Detention Puzzles Doctor’s Family

For the family and friends of Riad Abdelkarim, these days of waiting are filled with questions and dread, questions and fear, questions and more questions.

Since the Anaheim physician was detained Sunday in Israel and subsequently arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities, Abdelkarim’s supporters have heard nothing about what he has allegedly done wrong. David Douek of the Israel Consulate in Los Angeles said Wednesday that authorities have “pretty much closed the case” to further public disclosures because of national security concerns.

The silence has magnified the puzzling character of the doctor’s case. Abdelkarim, 34, was a board member of the Holy Land Foundation, a Dallas-based Islamic charity that was shut down in December by the U.S. government on charges that it funneled funds to the militant group Hamas. But Abdelkarim was found to be clean by the FBI after questioning last fall and had frequently traveled to Israel without incident, as recently as January.

Unlike the shadowy men of the terrorist network Al Qaeda, Abdelkarim was a highly public figure who wrote more than 200 articles, spoke at community forums and volunteered for medical relief missions. In his most recent trip, he had traveled to Israel at the invitation of the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based global humanitarian organization, to assess health needs in the Palestinian territories.

His family says this Santa Monica native of Palestinian descent was a quintessential American who played Little League baseball, favored hamburgers over hummus, made high school valedictorian and led his class in the Pledge of Allegiance. He was also a typical Californian, his family says, who swam and bodysurfed growing up around his father’s market in Hermosa Beach and considered himself a die-hard Los Angeles Lakers fan.

“Riad is as American as they come,” said his brother Basil, a Bellflower physician. “This is almost like a smear campaign to present him as a terrorist. The most important thing to understand about Riad is that he is a humanitarian, and this should not be a crime.”

The physician’s supporters have engaged in a flurry of activity to win his freedom. On Wednesday, the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and the Anaheim office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked Abdelkarim’s congressional representative, U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), to appeal for his immediate release. Lacking essential facts about the case, Cox said it was “not my role” to press for Abdelkarim’s release. But Cox said he was working to ensure that Abdelkarim was afforded due process and other legal rights.

In Chicago, Najee Ali said he would represent the Muslim American Society, the nation’s leading organization of African American Muslims, in traveling to Israel next week to make a religious appeal for Abdelkarim’s freedom.

And in Orange County, a retired Christian minister who credits Abdelkarim with saving her husband’s life said she intends to raise the issue of how to help the doctor and his family at an interfaith meeting today. Connie Regener of Irvine said the man she knows only as a compassionate healer had cared for her husband’s diabetes, heart irregularities and other problems a few years ago. Now, she said, it was time to return the kindness.

“He was so very supportive and kind to us in our emergency, and now I’d like to see the same treatment extended to him,” said Regener, a member of a Christian-Muslim women’s group that meets monthly at the Crystal Cathedral.

As the activities mount, so do questions about what might have triggered Abdelkarim’s detention.

Cox said Wednesday that he was told by the State Department that Abdelkarim was being held on charges of being “a member of a terrorist group” and “funneling funds to a terrorist group.” If true, that would likely pinpoint the physician’s association with the Holy Land Foundation, which Israel and the U.S. government have outlawed on charges that it was a leading source of funds for Hamas suicide bombings and other terrorist activity.

Abdelkarim joined the group’s board last spring, arguing like other Muslims that actions against Holy Land were primarily aimed at demoralizing the Palestinian people. Foundation members deny the terrorist charges and are suing the federal government for freezing its funds.

After U.S. authorities shut down the foundation, Abdelkarim started a new charity, KinderUSA, in March aimed at helping children in the West Bank and Gaza. The new charity sent out its first e-mail appeal last month for $1 million to buy food, household items and medical supplies.

In an April 10 e-mail to The Times, Abdelkarim said founders of the new charity included such prominent U.S. Muslim physicians as Laila Al-Marayati of Glendale, a former member of the U.S. religious freedom commission. The charity was in no way involved with Holy Land members who were under the most scrutiny by investigators, he wrote.

“They have their own problems to deal with,” he wrote. “As for me, I’m ‘clean’ as far as I’m concerned, and I couldn’t sit by and watch as the situation in Palestine worsened, with nobody there to help the people.”

Others wonder if an impassioned letter Abdelkarim wrote from the Jenin refugee camp displeased the Israelis. His April 29 letter spoke of the stench of death, stories of executions and destruction, and his shame at being a U.S. taxpayer subsidizing the Israeli military arsenal.

“They are trying to silence him,” said Ibrahim Hooper of the American-Islamic council in Washington. “To use the bogeyman of terrorism is to keep people from assisting the Palestinians and making their lives so miserable that they will buckle under.”

His four young children’s questions are more immediate. Is Dad going to make the Angels baseball game and the “Star Wars” film opening, as he had promised?

As the long days turn into sleepless nights, the children have stayed out of school and the family has secluded itself. During a visit to his Orange County home this week, the children described how they had decorated the home with balloons for his homecoming, and were looking forward to visits to Disneyland and the park with him. Now, says his wife, Wijdan, no one has been able to eat or sleep much.

“We just want him home,” said Wijdan as her eyes filled with tears. “His children need him.”