CHICAGO, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Lawyers for the founder of Global Relief, the nation's second-largest Muslim charity, stood outside the Dirksen Federal Building Thursday where their client was to appear before a federal grand jury.
Ann Arbor, Mich., Muslim leader Rabih Haddad, a volunteer teacher at the Michigan Islamic Academy, has been held at federal facilities without charge since FBI agents and U.S. marshals seized the Bridgeview, Ill.-based foundation's records and froze its bank accounts on Dec. 14.
Global Relief officials deny any links to terrorist groups and Wednesday filed a motion seeking to release the group's financial assets and records.
"At this point all we know is that Haddad has been subpoenaed," said Haddad's lawyer, Ashraf Nabani. "A subpoena we have not seen yet."
Nabani said Haddad was to appear Thursday before a grand jury impaneled in May 2001.
"The government has not disclosed any information, much less tell us what connection he has to the grand jury investigation," Nabani said. "What they'll ask, and what he'll say, I don't know."
Nabani said Haddad, 41, was being held in solitary confinement in a cockroach-infested, 6-foot-by-9-foot cell at the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center.
"I have a camera fixed on me right outside my door that has completely deprived me of any kind of privacy since that door has a small window which allows them to check and see if I'm still there around the clock," Haddad wrote in a letter distributed to reporters. "I am allowed one 15-minute call to my family every 30 days. My food is handed to me through a slit in the door. The same opening is used to put cuffs on me before the door is opened for any reason."
Nabani said the conditions were harsh for someone who had not been charged with any crime and no one had offered any evidence to link Haddad to terrorism.
Haddad, a native of Lebanon who has a degree in engineering, had three closed hearings in immigration court in Detroit before he was moved to Chicago. He had been living in Ann Arbor before his arrest and his wife, Salma al-Rushaid, a Kuwaiti, applied for permanent residency last spring. Their visas expired in 1999.
Al-Rushaid admits the family stayed in the country after their visas expired but she applied for an extension.
A deportation hearing in Detroit was postponed Tuesday and a judge consolidated the cases. The couple have four children, ages 3 to 12, but only their son, Rami, 8, was born in the United States and is not subject to deportations.
The Detroit News, the Ann Arbor News, American Civil Liberties Union, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and other organizations have joined lawsuits seeking information about the Haddad case.
Global Relief's attorney Roger Simmons, of Frederick, Md., said the foundation raised $5.2 million in 2000 and had distributed humanitarian relief in 22 countries providing medical supplies, basic vocational training, food, tents and blankets to victims of famine and war.
"To this day Global Relief has no idea why the government did this," he said. "On Jan. 28, Global Relief filed a lawsuit against (Attorney General) Mr. Ashcroft, against the head of the FBI and other government officials for first having taken all of our documents without explaining why and for having sealed the records as well as freezing all the bank accounts."
Simmons said Global Relief had never been designated as a terrorist organization. "There's been no complaint, no indictment, no allegations."
Attorney Jim Finnerty, president of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said the case is about more than Haddad.
"I think this case is outrageous. We have to realize this is not just about Mr. Haddad," he said. "This case is also about all the people that are in jails in New Jersey without charges, who are being held either on fictitious immigration violations or as material witnesses. What we're seeing in this country is a whole element of secrecy. People just being taken off the street."
"Many people are beginning to ask themselves what has happened to the basic freedom of 'habeas corpus' in this country when a man like Rabih Haddad can be held without charges for two months," said Andrew Thayer of the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism. He said the government had not produced any evidence against Haddah "let alone any charges against Haddad. We have a case here of secret evidence, a case of secret court proceedings and now we've got a case today of secret grand jury proceedings."
A small group held signs reading: "Free Rabih Haddad!" and "Stop the Deportation of Salma al-Rashid."
