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Detroit man cleared in gas station bombing fights for citizenship

A Detroit man, who moved to the U.S. at 6-years-old, says if he would not have been wrongfully convicted 30 years ago, he'd be a citizen today but immigration is still trying ot send him to Iraq where he says his Christian beliefs will get him killed.

DETROIT (FOX 2) - A Detroit man who spent 13 years in prison for the bombing of a gas station in the late 1980s but was later exonerated is now facing a possible death sentence in the form of deportation to Iraq.

Waleed 'Tony' Isho was wrongfully convicted of the 1989 bombing of a gas station on Seven Mile and Woodward. He was arrested, tried and, after only 40 minutes of deliberation, Tony was convicted and spent 13 years in prison.

The moment he was released, immigration wanted to deport him.

It took another 18 years before the conviction was removed and he was exonerated by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Qiana Lillard in 2020.

"When she said you were exonerated vacated, I still get chills- I got chills now talking about it," said Tony.

But with his conviction removed, immigration was still knocking on the door since Tony was brought to the U.S. when he was just 6 years old.

"I've been out here - about 18 years since I've been out of prison - and I followed everything immigration wanted of me. Everything," he said.

If he is deported to Iraq, he'd likely die. Attorney Marvie Neubauer is fighting for his citizenship and says Tony can't hide in Iraq.

"There's persecution for the Chaldeans in Iraq at this point in time. He's marked, he has Christian tattoos, that's not something he can hide," said Neubauer.

The two met at a prayer meeting just two years ago and Neubauer said if she was not convicted, Tony would be a citizen today.

After the meeting, Marvie went on his mission to get Tony exonerated - which happened last year - but the citizenship eludes him for now.

"Citizenship was halted because the US government, as a result of his wrongful conviction, took away his green card - thereby taking away his right to become a citizen," said Neubauer.

Tony is fighting the order from immigration and there's a temporary agreement to keep him in the U.S. due to his innocence.

Tony was on a green card in 1989 and, typically, it takes five years until citizenship is granted. He and his attorney argue that he not been wrongfully convicted, he'd be a citizen today. Immigration says he has to start from the beginning - which means five years on a green card before becoming a legal citizen.

Waleed 'Tony' Isho spent 13 years for a gas station bombing but was later exonerated. But his wrongful conviction could wind up with him being deported to Iraq, despite being on track for citizenship before his arrest.

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Chaldean cleared of Detroit gas station bombing fights deportation to Iraq, likely death - FOX 2 Detroit

MISSOURI, USA: On Aug. 2, 1990, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered his army to invade and capture Kuwait. This ill-fated decision forever changed Iraq and the lives of all Iraqis and the first coalition war against Iraqi began on Jan. 16, 1991.

Some 30 years later, we are still assessing the consequences of the invasion of Kuwait. As part of its special coverage of the Gulf War, Arab News has done a deep dive into the topic to produce a multimedia feature titled Desert Storm: 30 years on.

Iraq between 1991 and 2003 suffered tremendously under international sanctions. Although the Oil for food UN program was designed to make sure no Iraqis went hungry under the sanctions, Saddams regime prevented food and medicine from reaching dissident populations still under his control (particularly Shiites).

As a result, some 500,000 Iraqi children are estimated to have died preventable deaths during this period. The brutal dictatorship that terrorized all Iraqis finally fell in the 2003 installment of the Gulf War. For a brief moment it seemed life would get better for the citizens of a country with one of the worlds largest proven oil reserves.

The successful coalition military campaign quickly degenerated, however, into a disastrous occupation. One event in particular came to symbolize everything the Americans did wrong in their occupation of Iraq: the scandal surrounding American treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

First came the very fact that the Americans chose the Abu Ghraib prison to house close to 4,000 prisoners (mostly Sunni Arabs suspected of participating in the post-2003 insurgency against the coalition occupation regime). Abu Ghraib had been infamous during Saddams reign, akin to Irans Evin prison in Tehran. Long before 2003, getting sent to Abu Ghraib stood out as one of the worst fates someone could face in Iraq.

Follow our special coverage of Iraq

Instead of assuaging already suspicious Iraqis and reassuring them that post-Saddam Iraq would be different, the Americans simply took over Abu Ghraib and began using it much as Saddam had. Coalition forces likewise installed themselves in Saddams palaces (including the Green Zone in Baghdad), turning them into their new administrative headquarters for the occupation.

For many Iraqis, the message seemed clear: The Americans were the new Saddam, except this time Sunnis would take the place of Shiites and Kurds as Iraqs oppressed groups. Just in case anyone remained unsure about Iraqs new dictators, the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April of 2004.

It began with the death of an Iraqi detainee being interrogated at the prison. Soon after, a US soldier discovered a CD-ROM disc in the prison with photos of prisoner abuse. He reported this to his superiors, who began an investigation (as is standard operating procedure for such reports).

The news program 60 Minutes soon obtained the graphic photos of detainees being tortured by their American guards and broadcast a story on the matter.

The photos of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib shocked the world. CNN summarized the types of abuse as follows:

Although most people think of Iraq as a very hot country, much of this torture occurred in December 2003 when temperatures in an unheated prison get quite cold and damp. Keeping the prisoners naked under such conditions, in addition to various forms of humiliation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, cold-water, high-pressure hoses, physical abuse and psychological abuse, certainly amounted to torture.

By early May of 2004, George W. Bush, then US president, appeared before news cameras around the world disavowing the abuse of prisoners and his regret for the humiliation suffered. The damage had already been done, however, as the evidence of torture and humiliation of Iraqis swelled the ranks of militant groups and fueled the insurgency in the country.

If the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was intended to save coalition lives by forcing prisoners to divulge information about the Iraqi insurgents, it had very much the opposite effect. Responsibility for the whole sorry episode never ended up reaching very high up the American chain of command.

Although Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense at the time, testified before the US Congress and Senate, neither he nor President Bush or Vice-President Cheney were ever really blamed.

The narrative that emerged instead was one of a few bad apples on the night guard shift at Abu Ghraib. Low-level soldiers and civilian contractors received demotions, reprimands and prison sentences of a few months. The highest official sanctioned for the abuse was Janis Karpinski, the brigadier general in charge of several prisons in Iraq. She was rotated out of Iraq and demoted to colonel.

Follow our special coverage of Iraq

For a country that prides itself on its human-rights standards and frequently chides foreign leaders from a moral high ground, this looked like a hypocritical outcome. Many thought it unlikely that higher level officers and government officials did not know what was going on in Abu Ghraib prison.

At the very least, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld created the kind of standard operating procedures and climate that allowed Abu Ghraib to occur. They insisted on calling captured militants enemy combatants rather than prisoners of war so that they could send them to Guantanamo Bay without formal charges or Geneva Convention protections.

On other occasions they sent the captured fighters on secret flights to Egypt or secret CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe so they could be tortured there, far from the light of the world. They engaged in various forms of sophistry to classify things like water boarding enhanced interrogation rather than torture.

In the end, all of this hurt rather than helped the American cause. Such abuses gave the insurgents in Iraq the oxygen they needed to survive several more years than they should have. Some of the insurgents even eventually morphed into the self-proclaimed Islamic State or Daesh.

To be certain, some of the outcomes from Saddams 1990 blunder turned out for the better. Iraqi Kurds in particular found an opportunity to emerge from the ashes of Saddams genocidal policies against them in the 1980s.

The unacceptable risk that Saddams nuclear weapons program would have posed to the world a program which was just a few years short of completion in 1990 receded. However, as with almost all watershed moments in a countrys historical trajectory, the positive changes found themselves weighed down by the bad.

David Romano is Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University

Excerpt from:
How Abu Ghraib became a byword for the disastrous occupation of Iraq - Arab News

In an increasingly interconnected world and with the rise of massive social media corporations and big data analytics, digital privacy and data security have never been more important.

While in many advanced democratic societies the debate often revolves around the citizens right to a private space, in countries such as Iraq the lack of privacy can have deadlier repercussions and so demonstrators are increasingly adopting novel means of keeping their identities away from the prying eyes of security forces and powerful Shia militias.

Since the US-led invasion and occupation of the country in 2003, Iraq has had a long history of civil unrest and protest movements. Up until 2013, these were largely led by the Sunni Arab minority that felt marginalised by the post-2003 order.

Their demonstrations came to a violent end in 2013 when former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the army to forcibly disperse protest camp sites in Ramadi and other cities, a move an Iraqi parliamentary probe later blamed for the rise of the armed group ISIL (ISIS) in Mosul.

Since ISILs defeat in 2017, tensions between state and society simmered until exploding in October 2019, this time in Iraqs Shia heartlands traditionally the bastion of electoral support for the Shia-dominated political system.

Electronic armies have managed to penetrate the phones and social media accounts of some activists [Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters]Complaining of corruption, a lack of economic security, and accusing Iraqs political elites of being beholden to foreign powers, particularly Iran, mostly Shia Arabs took to the streets of the capital Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriya, and other main population centres throughout central and southern Iraq.

The federal authorities response was to once more resort to violence, backed extensively by Shia militias which deployed snipers on rooftops to pick off demonstrators.

There are so many examples of the states alliance with the militias, Sara, who attended the protests in Baghdad, told Al Jazeera, asking that her real name not be used for her own security.

Their alliance was to protect a system that works for Iran and its clients in Iraq, not the Iraqi people who suffer under their corrupt rule, she said. They have a long history of violence against the Iraqi people.

In a two-pronged offensive against the demonstrators and the international media organisations reporting on their protests, the government throttled social media sites used to organise the demonstrations and then cut internet access across much of the country to prevent both professional and citizen journalists from reporting on abuses.

However, even after internet services were restored, activists faced a series of cyberattacks that led to arrests and the disruption of protests.

To begin with, we used apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Twitter to organise marches and publicise what was happening, an unemployed software developer who participated in protests in Baghdad in 2019 and 2020 told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

But we soon discovered that a lot of these apps had been compromised by victims being tricked [into installing] fake apps that downloaded messages straight off phones. We would turn up to an area to hold a protest and find masked militias waiting for us with knives and clubs, he said.

While this suggests both the Iraqi security forces and militias have greatly expanded their cybersecurity capabilities, experts say the hacking expertise could be imported from neighbouring Iran.

Certainly, the electronic armies of the Iranian-backed militias are getting support from Iranian experience and expertise in electronic warfare, Watheq al-Sadoon, Iraq expert at Turkish think tank ORSAM said, referring to the specialist cyberunits embedded within most militia and state security entities.

The electronic armies have managed to penetrate the phones and social media accounts of some activists, al-Sadoon added. This allowed the militias to spy on activists and send threats to them.

Evidence of Irans burgeoning cyber-warfare capabilities has recently been uncovered.

In September, The New York Times reported on a sophisticated Iranian hacking programme that specifically targeted dissidents. Al-Sadoon suggested this could have easily and cheaply been exported to Irans clients in Iraq.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other rights monitors, activists have been routinely targeted for arrests and enforced disappearances.

Despite Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis promises to locate those who had been forcibly disappeared, HRW described his efforts as a do-nothing mechanism.

Some high-profile dissidents have even been targeted for assassination.

On Wednesday, the father of a missing anti-government activist, Jasb Hattab Aboud, was killed after he waged a public campaign trying to bring to account a militia suspected of abducting his son.

Last December, Salah al-Iraqi was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Baghdads al-Jadida area.

In August, Reham Yacoub, a medical doctor and well-known activist who had been key to the protest movement in Basra and was a staunch womens rights activist, was similarly gunned down by masked assailants. She had been the subject of repeated death threats because of her activism.

In all instances, no arrests have been made with suspicions falling on the Shia armed groups who control the areas in which the killings happened.

In the wake of al-Iraqis murder, rights groups, including Amnesty International and HRW, said the authorities failure to bring the perpetrators to justice was perpetuating and further entrenching decades of impunity that have left brave individuals without the most basic protection.

With almost 600 protesters killed and thousands more wounded, arrested, or else victims of enforced disappearances, Iraqi civil society has had to adapt in order to survive, and has turned to technological innovation for protection.

The unemployed software developer said he had increasingly been training activists on how to use anonymisation technologies to protect them from infiltration, when demonstrations restart after the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control.

One of the main technologies relied on are virtual private networks, or VPNs.

There are now new technologies available that give us an additional layer of security, such as decentralised VPNs. Weve had to rely on these as there have been major security breaches on conventional VPN services and we cannot guarantee our data is not being shared, said the software developer.

He referred to NordVPN, one of the worlds largest privately-owned VPNs, which was hacked twice in late 2019 and compromised the security and privacy of its users. Instead, Iraqi activists are increasingly relying on novel VPNs such as Sentinel, a decentralised VPN, or dVPN.

Srinivas Baride, chief technology officer of Exidio, which developed the Sentinel technology, told Al Jazeera his companys technology was specifically designed to solve the problem of centralised control over users data, a risk all customers of traditional centralised VPNs face.

Centralised VPNs operate under a central authority, usually a corporation, that controls and manages all the information related to the users, Baride said. But in our dVPN protocol, everything is decentralised The nodes are hosted by individuals from anywhere across the globe.

By having an open-source code that anyone can access and by relying on a global network of individual hosts, Baride said, dVPNs prevent governments from blocking the server and IP addresses of known VPNs that have largely static servers.

Of course, there is nothing stopping governments simply unplugging the internet, Baride concluded.

However, as technologies such as Elon Musks ambitious Starlink project which aims to beam the internet to remote areas across the globe via satellites gains pace, the software developer suggests this could be combined with dVPNs to maintain constant communication.

We will be able to continue to talk to one another, to organise, and to show the outside world what is happening to us, he said.

Unless they shoot down these internet-providing satellites, they will never be able to silence our hopes for democracy and accountability again. That is our dream.

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Iraqs protests and the technology of resistance - Al Jazeera English

Amanat Ali Chaudhry

The four-day tour of war-torn Iraq by Pope Francis is a significant event at several levels. Undertaken amidst serious security concerns and at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the first-ever papal visit has brought to the fore the reality of present-day Iraq, as the country struggles to emerge from the bouts of violence perpetrated by the United States as well as the dreaded Islamic State (IS).

To begin with, Iraq is back to the mainstream of global conversation. The coverage of the tour has highlighted the formidable challenges Baghdad has faced ever since the Bush administration committed the monstrous folly of attacking Iraq in 2003.

The coalition forces may have taken out Saddam Hussein. The consequences of the Western military misadventure have, however, proven to be far deadlier than anticipated. The aftermath of Saddams fall has led to the transformation of the geostrategic landscape of the Middle East. The unleashing of the dynamics, deep and impactful as they are, has deepened the fault-lines and ushered in a new era of competition and rivalry for regional dominance.

Received by the Iraqi prime minister with the red carpet rolled out and people lining up the roads, 84-year-old Pope Francis emphasized Iraqs identity as the cradle of civilization, a clear reference to the countrys religious diversity and rich heritage.

The engagements of the Pope were structured in a manner as to send a symbolic, yet powerful, message to a world that has increasingly been shaken by the faith-based violence and a sense of deep acrimony, fuelled by suspicions and hatred of each other.

Pope Francis rightly condemned the senseless violence and called for an immediate end to extremism. Walking through the streets of once-thriving Mosuls Old City that boasted of ancient mosques and churches standing in complete harmony, the pontiff, visibly moved by the sight of the destroyed buildings and desolate streets, reiterated his conviction that fraternity is more durable than fratricide.

Mosul which has borne the brunt of heavy fighting between the Iraqi security forces and IS fighters is a picture-perfect of the destruction of not just the physical infrastructure but also of the deep bonds of captivating culture, rich civilization and faiths.

In a visit to the ancient site of Ur, the birthplace of Hazrat Ibrahim (ra), the prophet revered equally by Muslims, Christians and Jews, Pope Francis made the most telling statement. He condemned violence perpetrated in the name of God as the greatest blasphemy. He went on to add that Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion. We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion.

This powerful defence of religion comes at a time when different faiths, mainly Islam, have been held responsible for spawning violence and terrorism in the world. The narrative against religion has been woven in a manner so as to shield the role of the industrial-military complex, and powerful political establishments in causing armed conflicts in pursuit of grand strategic and economic objectives. The peculiar framing of discourse legitimizing the war on terror and justifying the attack on Iraq is a case in point.

Another noteworthy aspect of the anti-religion campaign is the keenness to unquestioningly accept a view that claims to justify violence in the name of God. The permeation of such an attitude, particularly in the West, has given birth to the stigmatization of an entire Muslim community that has found itself on the wrong side of mainstream public opinion that has been shaped by populist political discourses. The acts of terrorism perpetrated by the likes of Al-Qaeda and IS have been used handily in support of such framing as denounces Islam.

One of the prime objectives of the papal visit was to express solidarity with the fast-dwindling Christian population in Iraq. In a span of almost two decades from 2003 onward, the number of Christian Iraqis has reduced from around 1.5 million population to a little over 250,000 people. The drastic fall in numbers caused by armed conflict, migration, and the targeting of the community by the IS has brought down the population from 10 percent during the mid-20th century to nearly one percent now.

Enunciating that the religious diversity of Iraq was a precious resource on which to draw, not an obstacle to eliminate, the Pope urged a greater role for the members of the Christian community in the countrys public life. He added that the age-old presence of Christians in the land, and their contributions to the life of the nation constitute a rich heritage that they wish to continue to place at the service of all.

The chief highlight of the historic visit was an important meeting between Pope Francis and influential Shiite leader Ayatollah Sistani in the city of Al-Najaf. The 90-year-old Iraqi leader has been pivotal to Iraqs successful fight against IS whose religious edict resulted in swelling the ranks of the Iraqi forces. His support is considered critical to the longevity of the governments in Iraq.

A supporter of religious minorities, Ayatollah Sistani has been a defender of their political rights and believes in the separation of politics from religion. The meeting between two respected religious leaders conveyed a message of unity and inclusion.

While the Pope was grateful to the top Iraqi cleric for speaking up together with the Shiite community in defence of those most vulnerable and persecuted amid the violence and great hardships, Sistanis office described him as stating that Iraqi Christians deserve to live like all Iraqis in security and peace and with all constitutional rights.

The show of unity with the mainly Shia-majority country comes on the heels of a similar initiative led by the Pope when a joint declaration with the Sunni leaders and scholars of Al-Azhar University was signed in

Abu Dhabi in 2019.

The papal visit to Iraq, a country torn by extremism, terrorism and sectarian conflicts, represents a solid public outreach effort to help bridge the religious divide, promote interfaith dialogue, and convey a sense of reassurance to the Iraqis in general and the members of the Christian community, in particular. More than that, it aims to build bridges, promote pluralism and highlight convergences between the followers of Islam and Christianity.

Pope Francis assertion that we are descendants of Abraham and the representatives of different religions and that like the great Patriarch, we need to take concrete steps is carefully employed to appeal to the common roots of both Muslims and Christians. Ibrahim Al-Marashi, while writing for the Al Jazeera website, stated that By using Abrahams birthplace as a setting for his speech, the Pope stressed the concept of the Abrahamic faiths as a single tradition.

There was a time in the early 1990s when the concept of the clash of civilizations found traction after the Western model of liberal democracy vanquished communism and singled out Islam as the next adversary.

While there were some misgivings about the framing of the discourse in terms of ideological binaries, what followed the catastrophic events of 9/11 renewed the conversation. Those purporting to speak on behalf of Muslims leveraged the clash of civilizations argument to attract people to their ranks in what they interpreted as a holy war.

The notion of the faith-inspired clash has got a new lease of life as the dynamics of popular nationalism, often expressed in religious terms, shape the terms of engagement between Muslims and the host Western governments.

In this background, the visit of Pope Francis not only inspires hope but also offers a blueprint of a more formal engagement that can be institutionalized to challenge the theory of the clash of civilizations and replace it with that of dialogue among civilizations.

The writer, a Chevening scholar, studied International Journalism at the University of Sussex.

Email: [emailprotected]

Twitter: @Amanat222

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The Pope in Iraq - The News International

After frantic meetings in Baghdad, Beirut and Tehran, Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitaries have agreed to stop attacks against US forces in Iraq on the condition that Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi formally demands an Americanwithdrawal, officials and factioncommanders told Middle East Eye.

Kadhimi must tell Washington that the pullout has to be completed within 12 months, they added. Sources said it is likely that Kadhimi will comply and make the formal request.

On 1 March, the armed factions announced the end of an unofficial armistice with US forces in Iraq that had largely held since October, despite a few violations.

'If any of these parties violates the agreement, then this means that it is a personal act and the perpetrator is considered outside the consensus, and it is dealt with on this basis'

- Iraqi negotiator

Previously, attacks on US troops and their western allies in the anti-Islamic State (IS) group military coalition had been routine, as the paramilitaries sought to push the United States from Iraq.

However, a rocket attack on a military base in Erbil last month prompted the US to launch air strikes on a position just inside the Syrian border occupied by Kataeb Hezbollah, the paramilitary group most hostile to Washington, and Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada, a smaller Shia faction.

Although the Iraqi armed factions declared that they had nothing to do with the Erbil attack, which killed a military contractor and wounded nine others, including a US soldier, the Pentagon pointed the finger of blame at Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada.

The tit-for-tat attacks between the two sides resulted in a 3 March raid on Ain al-Assad, a base in western Anbar province that hosts the largest US presence, with at least10 short-range BM-21 Grad missiles launched at the troops there.

The Iraqi military said the attack did not cause any casualties, but the Pentagon announced the next day that a US contractorhad died after suffering a heart attack during the raid.

Kadhimi's embattled government, which has sought to limit the paramilitaries power and been targeted by them in return, has attempted to limit the fallout from such skirmishes and buy time for Washington and Tehran to begin negotiations to resume the 2015 nuclear deal, hoping they will calm the region.

Erbil attack a warning to Iraqi Kurds, not the US, say Shia commanders

This latest de-escalation agreement was made by a group of faction commanders known as the Coordinating Committee for the Resistance Factions,and the Iraqi government, sources said.

It stipulates that all attacks must cease and in return Kadhimi will send a letter to the United Nations Security Council asking for the US-led coalitions mission in Iraq to end, two of the parties that concluded the agreement told MEE.

Iranian and Lebanese parties, as well as an international organisation operating in Iraq, helped bring the sides together, "one acting as a guarantor and another as a negotiator", as an Iraqi official put it.

"Currently, all concerned parties [leaders of the Iranian-backed armed factions and the US forces] have agreed to calm," one of the Iraqi negotiators told MEE.

"If any of these parties violates the agreement, then this means that it is a personal act and the perpetrator is considered outside the consensus, and it is dealt with on this basis."

Middle East Eye has asked the US-led coalition for comment, but received no response by the time of publication.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

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EXCLUSIVE: Iraq paramilitaries agree to stop attacks on US if Kadhimi demands withdrawal - Middle East Eye