To Ben from Brooklyn:

You write that you "hope the governments are doing a wise and careful job" - but it's beholden on civil society to make sure of this and, given our country's track record at Guantanamo and elsewhere, we aren't doing a very good job. Add to this the fact that Fahad Hashmi has sat for the past 2.5 years in severe solitary confinement BEFORE his case has gone to trial. After 4-5 weeks in solitary, most psychiatrists around the world agree that what is happening amounts to torture, plain and simple. Is this really what
we want to stand for? Is this really a good use of millions of dollars of federal money spent on legal proceedings and detention costs in addition to the multitude of human resources involved?

We've already seen what our country's does when it gets involved in "pre-emptive" war. Do you REALLY want "pre-emptive" justice too? If that's so, statistically speaking, many more Americans will rape and kill their wives, girlfriends, relatives and kids than commit terrorist acts. Should we lock all of those potential criminals up too? Are you really willing to
give up your right to be innocent until proven guilty of an actual crime? If your answer is an honest no, then you shouldn't be willing to give this right up for others.

In 2001 Timothy McVeigh was allowed to plead his case on the news show 60 Minutes.

One Sunday morning, in May of 2009 moments after church services had begun Dr. George Tiller, who was acting as an usher, was shot once and killed with a handgun. Dr. Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, a member of the church choir, was inside the church at the time of the shooting.

The gunman a defiant and unapologetic, Scott Roeder, of Kansas City, Mo confessed to the slaying telling "The Associated Press" that he killed the doctor to protect unborn children. He spoke to the AP in a telephone call from jail.

The last writer says we don't know if Hashmi knew his housemate was supporting Al Qaeda.
He's right, but, what we do know is that Hashmi is an American citizen and his rights have been taken away from him.

He isn't allowed to talk to the press. Katie Couric and Fareed Zacharia aren't lining up to talk to Hashmi.

This case is about the torture and flagrant rights violations of a U.S. citizen by the U.S. Government

I don't know if Hashmi did any terrible thing, but I'm smart enough to know that if they start by denying Hasmi's rights, they finish by taking away my own.

By the way, if you fly 1st class they'll give you steak knifes. 9/11 wasn't about the box-cutters that had been planted on the plane before the hijackers boarded.

I guess I'll be the lone dissident here.

Of course, as Ms. Berman says, we don't know if Hashmi knew his housemate was supporting Al Qaeda, what his housemate was doing with Mr. Hashmi's cell phone, or why Mr. Hashmi lent him money for a plane ticket. But we also don't know that he is innocent.

Mostly, though, we don't know what the intelligence agencies know. When asked why his captivity is at such odds with the magnitude of his *charged* crimes, Ms. Berman gave a naive "I dunno."

Well, Virginia, terrorism cases lead to lots of crimes that cannot be charged and others that can be charged. If the governments choose to use the ones they can in fact mention in order to deport people, detain them, or otherwise, then I hope the governments are doing a wise and careful job.

Please remember that all nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers committed essentially *no* prosecutable crimes until the moment they took out their box cutters (which were legal) and rushed the cockpit. Up until that point, they were committing conspiracy, which is very hard to prove without a great deal of time, surveillance, and getting co-conspirators to "roll over" on each other.

I don't know if Hashmi did any terrible thing, but I'm smart enough to know that I don't know he didn't.

Thank you Leonard Lopate for this sober coverage of Fahad Hashmi's case. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media outlets have yet to examine how Fahad's civil and human rights have been abridged by the legal system. Attorney General Holder and the Obama administration need to be held accountable, and by fostering the public debate, reports like this one are a crucial step in doing just that. Hopefully by the time the case goes to trial the government's case will have been exposed for the biases it are operating on. In the meantime, we need to call on the Attorney General to end the torture that is Fahad's solitary confinement and to allow him to fully participate in his own defense.

Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. Given the huge public outcry to close the Guantanamo prison, it is unspeakable to imagine that a young man is being treated with similarly cruel and unusual procedures--the connection between even brief solitary confinement and deteriorating mental health is well documented--right here in Manhattan. (And in this case even the "terrorist" crime of which the man is accused did not involve any weapons, nor any material that could be remotely construed as ingredients to create a weapon.) Such guilty-until-proven-innocent measures are unacceptable in any society purporting to be a democracy.

It's so wonderful to hear another outlet giving attention to this case: the very epitome of what we say we stand for in America---justice for all---and no one guilty until proven innocent, much less grossly mistreated! In America?
It's very hard for me to understand why all news stations haven't jumped on this story, but thank you!
Please, everyone reading this:
Come to the vigil on MLK Day, Mon., Jan 18th. For more info, go to www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org

I have written to Attorney General Holder and told him that in my humble opinion Fahad Hashmi is not Lex Luther. He's never going to use the video surveillance that spies on him 23 hours out of the day to create a hologram and escape to run amok until Superman brings him back to justice.
For nearly three years 29-year-old Muslim American Syed Fahad Hashmi has been held without trial--first in London and then here in New York City at the Manhattan Correctional Center. Fahad is being held under draconian conditions called pre-trial confinement. The Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) keeps Fahad in 23-hour lockdown, in solitary isolation, allowed out of his cell into another cage one hour a day for exercise.
I too have attended vigils and a public forum and it's shocking to me that this is happening right here in New York City. It is a fact that solitary confinement is a form of torture. It is well-documented that people have been driven insane when kept in solitary confinement for months. It is one of the main forms of torture at Guantanamo, Bagram, and military prisons around the world.
It is clearly obvious even to a layperson like myself that this man's First, Fifth, Six, and Eighth Amendment Rights have been abused. I cannot see how this treatment is justified even by that heinous document called the Patriot Act.
We taxpayers have spent more than a million dollars on this case so far. How much money is going to be spent on persecuting someone for what appears to be a "thought crime"?

He's not The Joker, or Dr. Doom, or Lex Luther. Please beg the Obama administration to reconsider how this man, an American Citizen, is being treated in our own country.

Everyone concerned about our civil liberties and the use of Special Administrative measures should attend the next Free Fahad vigil on Martin Luther King Day from 6 to 7 pm outside the MCC at 150 Park Row. Here is a link to a video for the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWhGRpT3KRU

Thank you for airing this report on the plight of Fahad Hashmi in what has consistently been an excellent segment of the show. This is a tragic situation for Fahad Hashmi and his family, but it also has a much a wider significance for everyone living in this country. The worst aspects of Guantanamo -- the derogation of due process and established legal norms, and the routine use of cruel and inhumane treatment -- are being imported into US domestic law. If this process is allowed to stand, rather than closing down Guantanamo, Obama will have presided over its normalization and integration into the US legal system. Please stay on this issue.

Thank you for this excellent report. I have attended vigils and a public forum about this case and it's shocking to me that this is all happening not in Guantanamo or Bagram or Abu Ghraib, but right here in New York City. I have heard Fahad Hashmi's family and lawyers speak at public events and would urge you to have them come on to your show for an even greater level of detail about the case. Hashmi's case seems to be crucial for us, as Americans, to focus on right now not only because it will play a role in how the Guantanamo cases move forward but also because it points to a worrying breakdown in due process rights within the US and to use of torture (as most human rights organizations and international psychiatric organizations agree, prolonged solitary confinement amounts to torture and Mr. Hashmi has been in solitary for 2.5 years) under the Obama Administration right here at home in the US. Thank you again for this excellent reporting.

More information on this case can be found at:

http://freefahad.com/
http://www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org/
http://www.thawaction.org/

Since Monday, October 19, Theaters Against War (THAW) has been holding night vigils outside of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan on behalf of Fahad Hashmi. The next vigil will be on the evening of MLK Day, Monday, January 18 from 6-7PM.