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North Jersey Media - November 3, 2005
Muslims' prayers at game led to FBI queries
By JOHN CHADWICK, AMY KLEIN and JOHN BRENNAN
The trouble started after five Muslim men were seen praying inside Giants Stadium before a Sept. 19 football game. A suspicious spectator notified authorities, who cornered the men in the stands during the game.
"All of a sudden, eight yellow-jacketed security officers come up to us," said Sami Shaban, one of the five men, and a Mahwah High School graduate. "They told us, 'Get up.'Ÿ"
As the men complied, Shaban said, security guards clutched their arms and other spectators shouted their approval. "Now I feel safer!" one bellowed. Several state troopers waited at the bottom of the stairs.
The men were then turned over to FBI agents, five of whom questioned them for about 30 minutes before escorting them back to the stands during the game between the Giants and the New Orleans Saints.
Shaban and others, including Mostafa Khalifa of Howell, described the incident Wednesday during a news conference timed to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which begins this week. They called on law enforcement officials to stop racial and religious profiling.
The five men, who are Arab-Americans, gathered shortly after they entered the stadium to perform one of five required daily prayers.
"I'm as American as apple pie," said Shaban, who was born in New Jersey and raised in Belleville, Nutley and Mahwah. "Now I'm made to feel like I'm an outsider for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed." Khalifa added that he has been a Giants fan since 1986.
FBI spokesman Stephen Siegel denied that the men were singled out because they are Muslim. He said they were questioned because they had been seen by spectators congregating around an air duct - apparently while praying.
"You had a group of gentlemen huddled over by an air intake duct," Siegel said. "In this day and age, we tell people to act on anything they deem suspicious. The fans there thought it was suspicious because they were near an area not normally accessed by the public."
After being questioned by FBI agents, Siegel said, the men were offered a private room where they could pray and upgraded seats to compensate them for the inconvenience. "We were responding to essentially a tip," Siegel said. "This is a gigantic public event with tens of thousands of people, so if someone makes a suspicion known, we're not going to ignore that."……
The Giants-Saints game originally was scheduled for Sept. 18 in the Louisiana Superdome, but after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, it was moved to the Meadowlands and turned into a fund-raiser for hurricane victims. Former President George H.W. Bush attended the game as part of the fund-raising campaign, which he and former President Bill Clinton were leading.
Shaban, however, said he didn't remember seeing an air duct. He said he and his friends had simply gathered in prayer off to the side of a corridor so they wouldn't be in people's way.
He said the interrogators never mentioned the air duct during the questioning. And he said the agents didn't search them for weapons. Instead, they asked a series of questions, some which the men found offensive.
At one point, an agent asked them if they knew Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian Islamic cleric who preached at a Jersey City mosque in the early 1990s and is serving a life sentence in federal prison for a failed plot to bomb the United Nations building, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and other New York sites.
"They asked us, 'Do you know the blind sheik?'Ÿ" Shaban said. "I told them I was probably 12 at the time he was here."
Shaban, a second-year student at Seton Hall Law School, also disputed the FBI's contention that the men were given upgraded tickets. He said he had wanted to return to the original seats, but that agents insisted they move to another area "for their own safety." They were escorted to a similar location on the other side of the stadium.
And Shaban said three security guards stood in the aisle next to them. "No other row had three yellow jackets next to it," he said.
A spokesman for a Muslim group that organized the press conference said the men aren't planning to sue over the experience. Instead, they're asking non-Muslims to attend an Eid al-Fitr event to learn more about Islam. The holiday marks the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting and prayer, and takes place today or Friday depending on the sighting of the new moon.
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2ODA3MjkyJnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg
New York Times - November 3, 2005
We Felt Like Outsiders, Say Muslim Men Held at Game
By Alan Feuer
In "See Something, Say Something" America, it looked like a suspicious scene: five bearded men praying near a ventilation duct and food-preparation area in Giants Stadium, during a football game attended by nearly 80,000 fans.
Tensions were already high because it was Sept. 19, just after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And making matters worse, George H. W. Bush, the former president, was in the stands.
A nervous fan alerted stadium security, and shortly afterward, the young Muslim men - longtime friends and Giants fans - were being interrogated by F.B.I. agents. It was a reminder, the young men said, that their appearance is a hazard in an age of terrorism. It also ruined for them the fund-raiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina (the Giants played the New Orleans Saints and money was raised for the relief effort) and what they had anticipated would be a great game.
At a news conference yesterday, two of the men - Sami Shaban, 27, a student at Seton Hall University's School of Law, and Mostafa Khalifa, also 27, an information technology expert - described how as many as 10 security guards wearing yellow jackets pulled them from their seats and led them to a small interrogation room as thousands of fans around them booed, hissed and called them names.
"We were innocent; we did nothing wrong," said Mr. Shaban, who lives in Piscataway, N.J. "We went to support Katrina and see a game, most of which we missed."
"I was born and raised in the U.S.A.," he added at another point. "It makes me feel almost a feeling of disappointment. I'm American as apple pie. Now I'm made to feel like an outsider for no reason except that I have a long beard and pray."
Special agent Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the Newark office of the F.B.I., said that Mr. Shaban and his friends had not been singled out for their appearance or behavior but because they had been seen in an area of the stadium "not normally accessed by the public." The area has since been cordoned off.
Mr. Siegel said that because of the game's proximity to the 9/11 anniversary and former President Bush's presence, there was "a heightened security awareness" at the Meadowlands that day. He said the five men were briefly detained and questioned, after which they were offered another place to pray.
He also said the men's seats were upgraded, but Mr. Shaban and Mr. Khalifa denied that. Mr. Shaban said that he and his friends had wanted to return to their original seats to prove to those around them that they had done nothing wrong.
Instead, he said, stadium security officers escorted them to seats close to the Giants' front office. Three uniformed guards were placed at the end of their row, he said, and, after the game, other officers escorted them to their car.
As they walked escorted through the parking lot, Mr. Shaban recalled, one officer remarked, "All it takes is one complaint these days." An F.B.I. agent who was walking with the group added, "It's a dirty word, but it's profiling," Mr. Shaban said….
Of the five friends - only three, Mr. Shaban, Mr. Khalifa and Zeyad Zeineldine, 23, of South Brunswick, N.J. - were identified at the news conference. Mr. Shaban is of Palestinian heritage; Mr. Khalifa was born in Egypt: and Mr. Zeineldine did not appear at the news conference, though Mr. Shaban said he had permission to release Mr. Zeineldine's name.
Mr. Khalifa said he did not blame the fan who reported them for what he described as a brief evening prayer in an out-of-the-way spot near Gate D of Giants Stadium. "We understand the job of law enforcement," he said, adding that the way the men were taken from their seats, interrogated and guarded was more of an ordeal than it needed to be.
Wissam Nasr, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which organized the news conference, said his group had no plans to file a lawsuit, adding that he wanted to "keep things positive." …….
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/nyregion/03muslim.html
The Star-Ledger comment - November 04, 2005
Suspicions of profiling
The FBI and sports authority officials say no way was the questioning of five Muslim men at a Giants football game racial profiling. Maybe not. But yanking them out of their seats long after people had seen them in group prayer also doesn't seem the "routine, precautionary law enforcement" that one FBI spokesman called it.
The official line is that the men attracted the suspicion of stadium security workers, as well as fans, not because they looked Middle Eastern, not because they appeared to be Muslims, but because they were praying in an area where the public normally doesn't go -- a nook of the stadium near a main air duct and a food preparation area. This was at a game shortly after the fourth anniversary of 9/11, when former President George H.W. Bush was present.
The men were asked a few questions, then offered upgraded seats but were watched by the FBI until they left.
Certainly no one wants to chance an evildoer adding something nasty to the ventilation system. But the part of the stadium by this air intake duct wasn't off limits to the public that night. It has since been cordoned off, but if the air duct is a vulnerable zone, that should have been done long ago.
Then there is the timing of the men's questioning. They weren't asked what they were doing immediately when the security workers observed the so- called suspicious behavior. It was only much later that the men were taken from their seats to an interview room. Obviously, they couldn't have been considered an immediate danger.
It is clear that praying alone shouldn't be cause for alarm. Neither should standing near an air duct if it hasn't been put off limits. Two of the Muslim men say the explanation is profiling. If there is a more rational explanation, we haven't heard it.
http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/editorials/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1131089488143080.xml&coll=1
New Jersey News – November 11, 2005
Two men challenge stadium detention
NEW YORK - One week after two Muslim men held a press conference alleging racial profiling at Giants Stadium, two non-Muslim men have come forward with similar charges.
Mathew Varughese, 26, of Westchester, N.Y., and Pierre Mainville, 28, of Stamford, Conn., said Friday that authorities profiled and unfairly detained them at a Sept. 19 Monday Night Football game between the Giants and the New Orleans Saints.
"We had the Red Scare of the '20s, the Yellow Scare of the '40s and now we have the Brown Scare," Varughese, a Manhattan attorney, said at the noon Harlem press conference, alluding to previous episodes.
Varughese and Mainville, a financial analyst, said they attended the game with two other men, and halfway through the second quarter, they were singled out by security guards, removed from their seats and questioned by FBI agents and stadium security for about 40 minutes.
A stadium security guard questioned them about their religious backgrounds and nationality, both men said.
The FBI initially said the men were held because they had been seen taking pictures of the field, said Varughese. Later, he added, a security guard told them they had been detained because a fan reported seeing several Muslim men praying. None of the men had cameras at any time, said Varughese, and none was Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent.
Varughese is American-born, Protestant and of Indian descent. Mainville is biracial, Roman Catholic and from Connecticut. The two other men did not attend the press conference for privacy reasons, Varughese said, but he described both as American-born and Christian; one is of Indian descent, the other of Dominican descent. . .
The men said they want to raise awareness about profiling and, hopefully, help to end it.
"We respect the FBI doing its job, but profiling is illegal and doesn't make us safer," said Wissam Nasr, executive director of the New York branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which sponsored the press conference. "We all remember that day in London when a Brazilian man was shot dead in the train. That's profiling at its worst, and that's what happens when countries accept profiling."
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2ODE0NDEzJnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg==
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