamic extremism assualting our apple pie,baseball,and God fearing American way of life...We are responsible for.We create those very monsters.

We gave weapons,training,and funding to Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan rebels in the 80s to fight off Russian oppression which in turn bit us in the ass with the attacks of September 11th.The War on Terror/War in Iraq allowed various Islamic extremists to rise up and take arms with us being there,and the scandals of millitary prison abuse....We produce them every single day.

And the GOP wonders why the support for the war is at a new low.

It's almost as if to say "We can't fight a war if we don't have a threat."
How does one come about with having a foe,an obstacle,a threat to glorify and hate?

You make one.
Whether purposely,or involuntarily,it seems like how the system works.

The ideas of prisons spawning terrorist groups is no suprise,but it goes to show that many minorities who wind up in jail for misdemeanor crimes usualy transform into the monsters our society loves to fear.

Makes ya think eh?

 

The government at the time didn't know Osama Bin Laden was going to be a terrorist, nor did they know that him & his group was going to cause 9/11. If they could have seen in the future then sure the government would have never support it Osama Bin Laden. But seeing it was a whole different era & the communist were the invading occupancy, which to hooms ideology does stand against every american belief/ideal. Anyone with reason could see why our government gave them the go a head. Please don't blame government because when you blame government you're blaming the people. Who I would blame are the communist bureaucrat's, by trying to force an idea on a certain people, to starting a war by invading a country, & clicking off this paradox.

 

CIA allegedly hid evidence of Iraqi detainee's torture and murder - report

By AFX News

WASHINGTON (AFX) - CIA interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi 'ghost detainee' who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine reported today, after obtaining hundreds of pages of documents, including an autopsy report, about the case.

The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death.

The details about his death emerge as US officials continue to debate congressional legislation to ban torture of foreign detainees by US troops overseas, and efforts by the George W. Bush administration to obtain an exemption for the CIA from any future torture ban.

Jamadi was abducted by US Navy Seals on November 4, 2003, on suspicion of harbouring explosives and involvement in the bombing of a Red Cross centre in Baghdad that killed 12 people, and was placed in Abu Ghraib as an unregistered detainee.

After some 90 minutes of interrogation by CIA officials, he died of 'blunt force injuries' and 'asphyxiation', according to the autopsy documents obtained by Time.

A forensic scientist who later reviewed the autopsy report told Time that the most likely cause of Jamadi's death was suffocation, which would have occurred when an empty sandbag was placed over his head while his arms were secured up and behind his back, in a crucifixion-like pose.

Blood was mopped up with a chlorine solution before the interrogation scene could be examined by an investigator, Time wrote, adding that after Jamadi's death, a bloodstained hood that had covered his head had disappeared.

Photos of grinning US soldiers crouching over Jamadi's corpse were among the disturbing images that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, prompting international outrage and internal US military investigations.

Last week, the New Yorker magazine reported that the US government's policies on interrogating terrorist suspects may preclude the prosecution of CIA agents who commit abuses or even kill detainees, and said the CIA had been implicated in the death of at least four detainees.

Mark Swanner, the CIA agent who interrogated Jamadi, has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency. He told investigators that he did not harm Jamadi, Time wrote.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10984.htm ​