Mixed Reviews on Anti-Terror Interview Plan

He was sought out for questioning by the FBI after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even though he had violated no laws. And, he said, he certainly hadn’t consorted with terrorists.

But the young man--a native of the Middle East who asked to be called Mourad--agonized for weeks about whether he should agree to the “voluntary” interview. “I was shocked. I thought: ‘I don’t fit the profile. What did they come to me for?’ I don’t know anything about the people detained.”

After consulting a lawyer, he decided to go ahead with the interview, if only to show that he had nothing to hide.

Two months after federal authorities sent out letters seeking interviews with 700 foreign-born men in Michigan--most from Arab countries--as part of the government’s investigation into terrorism, only half have been questioned.

In eastern Michigan, where most of the men reside, 250 either have declined to be interviewed or could not be located as of Jan. 24, the date by which law enforcement officials had hoped to finish the questioning.

‘We’ll Visit Them More Than Once’

Still, the program is serving its purpose, officials said, of gaining intelligence about terrorism from people who are not suspects but may possess useful information without even knowing it.

The U.S. attorney’s office and local police will not comment about any information gleaned from the interviews.

“We try to find them. We’ll visit them more than once to try to get to them,” said Robert Cares, the assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit who is in charge of the counter-terrorism task force here.

Michigan’s operation is part of a nationwide effort by the Bush administration to question about 5,000 people holding temporary visas from a number of countries, mostly Arab, who have entered the United States since January 2001.

Michigan has what is considered the largest Arab community outside the Middle East--as many as 200,000 people, most of them living in Detroit and its western suburb of Dearborn. Officials here chose to contact those sought for interviews by letter, deeming that a kinder way to carry out the program than having federal agents show up unannounced at someone’s home or workplace.

But if the letters go unanswered, law enforcement officers will follow up.

“Every case is different. We’ll go to someone’s address and knock, and they’ll say that John Doe has moved somewhere else,” which will also be checked out, Cares said.

The operation, Cares added, was not intended to root out immigration scofflaws who have overstayed their visas. But Muslim and civil rights groups are not so sure.

“That remains to be seen, because [the program] is still being wrapped up,” said Haaris Ahmad, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“The [Immigration and Naturalization Service] can play fast and loose when they get someone on minor visa violations,” Ahmad said. “Now you’re going to take these 5,000 people and get a big chunk of them on visa questions.”

Nabih Ayad, a Dearborn attorney who represents a number of people who received the letters, noted the wording of a letter of instruction from the U.S. attorney’s office to the interviewers: If someone has overstayed a visa, the interviewer is told to call someone at the INS, “who will advise you whether the individual is in violation of immigration laws and whether he should be detained.”

Ayad has advised clients with expired visas to decline the interviews but to seek to clear up their status. “It’s kind of like sending sheep to slaughter.” Authorities “would know their new address, phone number, cell phone number, where they work.”

Daniel Oates, the chief of police in Ann Arbor, about 40 miles west of Detroit, at first was skeptical of the proposed interviews, wondering what could be gained and at what cost to community trust.

He met with members of the Muslim community, who pledged cooperation if the campaign was held to a terrorism investigation, and Oates was on board.

Recipients of the letters “came from countries, Arab and non-Arab, where Al Qaeda had a presence or a recruiting presence,” said Oates, who was chief of intelligence for the New York Police Department before taking the Ann Arbor job in January 2001. “If, among the 5,000 people, one or two had some information that was helpful to the federal government to fight terrorism, it was worth it.”

In the interviews, representatives of local police departments, the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office, the Internal Revenue Service and even the Treasury Department and Drug Enforcement Administration ask general questions about an individual’s activities in the U.S. They also want to know whether someone has been approached about being trained in terrorist activities or knows of anyone who has been approached.

Fears that people would be pressed to turn over all their friends’ telephone numbers have not played out, although some have reported being asked questions that they thought were irrelevant and too personal, such as what they talked about in phone conversations with family members overseas.

Mourad, who is in his 20s, said he thought the questions were too general to be of much use. One question, he said, was: “Do you know anyone who has committed crimes or terrorist acts, or who might in the future commit terrorist acts, or who might have purchased guns?”

“Do I know anyone who received military training or ‘suspicious’ training?” Mourad said he was asked. “My concern was, do I really know all the facts about the people I’ve met?” A simple no ended each line of questioning.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has advised the letter recipients who agree to the interviews to bring a lawyer.

That’s to avoid people being tricked into saying something they don’t mean and to ease concerns of those afraid that they’ll be arrested on the spot, said Ayad, who has sat in on more than a dozen interviews.

Members of the Muslim community say they are cooperating with the effort but find personal pain in stereotypes that persist.

“We had tears in our eyes on Sept. 11. We grieved with the whole country,” said Ali Dakroub, 35, who moved to Dearborn from Lebanon when he was 3. “But you also hurt because you get stereotyped. I’d be more than happy to die for this country, where my children were born.”

Dakroub recalled seeing one TV news reporter interviewing an Arab man at an airport who said he didn’t object to searches as long as people who appeared to be from the Middle East weren’t singled out. Said the anchor: “Do we really want to take advice from Abdullah?”

“This is the kind of thing that really jabs at you,” Dakroub said.

But upon hearing of a Muslim woman who was forced to remove her head scarf at the Baltimore airport, he shook his head. “It’s like asking a nun to take off her headpiece. Diversity is getting jeopardized.”

Hasan Qazwini, imam of the Islamic Center’s mosque just north of Dearborn, said he tries to find a balance between what he finds acceptable and what he views as right.

“We have no problem with the government conducting and implementing measures to secure the country and society; we understand that our country was attacked viciously by a bunch of terrorists,” Qazwini said.

“The only thing is when these measures enforce racial profiling. . . . To be guilty until proven innocent, that is so painful.”

Demanding a Citizen’s ‘Green Card’

Qazwini, whose father runs a mosque in Pomona and who became a U.S. citizen after immigrating from Iraq nine years ago, was stopped at the Detroit airport in November and repeatedly asked for his “green card” (identification held by permanent residents), even though he is a U.S. citizen.

Qazwini tells his congregation during weekly prayers to condemn terrorism, that the killing of innocent people is not condoned by Islam.

“But there always seems to be some misplaced anger in the world,” said Dakroub, who owns a gas station in Dearborn. “I wish it could be channeled to a productive way.”

It’s the kind of anger that Mourad swallowed in submitting to the FBI’s questioning.

“I guess it was justified, considering the terrible things that happened to thousands of people. I wanted to contribute to the process.”