Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

The Justice Department has often stalled when courts pressed it to secure the witnesses’
testimony—it has sought continuances and looked for ways to delay the testimony.
Meanwhile, it has continued to interrogate the witnesses and gather information about
them from other sources, as if they were suspects. While the Justice Department has
stalled for time, the witnesses have endured incarceration, as illustrated by the following
examples.
Abdullah Tuwalah
In 2001, Saudi national Abdullah Tuwalah was a scholarship student at Marymount
University in Arlington, Virginia. The Department of Justice arrested Tuwalah on the
allegation that he had information material to the grand jury investigation of Saleh Ali
Almari, another student who had been briefly enrolled at Marymount. The FBI
connected Tuwalah to Almari because Tuwalah had met Almari through the Arab social
club on campus. 81 Although counsel for Tuwalah repeatedly informed the federal
attorneys handling the case that he was ready to testify, the government refused to
present him to the grand jury. Instead, according to his attorney, “the government just
kept interviewing him.” 82 During the six weeks Tuwalah was incarcerated as a material
witness, the FBI interviewed him multiple times; Tuwalah even agreed to a polygraph.
According to his lawyer:
The FBI interrogated him seven times and it was clear from the
beginning that he was cooperative. He said that he would come in
voluntarily and would cooperate during interviews. I’ve never seen
interview questions like this. The questions would go like this: the FBI
would not even ask questions they would just say “well he knows
something” and we’d respond “he knows what?” and then the FBI
would come back and say “he knows.” The interviews were ridiculous.
Tuwalah never testified. The grand jury was convened but they never put him on the
stand. His lawyer said, “They wanted to investigate him to see if he had anything or to
say he had something. They were trying to put together a mosaic of information—trying
to piece him together with anybody who knew anything.” 83
81
HRW/ACLU telephone interview with Denise Sabagh, attorney for material witness Abdullah Tuwalah,
Washington, D.C., August 18, 2004 (Interview with Denise Sabagh).
82
Ibid. The FBI also arrested several other Muslim Marymount students and detained them as material
witnesses because they had known Almari.
83
Interview with Denise Sabagh.
27 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G)