fatman17
PDF THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 32,563
- Reaction score
- 98
- Country
- Location
July 18, 2012
On Being Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison
In Your Eyes, Im a Terrorist
by TAREK MEHANNA
In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful.
Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The easy way was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the crime of supporting the mujahideen fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to call them, terrorists. I wasnt born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and Im no different. So, in more ways than one, its because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated toward any book that reflected that paradigmUncle Toms Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X even The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers [and] how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forcesan insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the civil rights struggle.
I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend themregardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed by many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I dont know if youve seen the movie X by Spike Lee the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolms life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; its not a culture or ethnicity. Its a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised.
This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about : what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how were supposed to exist. And since theres no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Quran and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world; and the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya what Israel had done in Lebanonand what it continues to do in Palestinewith the full backing of the United States. And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf war, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq.
I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and howaccording to the United Nationsover half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a 60 Minutes interview of Madeleine Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were worth it. I watched on Sept. 11 as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of Shock and Awe the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads .
I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslimsincluding a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlerswere shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as they slept by U.S. Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a 14-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women dont even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the 17 Afghan Muslimsmostly mothers and their kidsshot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses.
These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of brotherhoodthat each Muslim woman is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. I couldnt see these things beings done to my brothers and sistersincluding by Americaand remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Reverewhen he went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minutemen. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minutemen waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. Theres an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about.
All those videos and translations and bickering over Oh, he translated this paragraph and Oh, he edited that sentence, and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to kill Americans .The governments own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little terror plots, but I refused . Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invadersSoviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and its not extremism. Its what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you dont have to agree with my beliefsno. Anyone with common sense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.
But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the U.S. military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed terrorism and the people defending themselves become the terrorists who are killing Americans. The mentality that America was victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets two and a half centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. Its the mentality of colonialism.
When Sergeant Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, all of the focus in the media was on himhis life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his homeas if he was the victim. Very little sympathy was expressed for the people he actually killed, as if theyre not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether or not they realize it. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that theyre my impartial peers, I mean, come on. I wasnt tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted menot because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities only to look back later and ask: what were we thinking? Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War IIeach was widely accepted by American society, each defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked, What were we thinking? Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjectiveeven this whole business of terrorism and who is a terrorist. It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, Im a terrorist, and its perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the U.S. military in foreign countries, yet somehow Im the one going to prison for conspiring to kill and maim in those countriesbecause I support the mujahideen defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a terrorist, yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the terrorists are, she sure wouldnt be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with killing Americans. But, as a Muslim living in these times, I cannot think of a lie more ironic.
Tarek Mehanna, a 29-year-old American who holds a doctorate in pharmacology, was convicted of supporting al-Qaeda by translating their documents into English and expressing sympathetic views toward them, and of conspiring to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq. He read this statement to Judge George A. OToole during his sentencing on April 12, 2012.
On Being Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison
In Your Eyes, Im a Terrorist
by TAREK MEHANNA
In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful.
Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The easy way was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the crime of supporting the mujahideen fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to call them, terrorists. I wasnt born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and Im no different. So, in more ways than one, its because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated toward any book that reflected that paradigmUncle Toms Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X even The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers [and] how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forcesan insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the civil rights struggle.
I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend themregardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed by many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I dont know if youve seen the movie X by Spike Lee the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolms life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; its not a culture or ethnicity. Its a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised.
This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about : what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how were supposed to exist. And since theres no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Quran and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world; and the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya what Israel had done in Lebanonand what it continues to do in Palestinewith the full backing of the United States. And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf war, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq.
I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and howaccording to the United Nationsover half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a 60 Minutes interview of Madeleine Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were worth it. I watched on Sept. 11 as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of Shock and Awe the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads .
I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslimsincluding a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlerswere shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as they slept by U.S. Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a 14-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women dont even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the 17 Afghan Muslimsmostly mothers and their kidsshot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses.
These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of brotherhoodthat each Muslim woman is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. I couldnt see these things beings done to my brothers and sistersincluding by Americaand remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Reverewhen he went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minutemen. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minutemen waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. Theres an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about.
All those videos and translations and bickering over Oh, he translated this paragraph and Oh, he edited that sentence, and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to kill Americans .The governments own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little terror plots, but I refused . Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invadersSoviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and its not extremism. Its what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you dont have to agree with my beliefsno. Anyone with common sense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.
But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the U.S. military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed terrorism and the people defending themselves become the terrorists who are killing Americans. The mentality that America was victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets two and a half centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. Its the mentality of colonialism.
When Sergeant Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, all of the focus in the media was on himhis life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his homeas if he was the victim. Very little sympathy was expressed for the people he actually killed, as if theyre not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether or not they realize it. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that theyre my impartial peers, I mean, come on. I wasnt tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted menot because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities only to look back later and ask: what were we thinking? Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War IIeach was widely accepted by American society, each defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked, What were we thinking? Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjectiveeven this whole business of terrorism and who is a terrorist. It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, Im a terrorist, and its perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the U.S. military in foreign countries, yet somehow Im the one going to prison for conspiring to kill and maim in those countriesbecause I support the mujahideen defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a terrorist, yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the terrorists are, she sure wouldnt be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with killing Americans. But, as a Muslim living in these times, I cannot think of a lie more ironic.
Tarek Mehanna, a 29-year-old American who holds a doctorate in pharmacology, was convicted of supporting al-Qaeda by translating their documents into English and expressing sympathetic views toward them, and of conspiring to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq. He read this statement to Judge George A. OToole during his sentencing on April 12, 2012.
