[Farouk Abdel-Muhti is a Palestinian activist who has lived in the New York area for three decades. US immigration authorities arrested him in April 2002, one month after he had started helping set up interviews with Palestinian spokespeople on WBAI's "Wakeup Call" program. The US government is now holding him in solitary in the county prison in York, Pennsylvania, nearly 200 miles from his family, friends and legal team.]

I was in front of my door with my son Tarek when the neighbors said some planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. This was a shock for me. I went back into my apartment and turned on CNN on the television and got 1010 WINS on the radio. The first thing they said was that it had been "Palestinians," a commando from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). I got in touch with Palestine, and it turned out that this sinister accusation came from Tel Aviv. The Palestine National Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in general with all its factions rejected this act, criticized it and considered what had been done an anti-human act. After all, the people of Palestine are the victims of terrorist acts by the Israeli government on a daily basis.

But the authorities in the White House in Washington, which is in the hands of the far right of the United States, did not hold back from using the attack as a pretext for the plans they had had for years--in accordance with the development of capitalist globalization--to seize the riches of this world.

Also in this period of confusion, the administration in Israel used the same pretext to go on with its massacres, destruction and occupation against the people of Palestine and their inalienable rights. Now, with the concrete protection of the administration in Washington, they charged the Palestinian people's resistance movement with terrorism and said the events of 9/11 were on the agenda of the Intifadah and the Palestinian resistance--while since the beginning of the conflict what the Palestinian people have been seeking is an actual peace, to be implemented in accordance with the United Nations Resolution on the Question of Palestine. Resolution 181 is for the right of two states to exist in the historical land of Palestine. Israel exists, and now is the time for a Palestinian state to exist in the lands occupied by Israel on June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, and with the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties in the historical land of Palestine as of 1948.

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I am deeply sorry for what happened on 9/11 in my city, New York, the victim of this tragedy, and for those who died that day. As the civil rights leader Julian Bond said: "There was no gender, no race, no religion; it was everyone helping each other." But now on the streets of the United States again there is gender, there is race, there is religion.

Since the attack people who look like Arabs or Muslims have been harassed, assaulted or even killed. The administration of George W. Bush is using this terrible tragedy and atrocity to attack and manipulate the population in the name of "fighting terrorism." Using the slogan of "the War Against Terrorism," a vicious attack has been launched against the basic human rights of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States of America. Now, by the order of President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, they have created the Department of Homeland Security, which is the road to a police state. The people arrested aren't just Arabs, Muslims and South Asians--they are immigrant workers in general. The authorities have made life impossible and wretched for immigrants and their families, above all for immigrants from the southern part of this hemisphere--whose conditions of life and whose economy have been used in part for constructing the infrastructure of this empire.

Asked "What is your response to 9/11?" Noam Chomsky, one of the intellectuals who opposed to the Bush administration's aggressive military response to the attacks, answered: "This is a terrible atrocity, but unless you're in the United States, I guess, you know it's nothing new. That's the way the imperial powers have treated the rest of the world for hundreds of years. This is an historic event, but unfortunately not because of the scale or the nature of the atrocity, but because of who the victims were."

If you look back through hundreds of years of history, from the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people at the beginning of the creation of the US, from the 17th century until today, there are plenty of atrocities. They continue under the protection of this capitalist society, in which the exploited and marginalized class isn't allowed to express itself, in which the ones who constructed this nation go on being victims because they don't organize themselves in a unified way with a program and a strategy, as a first stage in the struggle for liberation and justice, leaving the differences to one side--as long as we are united around the same strategy and we always keep the dialogue for unity open and keep in mind that the US is a nation of workers who have to act multiracially to take their rights.

What I don't understand is that there are people who aren't worried and who live day by day, without seeing the past or thinking about the future, like the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (in Gibbon), or the story of the youths who took refuge from persecution in a cave (verse 10.27 in the Qur'an).

An example: the terrorism in the 1970s in the boroughs of the Bronx and Brooklyn, home to much of the working class of our city, the "capital of the world." In this terrorism, in which the system was an accomplice, the elderly, children, women, men and domestic animals were burned up; most of the victims were African Americans, Latinos and poor whites. These were the fires that devastated the Bronx and part of Brooklyn, leaving areas that could have been on the moon, or in a war zone, in Beirut during the 1970s and 1980s.

This was a massacre for ambition, an immoral and criminal act against the working class and the poor, carried out by the exploiting class, the landlords and the real estate interests which are the owners of 90% of the buildings and properties in the ghettos of the impoverished communities. They collected insurance for the bloodletting, millions of dollars. Today the impoverished and marginalized class still suffers psychologically, physically and economically from this act of class terrorism.

There has never been an investigation. And I wonder why now they don't investigate the big corporations and real estate interests which had their offices in the World Trade Center. In the same way, there should be an investigation for what reason the Bush administration started the war in Iraq. Blood for oil? And who is behind this administration, and what role do the multinational corporations play, and the megabanks and the real estate interests? And for whose benefit is this imperialist globalization?

Please, brothers and sisters, companeros and companeras, friends of the good, call for an investigation of all these crimes committed since World War Two by this imperialist government of the US.

One of these tragedies is the one from the 1940s, when the US government had prepared for war before the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after Dec. 7 the media and government unleashed a torrent of anti-Japanese American propaganda, and in February 1942 thousands of citizens and non-citizens alike--under President Roosevelt's infamous Executive Order 9066 authorizing the military to "evacuate," round up and imprison all Japanese, men, women and children living in the US--were sent to 11 camps, behind barbed wire and guard towers.

This fabrication aimed at denying the rights of the Japanese Americans is like so much of what is happening today to Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities, and Order 9066 is like the infamous "Homeland Security Department" aimed at us and at immigrant workers in general, the result of all this humiliation, racial profiling, torture and psychological and physical warfare, of which I am a victim today in this macabre apartheid prison in York, Pennsylvania.

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I am writing from here with all sincerity in the name of justice, rights and peace to all of you who oppose the war and occupation in Iraq and everywhere. I ask all of you to feel the sorrow of these mothers who lose their sons, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the Palestinian people, the Arab people, and also the sorrow of the Israeli, English and American mothers who also are losing their children each day, to carry out the agenda of occupation, of barbarism, of the brutal, murderous government of George W. Bush, and the racist agenda of Ariel Sharon and his government, and the adventures of the English Rin-Tin-Tin, British prime minister Anthony Blair.

I am with all of you, valiant and unselfish people in the United States and the world who oppose war, occupation, colonialism, racism, oppression, exploitation and the violation of our human rights.

But we have to keep in mind, with our heads held high, that the streets, the ghettos, the factories and the people are our vanguard (of which we are a part), with the torch of our unity, and we have to continue the protests with a clear and well defined strategy, crying in chorus: "No more wars in our names," "No justice, no peace," "Eliminate weapons of mass destruction" (the majority of which are in the US), "End the threat to humanity, we don't want more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis," "No more racial profiling," "Equality for all."

I am writing this risallah (message) from solitary confinement in this iron box #15--which I have been inside for six months and 16 days as of Sept. 11, 2003; soon I will have been imprisoned for one year and six months. This is psychological and physical warfare--23 hours and 15 minutes inside the box, with only 45 minutes to clean the cell, make collect phone calls, take a shower. When I go to the clinic or to see visitors inside this huge prison, it is with my hands and feet shackled and two task force guards escorting me. Names like "Abdel," "Mohammed" and "Mahmoud" make you unacceptable in this apartheid prison. They see Arabs and South Asian people as terrorists, and look for pretexts to humiliate us, to threaten, punish or torture us, like mocking Muslims and Arabs, using negative words like "terrorists," "cowards," "chickens," "evil." This apartheid, fascist York County Prison in York, Pennsylvania, is just two hours from the capital of the nation.

With all sincerity I am writing this risallah to all of you in the name of justice, rights and peace. The attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad (in the month of August 2003) is a horrible crime--and "suspicious," the Palestinian spokesperson in Iraq declared. This "blind" form of attack which makes no distinction between friendship and occupation is negative. The United Nations is the camp of international law and friend of the people of Iraq, which is under US occupation. The aggression on the UN headquarters is a negative act, damaging to the Iraqi people's rights (according to the Palestinian information office in Baghdad); this only benefits the Anglo-American occupation, which had been ignoring the UN's role.

The Palestinian people, who are under Israel's hegemonistic occupation, understand the importance of the United Nation's role and the international law that defends the rights of oppressed people and people in resistance against occupation and the colonialists.

We are deeply sorry for this tragedy of the Baghdad headquarters of the UN. We ask the United Nations to continue its role in aiding the people of Iraq and all the peoples of the earth, so that they can obtain their freedom and independence and move into the forefront.

This is the Palestinian message from Baghdad, Iraq, an occupied territory, in August 2003. For me, it is important that the UN stay free from the tentacles of US imperialism.

And I put my hand and heart with all of you who are in the camp of justice and rights. We will win.

Farouk Abdel-Muhti
York County Prison
Aug. 29, 2003

You can help get Farouk released!

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) is holding Farouk in violation of a June 2001 Supreme Court decision setting a six-month limit on detention in most cases like his. Contact top deportation officer David J. Venturella at phone 202-514-8663, fax 202-353-9435, email david.venturella@dhs.gov (w/copies to freefarouk@yahoo.com) and ask him why he's continuing to hold Farouk.

Progressive attorneys are defending Farouk pro bono, but legal expenses remain high. Please contribute by writing a check to "Nicaragua Solidarity Network," with "Farouk" on the memo line.

Mail it to:

Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti
PO Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009

To join the struggle to free Farouk, contact us at

212-674-9499

9/11/03: Farouk Abdel-Muhti has now been held for 503 days

WRITE to Farouk:

Farouk Abdel-Muhti
#75122
York County Jail
3400 Concord Road
York, PA 17402-9580

Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti
PO Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009
212-674-9499