Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

I could not ask questions. What’s worse is that they put me at great risk
of being physically harmed. You can’t ask why. 303
The U.S. government still has not relented in its suspicions of Abdullah, recently stating,
“The FBI continues an active investigation of Mohdar Abdullah and any connection to
the September 11 attacks.” 304 But in the same statement the FBI acknowledged that after
three years of detention, “The investigation to date has determined that there is no
evidence to corroborate information that Mohdar Abdullah had prior knowledge of the
September 11 attacks.” 305 The government never charged Abdullah with any crime
related to terrorism.
Abdullah, now twenty-five, is trying to rebuild his life while remaining under the shadow
of suspicion from the U.S. and Yemeni governments. He described to HRW/ACLU
how he felt during his detention in the United States:
Overall, emotionally I was stressed. I cannot describe my emotions. I
was quite angry and upset. I don’t feel that I was put through a fair legal
process. I feel I was deceived and tricked. I faced a lot of physical and
verbal harassment until I was deported. Everyone knew about who they
said I was … it was all over the news. The guards saw me as someone
who had come to the United States to harm them, who’s evil, who will
harm them. 306
Nabil al-Marabh
Nabil al-Marabh faced a similar fate upon his deportation to Syria after being held as a
material witness and then on immigration charges for over two years. The U.S.
government jailed al-Marabh from September 18, 2001 until January 2004. Although al-
Marabh’s material witness proceedings were conducted in complete secrecy with no
public documents, U.S. and Syrian papers ran stories alleging that he was a terrorist, a
key figure in the Detroit Sleeper Cell case.
Al-Marabh feared being tortured in Syria given that it was widely known there that the
United States had held him in connection with an alleged sleeper cell. So he applied for
303
Interview with Mohdar Abdullah.
304
Dan Eggen, “Hijackers' Friend Objects to September 11 Report,” Washington Post, August 10, 2004, p. A1.
305
Ibid.
306
Interview with Mohdar Abdullah.
95 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G)