[1254] in peace2
Okay! Portland Police refuse to cooperate with Ashcroft
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Saurabh Asthana)
Wed Nov 21 13:59:51 2001
Message-Id: <200111211842.fALIgQn10027@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
To: peace-list@mit.edu
Reply-to: rednblack@alum.mit.edu
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 13:42:26 -0500
From: Saurabh Asthana <angrymob@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
It's the little things that keep you going.
Saurabh
------
"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed."
-- Eduardo Galeano, "Upside Down"
Portland police refuse to cooperate with U.S. questioning
State law requires people be suspects before being questioned
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Portland police have refused a U.S. Justice Department
request for help in interviewing Middle Eastern immigrants as part of its
sweeping terrorism investigation, saying it would violate state law.
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced earlier this month that the Justice
Department had distributed a list of 5,000 men it wanted to interview about the
September 11 terrorist attacks, an effort that has been widely criticized by
civil rights groups.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Portland asked city police for cooperation last
week, acting police chief Andrew Kirkland said Tuesday. The request was denied
because Oregon law says no one can be questioned by police unless they are
suspected of being involved in a crime, he said.
"The law says, generally, we can interview people that we may suspect have
committed a crime," Kirkland said. "But the law does not allow us to go out and
arbitrarily interview people whose only offense is immigration or citizenship,
and it doesn't give them authority to arbitrarily gather information on them."
Portland is believed to be the first city to refuse to cooperate with the
Justice Department in its anti-terrorism effort.
Portland FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said Tuesday she couldn't comment on
the investigation. Justice Department officials were unavailable for comment
Tuesday night.
Charles Gorder, an assistant United States attorney in Portland, told The New
York Times that the interviews would be completed, with or without help from
local police.
Arabs and Muslims have expressed outrage at the U.S. Justice Department's plan
to interview the 5,000 men, who are not suspected of any crimes. The list is
comprised of men ages 18 to 33 who entered the United States since January 1,
2000, from countries that have been linked to the hijackers in the September 11
attacks or were waystations for the terrorist organization, al Qaeda.
Civil rights activists say the action constitutes racial profiling. The Justice
Department acknowledges the men are likely to be Arab and Muslim, but says the
list wasn't based on ethnic origin.
Racial profiling is also against state law, Kirkland said.
Kirkland, who is black, said profiling is an issue that hits home for him, but
that's not why the Justice Department's request was rejected.
"I am sympathetic to that issue from a perspective of growing up African
American. That doesn't factor into any decision to do this or not. We made
that decision regarding racial profiling long before September 11. That
decision was made for us when the Legislature wrote the law."
