Military Commissions and Racial Profiling Will Not Make Us Safer

Washington D.C. - January 2, 2010 - The Rights Working Group condemns any attempts to attack civilian populations like the one that occurred on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bound for Detroit on December 25, 2009.  The swift acts of those on the plane undoubtedly saved countless lives.

The Rights Working Group also commends the work of the federal officials who have taken the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, into custody.  Although many have argued that this latest attempt calls for military commissions and the use of racial and religious profiling against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians, especially in airports, recent history has proven that these tactics do not yield positive results.

In the aftermath of September 11, there were mass round ups of Muslim, Arab and South Asian men that yielded no successful terrorism-related convictions.  The much discredited NSEERS program which required men from Muslim majority countries to register themselves with Immigration and Customs Enforcement was another mass targeted yet unsuccessful counter-terrorism program.  Programs that indiscriminately sweep up members of a particular community without specific information or indications about criminal behavior have never been an effective law enforcement tool and will not serve the nation’s interest now.  Nor will using the long discredited military commissions system, which in spite of recent reforms still faces numerous legal challenges, achieve justice.  Law enforcement officers can and do question suspects in custody, and all indications are that federal agents have been successfully questioning Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab while he has been in their custody.

“Using well-established effective law enforcement methods and putting the suspect through a criminal justice system that has been tried and tested is in the interest of justice and national security,” said Margaret Huang, Executive Director of the Rights Working Group.  “Resorting to broad and untargeted racial and religious profiling will not make any of us safer; it will only divert precious law enforcement resources away from doing the targeted investigative work that can prevent or halt such attempts in the future.”

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