NEW YORK, Nov 25: The US Justice Department is geared up to interrogate some 5,000 young men who arrived in America from the Middle East in the last two years on visit or student visas.
Each one of them would be scrutinized like a potential suspect since all the 19 suspects who carried out the Sept 11 attacks against the United States were of Arab descent.
The US authorities say that they are conducting such operations to prevent another such tragedy from occurring again on the US soil.
So far, hundreds of Muslims living in the United States have been arrested and jailed since Sept 11.
Besides arrests and detention, Muslims are feeling the heat of discrimination and racial hatred at the workplaces and many have decided to pack up and leave the country for their homeland.
While many Muslims were picked up because they fit the profiles created by the US investigation agencies, most were incarcerated because they were Muslims.
The sweeping powers given to the law enforcement agencies have come under severe criticism from US civil rights and human rights group but there is little they can do.
All of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the planes that destroyed World Trade Center and part of Pentagon, one landed in a plain field in Pennsylvania, were Arab Muslims. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 got their visa in Saudi Arabia, two in Bonn, Germany, and United Arab Emirates.
According to a report in the New York Times, overall, over 1,200 people have been detained as part of the sweeping investigation, including men travelling the country with large amounts of cash and box cutters, and those who sought information on crop-dusters and flying lessons on large jets.
But a senior law enforcement official told the Times that just 10 to 15 of the detainees were suspected as Al-Qaeda sympathizers, and that the government had yet to find evidence indicating that any of them had knowledge of the Sept 11 attacks or acted as accomplices.
While most members of this small group are being held in New York on material witness warrants, some 500 others are in federal custody on immigration charges for violations like overstaying their visas or lying on documents.
A handful of those arrested are believed to have known some of the suspected hijackers. Others seem to have drawn suspicion for more coincidental reasons.
An Egyptian antiques dealer from Arkansas Hady Hassan Omar made plane reservations on a Kink’s computer around the same time one of the hijackers did so at the same place; he spent two months in jail before being released on Friday. A Pakistani gas station attendant was just a few minutes ahead of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader, in the line to renew his driver’s license; he was denied bail by a Miami judge, the Times said.
