High Profile Muslim Inmates Quietly Sent to Special Indiana Unit

By Farkhunda Ali

Muslim Link Staff Writer

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has secretly administered strict policies targeting Muslims and Arabs in the newly formed Communication Management Unit (CMU) in Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

In December 2006, inmates from various prisons across the nation were quietly moved to Terre Haute to be monitored in the CMU D-Unit cell. The CMU program makes it mandatory for all telephone communication to be monitored by staff. In addition, all communication will be subject to recording, and must be conducted in English only. All letters must be reviewed by staff prior to delivery. Visits must be non-contact only, live-monitored, and conducted only in English, a requirement that poses great hardship on inmates whose native tongue is Arabic or other languages

The prisoners were moved under heavy guard without any prior notification of to where or why they were being moved. The CMU D-Unit in Terre Haute is the former death row, which has received close to 20 Arab and Muslim inmates.

According to records obtained by RAW STORY and a letter sent to the Muslim Link by inmate Ismail Royer, current inmates at Terre Haute include five members of the Lackawanna Six, a Yemeni-native group convicted of training with Al-Qaida. Besides Royer, another of the so-called "Virginia Jihad" defendents there is Gaithersburg, Maryland native Masoud Khan.

The facility also houses Abdul-Rahman Alamoudi -- convicted of conspiracy to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at the behest of Libyan leader Muhammed Khadafi. Another CMU prisoner is Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born physician who was sentenced to 22 years for violating US economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s government. Dhafir is the former President of the now defunct Islamic Assembly of North America.

Attorney Peter Goldberger, a Philadelphia-area specialist in criminal appeals and former law professor who has 30 years experience dealing with federal prisons and inmates, told a reporter of RAW STORY, "what’s different about the program is its limitation of contact with friends, family and outsiders -- instead of 300 minutes of telephone time per month, it’s one 15 minute call per week, which can be reduced in the Warden’s discretion to a mere three minutes once a month."

According to Mirsada Stabancic, wife of Ismail (Randall) Royer, with the new CMU enforcement, she is only allowed to have only two-hour visitations four times a month. "High-risk inmates" like her husband Royer are only allowed to get family visits during the week; weekend visitation is not permited.

"The visitation for my husband is allowed between 8-10AM or 12-3PM on weekdays only with no physical contact, only conversation sitting behind a thick Plexiglas window," said Stabancic. "When we go to visit him in the morning and we go back in the afternoon, it is considered a second visit."

This puts a hardship on the family members specially the children who enjoy physical contact with their fathers. Stabancic’s children are upset about the new restraints because they can no longer jump on their father’s back and play with his beard.

"If I can’t give him a hug, I don’t want to go," said one of Royer’s sons when he found out that his father has been moved to high-security-risk facility where he will only be allowed to talk to him behind a glass window.

Likewise, the same situation exists with the 4-yr old son of Masoud Khan who is unable to comprehend why he no longer will be able to share a meal with his father during his next visitation.

Some civil right and legal critics say the CMU D-Unit could be considered as the DOJ’s effort to racially profile Arabs and Muslims.

"Segregating prisoners based on their national origin, religion, race or linguistic background is a practice that is in direct contradiction to the US Supreme Court ruling in Johnson v. California, which made it illegal to separate prisoners based on race," said Julie Stephenson, a third year law student at University of District of Columbia (UDC) Law School.

Johnson v. California, a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, involved the segregation of African-American inmates. While the Court noted in its decision that it did not decide whether the segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, it nonetheless "explicitly reaffirm[ed] that the ‘necessities of prison security and discipline,’ are a compelling government interest justifying only those uses of race that are narrowly tailored to address those necessities."

Religious discrimination is prohibited by Prison Bureau regulations. The regulation states that Bureau "staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs."

"It is the beginning Guantanamoization within the US Bureau of Prisons in the U.S.," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of MAS Freedom Foundation. "I’m concerned about the civil rights of these inmates. We will ask the DOJ for the investigation of the US Bureau of Prisons."

In a letter written to the Muslim Link in January 2007, Ismail (Randall) Royer wrote: "I have now been moved to a speak unit at FCI Terre Haute, Indiana. The unit is sealed off from the regular population. . . The point seems to be to prevent us from influencing the ‘regular’ Muslims in the prison and to put tight control on our communication with the community. Contact visits are not allowed, only four calls a month. All calls in other languages have to be translated before you can make another call. It’s called the Communications Management Unit (CMU)."

"The requirement of equal protection under the law forbids prison administrators from segregating prisoners by race, religion or national origin without a compelling security need," said Rachel Meeropol, an attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York. "These men must be given an explanation of why they have been moved and shown any evidence that might exist to justify the great intrusions on their privacy and associational rights posed by the CMU. Without these steps, we are very skeptical of the constitutionality of the transfers and restrictions," she told the Muslim Link.

Although it has been a normal practice of the BOP to move inmates secretly from prison to prison, at some point, legally, the Warden is supposed to allow two phone calls before the move, said law students at Howard University.

When the families of Royer and Khan visited the prison locator website (www.bop.gov), they had difficulty finding their permanent locations.

In addition, Stabancic told the Muslim Link when frends called the prison to find out visitation hours, they were told visitation is Fri-Sun 8AM-3PM for the general population. However, the CMU D-Unit prisoners have limited weekday visitations that have to be approved prior to the visit for each family contact.

According to Elizabeth Khan, mother of Masoud Khan, her son is allowed to make one 15-minute call once a month by appointment only. In addition, all visitations are allowed on weekdays with a prior 2-week approval in advance.

"Masoud says the prison is 60-years old and in poor condition. Visitations are behind the glass and one hour per weekend for a total of four hours per month once the visitor is given permission to come," added Elizabeth Khan, mother of Masoud Khan. "We have no idea whether he is okay, what they could possibly do to him. He’s in a 6 x 9 cell confined to himself for 23-hours of the day."

The 100-page document on the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Mail for High-Risk Inmates prepared in September 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General proposes several recommendations in order to increase the monitoring of telephone and mail communication in addition to inter-prison communication among prison inmates.

"The new procedure makes it mandatory for [Masoud] to submit his letters unsealed so that they would read them first before sealing and mailing. Incoming mail has always been opened and read by the authorities before being handed over to him, and in many instances, the mail was never delivered. Over the past few months, letters in Arabic were never delivered to him. Halalco and a bookstore in Texas have sent him books since October and none have been delivered to him or returned. Masoud was very nervous in December 2006 and apprehensive. He kept saying the visual cameras and overhead monitoring system had been increased. I also noticed that when he placed a call, the volume seemed to be very loud," said Elizabeth Khan, mother of Masoud Khan.

The BOP gave CMU guidelines to FCC Terre Haute, Indiana to increase monitoring of communication of inmates assigned to the D-Unit. All inmates of the D-Unit will be closely monitored and their outgoing and incoming mail has to be first reviewed by the staff before delivering to inmates or processing to the post office. In addition, all phone and written communication is required in English in order to be approved.

"The BOP started transferring prisoners in December 2006. This will raise some concerns within the courts," said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News in Seattle, Washington. "On the other hand, the way they are doing this is a violation of Administrative Procedures Act because they have targeted people based on religion and race."

"The DOJ and the BOP had difficulty monitoring all communication in 2005, so they came up with a policy to recruit more Arabic translators to monitor all communication. From administrative perspective, the Terre Haute Facility is now able to easily mange and control communication by putting all Arabic speaking people in one area," added Wright.

According to John Zwerling, legal counsel paintball defendant Saifullah Chapman, all materials get censored by the FBI. This is done to prevent certain types of communication. There are some procedural and due process concerns in this type of monitoring," said Zwerling.

"When I called to find out the location of my clients, the warden told me the institution is under a lockdown, but no one said they are not there Terre Haute," said Stuart Sears, an attorney of the Zwrerling, Leibig & Moseley Law firm in Alexandria, Virginia.

"One day, the prison locator [website] said my husband was in Virginia, another day in Atlanta," said Stabancic. "I did not know that my husband was moved to Terre Haute until the third week when he made a 1-minute phone call to let us know he was okay."

"With the CMU administrative measure, prisoners have no fourth amendment rights because every single phone call is tape recorded," added Sears.

With this rapid move of Muslims and Arabs to Terre Haute, families of other prisoners are afraid their relatives are likely to be moved to the CMU D-Unit in the future.

"My husband knows about the CMU. His communication and mail is already being monitored. In addition, now the BOP is trying to make the visitations harder for families," said Ola Mustafa, wife of Saif Chapman.

Although critics disagree with the limitation of CMU, Terre Haute inmates told family members that they are able to pray and communicate with other inmates in English. They are given food according to Islamic dietary habits and are allowed to keep minimal reading material.

"I told my husband at least this is the time when he can finally do an extensive study on Islam to become a scholar," added Stabancic. "Ismail always wanted to become a learned scholar of Islam."