position:radical cleric

Old stuff for archives. Ali Abdulemam

Bahrain Is Still My Country | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/13/bahrain-is-still-my-country-stateless-ali-abdulemam-human-rights

The 2015 decree includes 50 Shiite and 22 Sunni Bahrainis. The Sunnis are almost exclusively jihadis: Many of them — including radical cleric Turki al-Binali — are fighters with the Islamic State. Other members of the Islamic State whose citizenship was stripped posted pictures of themselves trampling or destroying their passports, promising that they will come back to Bahrain by sword, not passport. Number 35 on the list, Salman al-Ashban, posted a YouTube video in May 2014 showing him ripping up his passport.

On the other hand, among the 50 Shiites stripped of their nationality, you will see human rights defenders, journalists, doctors, professors, and former parliamentarians. Mixing Islamic State jihadis with pro-democracy activists is the Bahraini government’s way of misleading the media about the true targets of its crackdown. The monarchy’s clever answer whenever someone asks about this decree? “Oh, they are terrorists.”

My citizenship was revoked six months after the government amended the nationality law, giving itself the power to strip Bahrainis of their citizenship should they fail in their “duty of loyalty” to the state. Ali Salman, the general secretary of the opposition Al Wefaq National Islamic Society, has also been put on trial for threatening the security of the state, which could lead to his nationality being stripped as well.

Judge Challenges White House Claims on Authority in #Drone Killings - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/politics/judge-challenges-white-house-claims-on-authority-in-drone-killings.html

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the United States District Court here was hearing the government’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by relatives of three Americans killed in two drone strikes in Yemen in 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric who had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had no involvement in terrorism; and Samir Khan, a 30-year-old North Carolina man who had become a propagandist for the same Qaeda branch.

Judge Collyer said she was “troubled” by the government’s assertion that it could kill American citizens it designated as dangerous, with no role for courts to review the decision.

“Are you saying that a U.S. citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights?” she asked Brian Hauck, a deputy assistant attorney general. “How broadly are you asserting the right of the United States to target an American citizen? Where is the limit to this?”

She provided her own answer: “The limit is the courthouse door.”

#justice