Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

get all these kinds of questions—if you didn’t do anything why were you
caught? It’s just like all this doubt in people’s mind.
At the time we lost about 30 to 40 percent of our business and then it
kept getting worse and worse. And even when we got the apology and
the newspaper wrote about it we thought we were going to be slammed
because it’s an apology on the first page of the newspaper. And
[business] is slow. But people remember we were caught and this kind of
thing and [business got even] slower. Then the Evansville Courier made a
poll on the internet where they asked people did [they] talk enough
about the apology enough in the newspaper to give these people their
dignity back. It was so funny to get the response because most of the
response from people was, yes, they had enough, okay, they are
innocent, [but] let’s go back to our life, if they don’t like it let’s tell them
to go back to their home, we are trying to make the country safer. I
mean it was all this outrageous stuff. But of course I think it’s like
human nature. Bad news just keeps going and going and going but the
good news is the stuff we don’t care about—well they are innocent, well
everyone is innocent so let’s go on. So that’s why the apology didn’t
work for us. 327
Albasti had to cut his wait staff, including his friend Tarek Omar. Albasti moved to
Philadelphia.
Omar recalled:
I was put in jail for no reason. People are so nervous here. We lost so
much business because they think we are all terrorists.
After, it was difficult. You shop in Walmart and people say “oh, you are
the terrorist in the mall.” …. After the arrest, they thought terrorists are
in this mosque and they wanted revenge. We had to have guards there. 328
327
HRW/ACLU interview with Tarek Albasti, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Friday, July 16, 2004.
328
Interview with Tarek Omar.
99 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G)