| Posted by fluffy ® , Sep 17,2003,10:40 | MetroBlab |
by Joseph Hall, Michelle Shephard and Tim Harper, Toronto Star
Sept. 13, 2003
One of Canada's most moderate and respected Muslim clerics was pulled off a plane Thursday and thrown in jail by U.S. immigration officials in Fort Lauderdale without any charges being laid.
Ahamad Kutty, who has preached tolerance and peace throughout North America for more than two decades, was ordered off his Orlando-bound flight from Toronto and interrogated in an airport holding cell and a local jail for 16 hours as the U.S. marked the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
He has been declared a risk to national security.
Kutty, an imam and scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto and at the city's west-end Jami Mosque, was detained with fellow Toronto cleric Abdool Hamid. The pair had travelled to Florida to attend seminars and give a series of lectures and sermons on, among other things, the dangers of fanaticism in the Islamic world.
"We have gone through a traumatic experience. Really it dehumanized us," said Kutty, who arrived at Pearson International Airport last night at 8:30 p.m. Kutty said he was pulled off the plane at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and was grilled by at least 10 officials until about 1:30 a.m. yesterday.
"They handcuffed us and took us to jail."
Kutty said immigration officials told him his Islamic Institute of Toronto organization sounded familiar in name to the Islamic Institution of America, which he assumed was some sort of suspect group.
Authorities, Kutty said, were especially interested in a business card that he carried in his wallet bearing the name Islamic Society of North America. He said immigration officials made him sign a waiver giving up his application to enter the United States.
Kutty also said he would not return to the United States and would caution others in the Canadian Muslim community against doing so.
Hamid, who arrived with Kutty at Pearson last night, said one of the two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who had joined in the pair's interrogation had been apologetic about their detention, saying "You picked a bad day to fly," referring to the 9/11 anniversary.
Kutty, 57, and Hamid, 38, were released yesterday afternoon.
Members of both men's families say they were kept in the dark about the pair's whereabouts until 4:30 a.m. Friday when Kutty and Hamid were finally allowed to place phone calls home from a Fort Lauderdale jail.
"He was supposed to deliver the Friday sermon at the biggest mosque in Orlando today (Friday)," said Kutty's son Faisal.
Norma Morfa, a spokesperson for the department of customs and border protection in Miami, said the two men were denied entry to the United States because they were deemed to be a risk to national security.
She said the decision was made by a customs officer employed by the department of Homeland Security in Fort Lauderdale, but she refused to elaborate on how the decision was reached.
"This is by far the most bizarre incident I have ever heard of or witnessed," said Altaf Ali, executive director of the Florida office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who visited Hamid in a Fort Lauderdale jail. "You are allowed to fly on any day you wish in this country."
Ali said he had been denied permission to see Hamid's affidavit by the Homeland Security department.
Khurrum Wahid, a New York lawyer who spoke with Kutty, called the decision "outrageous" and said he would be willing to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government if Kutty wanted to take the case further. "These are long-time Canadian citizens," Wahid said.
An FBI spokesperson in their Miami office said two officers were called to the airport to question the men on the request of immigration officials.
"We were there for a couple of hours but didn't see any reason to have them detained further," the FBI's Judy Orihuela said yesterday.
"This is really shocking because both of them are totally against all forms of extremism," said Faisal Kutty, a lawyer and general counsel for the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association.