One of the last times Seyed Mousavi celebrated with his family was at Zeinab's graduation from Caltech in 2004.

By Maral Ali

Al-Talib meets with former UCLA graduate student Zeinab Mousavi to talk about the Mousavi family’s experience of having their father be imprisoned in the Terre Haute, Indiana CMU.

Al-Talib: Since his transfer to the Terre Haute CMU, how often has your family been able to visit Mr. Mousavi?

Mousavi: A couple times. My mom and my siblings have been there twice. You can only visit on weekdays, not on weekends, not on holidays, so it makes it super difficult because not only do you have to spend all that money for tickets and hotel and rental car, but you also have to take time off from work or from school to go see him. And sometimes they just change their schedule. So last time that my family went even though they had planned to see him for two days in a row [the prison] told them that they could only see him one day that week.

Al-Talib: What have these visits been like? Do the visiting restrictions affect you in any way?

Mousavi: I haven’t gone to see him. I’ve been traumatized by the experience of visiting him in [the prison in Los Angeles] and sometimes I get haunted by it so I cannot get myself to go, even though I really want to. But I-I just cannot go. I don’t know how my family does it.

Al-Talib: Do you face any challenges communicating with him?

Mousavi: I haven’t heard my dad’s voice since December. We email, and emails take about two days to get through security. And you know it’s difficult with emails because it’s text and you don’t get to see the person. There aren’t restrictions on what we can say to each other, but you know it’s being archived…so it always makes you feel uncomfortable just knowing that whatever you want to say, even if it’s personal, is being recorded somewhere. It’s disturbing.

We write in English. Sometimes I’d like to say something in Farsi, but I just don’t because I don’t want it to cause a delay to the emails. Sometimes there are bugs in the program so you don’t get an email and that can cause frustration. Once or twice, we hadn’t gotten some emails from him and hadn’t heard from him in some time. It’s really difficult to get in touch with the prison and they also don’t give information, so it was like we couldn’t do anything but just wait and see what the problem is. Is it that my dad’s not doing ok? Did they take away my dad’s right to use email? Or was it just the system? What was going on? We didn’t know for a few days, and that was heart wrenching.

Al-Talib: What sort of impact has the CMU had on your father? How has he been treated there?

Mousavi: It’s getting stricter actually. First [the prison] said they can’t hold prayers for more than three people in a group. So that means no Jama’ah prayer except for Friday Prayer. [The prisoners] would have study groups together to read books, but later on they said that they’re not allowed. So it’s not only just breaking their communication with the outside world or with their family, it’s also really breaking them as a human and not event letting them communicate amongst themselves.

Mostly he doesn’t tell us how bad it is, but once I was pushing him so he finally said that his cell is like living in a bathroom because there’s a bed and there’s a toilet right there.  And even when [he] wants to do his prayer and his sujood, it’s very close to the toilet because it’s a very small space. And he’s said before that mice live there.

Also, he didn’t complain about this, but another person saw this and my dad confirmed, the food there is sometimes rotten. Yes it’s a prison, and yeah they shouldn’t expect good food, but this is far worse than regular prisons.

Al-Talib: You have a younger brother and a younger sister. Your brother was in his mid-teens when your father was imprisoned. Your sister has gotten married recently. How have they dealt with your father’s absence?

Mousavi: It was a big thing for my brother that my dad missed his high school graduation. I think the scars, the wound is so new that we don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about it to my sister or my brother. I don’t know, I don’t know why it is but maybe it’s just so painful that we don’t talk about it amongst ourselves. But it was difficult for my sister to not have my dad by her side when she was getting married.

Al-Talib: What about your mother, Mrs. Mousavi?

Mousavi: Well it’s been really difficult because she has to deal with my dad, give him support and give the family support and make us feel like there are no shortcomings. It’s been really hard. It’s been really painful to actually see my mom age because of this experience. Again even with my mom we only talk about it on the surface, like what the lawyer said or what we have to do, but we don’t really talk about the deeper feelings. I think the emotions are so deep that you just want to keep them to yourself even though at the same time you want the entire world to know what’s going on. Words don’t do justice…to the feelings.

Al-Talib: You’ve been extremely involved in this case and have worked on it since the beginning. What has this experience been like for you?

Mousavi: In everyday life, I guess you could say I’m fine. I actually quit school, which was a big blow because I was getting my PhD. But there’s been so much going on and a lot of financial burden on us and we’ve been going in debt…I feel like I have to get a job and help out with the tremendous lawyer fees. And also emotionally it’s been two years of traumatic experiences. It has left me broken. That’s the simplest way to say it.

Al-Talib: How supportive has the Muslim community and your Southern California community been during these times?

Mousavi: There have been family friends who have stopped talking to us and a couple told me that they don’t want us to call them anymore. And some people were scared to come to the Masjed. But after some time more people came. I think at the beginning people were really scared. I guess I can’t blame them because they’re probably scared.But there have been supportive people as well. They try to emotionally help [by coming to the trials] and legally by writing character letters…

The non-Muslim community, those who have heard about it have been supportive. Even if it’s just asking me how things are going…they’re very willing to help…whereas the Muslims haven’t been as helpful. I just think they’re scared. It’s really difficult to be Muslim in American nowadays. A lot of the targeting that’s been going on has been on Muslims. And you don’t have to do anything wrong to get targeted and people realize this so they want to stay under the radar as much as they can.

It has left me feeling like I don’t belong in society. After the raid and the FBI coming and talking to me and showing up all the time, you always feel that you’re looking over your shoulder and …you’re being watched. You get used to it and you figure that it is what it is and you try to move on. But sometimes it gets to you.

The Terre Haute CMU contains a mostly Muslim prison population. One such case is Seyed Mahmood Mousavi, a Muslim community leader in Southern California who founded Masjid Al-Nabi in West Covina. He is the father of four children (the youngest is a sophomore at UCLA) and an active member of the local community. Because of his activism, he had been under the radar of the FBI for some time.

On June 29, 2006, at six in the morning, FBI agents, accompanied by the SWAT team, raided the Mousavi home. The family was led out of the house and forced to line up facing their garage door while guns were trained on them. Mr. Mousavi and his youngest child Ali, who was 16 years old at the time, were handcuffed while agents searched their home, removing all documents and computers. Simultaneously, Masjid Al-Nabi was also raided, its doors broken open, and all of its files removed. In August of the following year (2007), Mr. Mousavi was arrested on the front steps of the Masjid (mosque).

Although not accused of terrorism charges, the government nonetheless attempted to paint Mr. Mousavi as a terrorist and a threat to American national security. The DA claimed to have “secret evidence” that would prove his terrorist affiliation. Mr. Mousavi was denied bail because he was considered ‘a threat to society.’ The government was unable to prove any terrorist affiliation, thus shifting their attention to issues such as tax returns and his citizenship application. On April 24, 2008, Mahmood Mousavi was found guilty after a trial where, according to freeseyedmousavi.com, “witnesses and documents that he wished to call were turned away” and important documents were mistranslated.

On October 14, 2008, the federal court sentenced Mr. Mousavi to 33 months, over a year of which he had already served. The government had recommended a 9 year prison term. The atmosphere in the court room was one of relief, as he was expected to be released in December 2009. Judge Percy Anderson had also requested that he be housed in a low security prison camp with the general population here in Southern California.

This all changed when suddenly on December 12, 2008, Mr. Mousavi was sent to an out of state prison despite Judge Anderson’s recommendation. In a letter to his family, Mr. Mousavi stated that he was moved from California to an Oklahoma transfer prison with 200 other inmates but once there, he and the other Muslim inmates were pulled aside and placed in solitary confinement. After repeatedly requesting an explanation, he was told that his case was terrorism related. He expressed shock at this, telling prison officers that he was charged with no such thing.

He remained in solitary confinement until his transfer to the Terre Haute, Indiana CMU on January 8, 2009. He is expected to be released this coming December, yet in light of his sudden transfer to the CMU, the fear remains that his ordeal will continue even when his sentence ends.

For more information, please visit www.freeseyedmousavi.com.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have come to symbolize the face of the “War on Terror” and the many abuses that took place in that era, yet even with the end of the Bush Administration, a silent legacy remains in the form of secret illegal prisons in the United States designed to hold terrorists. The Communication Management Units (CMUs) are medium-security terrorism units located within the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana and in the US Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois; prisons within a prison. Described by its inmates as a “Little Guantanamo,” these units have been kept secret from the public, created outside of legal procedures, and according to Jennifer Van Bergen in a report in The Raw Story, house an almost completely Muslim and/or Arab prison population. In fact, a search on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) website will only reveal one mention of the CMU, and the BOP has yet to give out a list of who exactly is being held in these units.

The first major concern raised about the CMU is its illegal establishment. Opened in December 2006, the Terre Haute CMU did not follow legal steps, according to an article published in The Raw Story by Jennifer Van Bergen. Federal law stipulates “the public be notified of any new changes to prison programs and be given the opportunity to voice objections. Instead, the program appears to have been ordered and implemented by a senior official at the Department of Justice” during the Bush administration. On June 18th, 2009, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder and two high Bureau of Prisons officials, challenging the CMUs’ legality. Evidence reveals that officials sidestepped the Administrative Procedures Act after unsuccessfully attempting to create another facility named the Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU), which was stopped by Congress in 2005.

How inmates are chosen to be sent to the CMU is also extremely problematic, according to Dan Eggen of the Washington Post. Since being sent to the CMU is not a punitive measure, officials are not obligated to conduct hearings or take other steps that are required when punishments are given, said Carmen Hernandez, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In other words, there are no rules that lead a person to be sent to the CMU. Instead it is left to the BOP to arbitrarily decide who it chooses to send. Though the BOP claims that “race and religion play no factor in an offender’s designation to this unit,” the fact that an overwhelming majority of inmates are Arab and/or Muslim seems to implicate the CMU as guilty of racial profiling. In addition, most of the inmates have not been convicted of terrorism-related charges, casting even greater doubt on the neutrality and legality of CMU prisoner selection.

Another great concern is the extreme restrictions placed on prisoner communication. According to a June 2009 Democracy Now! interview with Andrew Stepanian, who was just released from the Marion CMU, restrictions at the CMU are “more or as restrictive” as super-max prisons such as the one in Florence, Colorado. Instead of the standard 300 minutes per month, prisoners are only allowed one 15 minute call per week, which is again restricted to weekdays between the hours of 8am-3pm. For families that work during these hours, communication becomes almost impossible. The warden has the power to reduce this to just 3 minutes per month. According to the CMU Institution Supplement, all communication must be in English. Unless “previously scheduled and conducted through simultaneous translation monitoring,” any call where non-English is spoken is immediately terminated. The Institution Supplement also lists that “in the event of terminated calls, inmates may be subject to disciplinary action, and the person may be removed from the inmate’s approved telephone list.”

Visits are also limited to two two-hour visits or one four-hour visit per month. All visits at the CMU are non-contact (partitioned room and telephone voice contact), with live monitoring by staff, and also conducted entirely in English. A Washington Report on Middle East Affairs shows that many agree that “the severe restrictions placed on inmates’ communication inhibit their ability to mount an appeal.” The fact that many inmates do not speak English makes these restrictions even more harmful and unjust. Such harsh guidelines are used for the most violent inmates with the worst offenses, yet most CMU inmates are either low or medium level security.

One family impacted by this extreme system is that of Seyed Mousavi of Southern California, who was sent to the CMU despite never being charged with terrorist activities back in January 2009. Like many of his fellow inmates, he suddenly and inexplicably found himself being taken to an out-of-state prison even though his judge had recommended that he be housed with the general population in a Southern California prison camp. Now his family in Los Angeles must deal with the hardships that this prison imposes. Because the prison is located in Indiana, visiting Seyed Mousavi has become extremely difficult and costly for his family, and when they are able to visit, limited to only four hours. And since visits are not allowed on weekends or holidays, seeing their father becomes that much harder. “It just aches. It hurts to not even have the basic right to seeing our dad freely, of being so restricted and having absolutely no choice about it,” said Zeinab Mousavi, Seyed Mousavi’s eldest daughter.

In the Democracy Now! interview, Will Potter, a freelance reporter focusing on the War on Terror’s effect on civil liberties, expanded on the CMU’s demographics, communication restrictions, and their implications. By observing those that have been sent to the CMUs and the nature of what they were accused of, he said that most are issues that the US government has a great vested interest in and does not want media coverage on. One example is Dr. Rafil Dhafir, who was accused of breaking the US embargo on Iraq by collecting and delivering medical aid to those affected by the sanctions. Extreme communication guidelines ensure that prisoners are not only blocked from talking to the media but from communicating with their groups and communities.

Potter identified an unsettling post-‘War on Terror’ campaign against activists where they are labeled as terrorists. Following a common pattern, these individuals are “guilty until proven innocent,” as they are called terrorists even before trial in press conferences, labeled again during their trials, and when sentenced, the government pushes for terrorist enhancement penalties, said Potter. The CMUs are the final step in the government’s use of the word ‘terrorism’ to push a political agenda and to really dominate and … attempt to control … social movements, said Potter. People are sent to the CMUs not because of their crimes, but because of the politics of their crimes, said Potter.

Though inmates and their families had hoped that the new administration would begin to right many of Bush’s wrongs, for the time-being, they can do nothing but wait. President Obama has pledged to close Guantanamo Bay and other secret prisons worldwide, yet as of now, he has said and done nothing about the CMUs. According to Zeinab Mousavi, prison conditions remain much the same for her father since President Obama took office, with no hope of anything changing in the near future.