March 13: Rally to Defend Ahmed Ferhani – stand against NYPD surveillance and entrapment!

Stand up against NYPD surveillance and entrapment!

Rally to Defend Ahmed Ferhani

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

9 am to 12 noon, 100 Centre Street, Manhattan

In recent months the Associated Press has revealed how joint CIA/NYPD infiltration and surveillance of Arab and Muslim communities, starting in New York but expanding throughout the Northeast United States, have affected every Muslim campus group, business, and mosque. While shaken by this attempt at wholesale intimidation, the community and its allies have rallied to show their determination to protect their constitutional rights.

Now it’s time to rally in defense of one of the targets of NYPD head Ray Kelly’s repressive policies. March 13^th is the next court hearing for Ahmed Ferhani, a 26-year old Algerian-American and Queens resident, entrapped and framed up by Kelly.

Leonard Levitt in his June 20, 2011 “NYPD Confidential” column makes clear the fraudulent nature of this indictment, which is symptomatic of the spying and frameup policies of Kelly as well as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

After noting that the FBI wouldn’t touch the case because it was so flimsy and because they didn’t trust the NYPD’s undercover informer, Levitt reported that Ferhani’s lawyers said police knew he had a history of mental problems and had been institutionalized up to 30 times. The lawyers compared the case to that of the Panther 21, arrested in 1969 and charged with conspiracy to blow up department stores and the New York Botanical Gardens. After a trial that lasted two years, a jury acquitted all the defendants in 45 minutes.

The 1969 frameup was similarly the product of a reign of surveillance terror against an entire community: this time the Black community. Said Levitt: “Their acquittal was an embarrassment for the Manhattan District Attorney and for the NYPD, whose intelligence unit, known as BOSSI, had infiltrated various political groups. A result was the Handschu agreement, which placed limits on police investigations of political groups.

As Levitt makes clear, the recent revelations show Kelly’s multistate surveillance program is an outright rejection of Handschu and other limits on arbitrary power fought for by oppressed communities for decades.

This is the same Kelly, of course, whose “Stop and Frisk” policy terrorizes entire Black and Latin@ communities, as every young man and woman in those communities walks the street fearing harassment, arrest or even murder at the hands of the NYPD. (This is part of what Michelle Alexander has so correctly labeled “The New Jim Crow.”)

End selective, abusive and fake prosecutions!

Stop NYPD/CIA Surveillance of the Muslim community!

End Stop and Frisk!

Manhattan Criminal Court, 100 Centre St. between White & Leonard Sts.

Part 51, Judge Obus

Transit: N, Q to Canal; J, Z to Canal; #4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall; R to City Hall; A, C to Chambers; #1, 2, 3 to Chambers

TO CO-SPONSOR THIS RALLY or for more info: defendahmedferhani@gmail.com or call 347 341-2521

Sponsored by the Committee to Defend Ahmed Ferhani