Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11
NEW BOOK ABOUT ALBANY’S “STING” CASE NOW AVAILABLE
Click here to order the book directly from the author:
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A new book about the Aref-Hossain “sting” case in Albany, New York has just been published. Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11, by Dr. Shamshad Ahmad, president of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany and the 2007 recipient of the Jim Perry Progressive Leadership Award from Citizen Action of the Capital District, is now available nationwide. Rounded Up is the only comprehensive account of the Albany case available, and there is only one other book on the market about a domestic terrorism case itself. Rounded Up is an important contribution to the new body of literature about the government’s preemptive prosecution of Muslims in America.
Click here to order the book directly from the author.
Special offer for online orders: $10.00 (which includes shipping to the U.S. and Canada). That’s $7.50 off the cover price of $17.50!
1. In your e-mail, please include your name, complete postal address and zip code, and specify how many books you are ordering. You will receive a confirmation e-mail in return.
2. Payment by money order only, please, we cannot accept checks or credit cards. Make money order payable to Masjid As-Salam and send to:
Shamshad Ahmad
276 Central Avenue
Albany, New York 12206 U.S.A.
3. When payment is received, the book will ship immediately.
Click here to listen to and read WAMC-FM article and radio interview
Three reviews of Rounded Up on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935534173
Review on Muslim Media Network:
http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?p=5543
Review by Kaleem Kawaja, a senior NASA engineer
http://projectsalam.org/books/Rounded_Up_02.html
Here’s journalist Carl Strock’s review of the book:
New book scrutinizes Muslim case
Sunday, October 4, 2009
By Carl Strock, Daily Gazette [Schenectady] columnist
Allow me to plug a book. It is “Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11,” by Shamshad Ahmad, concerning the case of the two Muslim men in Albany who a few years ago were manipulated by the FBI in such a way that they could be accused of supporting terrorism.
Shamshad Ahmad was in a unique position to view this case. He was the founder of the storefront mosque on Central Avenue that the two men belonged to — one was the imam there — and was personally involved from the initial raid and arrests through the trial and appeals, negotiating with lawyers, supporting the families, and often serving as spokesman to the news media.
He is a Muslim, of course, and he views the case through that lens: what it means not just to the two men and their families but to the Muslim community in Albany and to Muslims in America generally that such an elaborate and devious plot could be devised by the United States government to bring down two ordinary guys who were not doing anything remotely related to terrorism.
But he is also an American, and a highly educated one at that — a professor of physics at SUNY Albany, resident in this country for the past 30 years — so he can see things from that angle also, can see the legal and constitutional questions and mourn for what has happened to his adopted land.
I won’t attempt to summarize the case for those who might be unfamiliar with it. Suffice it to say that the FBI, under pressure following 9/11 to stop terrorists before they could strike again, resorted to manufacturing terrorists when no genuine ones could be found, and Yassin Aref, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq, and Mohammed Hossain, a Bangladesh-born pizza-shop owner, were two of those manufactured, or artificial, terrorists.
Aref was the primary target, based on the flimsiest of suspicions, and Hossain got roped in. The FBI deployed a Pakistani criminal who was facing deportation to set the two of them up, and it worked. Aref and Hossain were convicted and sentenced to 15 years each, which they are now serving.
Introducing the book Friday at a press conference at the mosque, Ahmad noted that the FBI deployed the same criminal in a more recent operation in Newburgh and said he expects such entrapment of Muslims to continue.
The book is a very able review of the Albany case, with an analysis of the evidence that should be useful to a newcomer and with many fresh insights and tidbits for the connoisseur.
Reading it, I got mad all over again at the misuse of government power, and I couldn’t help thinking, not for the first time, where were all those self-proclaimed foes of big government when this was going on, the ones we have heard so much from on the subject of health care?
If they want government out of people’s lives, why weren’t they protesting at the federal courthouse in Albany when the government was grinding two workaday family men under its gargantuan heel?
Where were the “Don’t Tread On Me” people with their nostalgic coiled-snake flags? Where the self-described conservatives who object on principle, or claim to object on principle, to big government?
Well, don’t get me going. You’ve heard this before, but Shamshad Ahmad’s book did get me stirred up again, that’s for sure.
The book is published by The Troy Book Makers and is available from their Web site, from Amazon.com, and from local bookstores, at a cost of $17.50, the proceeds to benefit Yassin Aref’s four children, who are in particular need. #
See and read more:
Steve Lendman Interviews Shamshad Ahmad on
Progressive Radio Network
Capital News 9, Story and Video
Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11
by Shamshad Ahmad, Ph.D., foreword by Stephen Downs
ISBN: 978-1-935534-174
Publication date: October 2, 2009
$17.50, published by The Troy Book Makers, Troy, New York
Paperback, 292 pages, photographs/illustrations, appendices
All proceeds go to the Aref Education Fund
Quotes from Rounded Up:
“I invite you to think: there are more than six million Muslims in this country, and eight years have gone by since 9/11, yet not a single Muslim terrorist has ever been found here. We are not terrorists. We are part of this society, we share its concerns, and we want to share in its success and prosperity.”
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About the sting tape of November 20, 2003: “The FBI has provided a transcript that contains only the first one-third of the discussion in this meeting. Perhaps their mission was completed when the camera recorded the picture of Malik [informant] holding the SAM on his shoulder, with Hossain looking at it. Very few will bother to investigate what actually went on during the rest of this meeting. Any honest soul will feel sorry for a person who expressed his views as Hossain did, and who was subsequently entrapped and convicted for promoting terrorism.”
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“In his testimony, Agent Coll said, ‘On numerous times, he [Aref] said, “I understand you want to legalize your money and it is good for you and good for him, you should both have the benefit, it is part of the faith.”’ But in the entire fifty hours of tape recordings, I found a discussion about legalizing money only once…[Aref] had the impression that Malik [informant] was claiming some kind of business tax credit by such transactions––the same way people giving to charities get tax deductions. ‘I had no clue of any illegality of the loan arrangement,’ Aref told us. ‘How can I say money laundering is a part of our faith? Our faith forbids even interest.’”
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From the foreword by Stephen Downs: “I believe this book will become a classic description of what happens to justice in a time of ethnic conflict. It’s a case study of how an immigrant community was attacked by the very government that was supposed to protect it, and how many Americans who should have known better closed ranks to scapegoat this vulnerable population. But it’s also a story of how some Americans fought back against this scapegoating and joined ranks with their Muslim neighbors to protest the cynical abuse of power by the FBI and the Justice Department…In this sense, the Aref-Hossain case is also a case study of a larger phenomenon––the corruption of the Justice Department, and its abandonment of the Constitution and the rule of law, for political expediency…No one who reads this book will ever view the government’s obligation to do justice in the same way again.”