FBI raids of pro-Palestine activist homes in four US states

Twin Cities Indymedia reports that FBI raids took place today in Minnesota, Michigan, North Carolina and Illinois. While there is limited information right now, the FBI appears to be targeting people associated with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization for activist work relating to Palestine and Columbia.

The federal search warrants appear to be focusing on seizing electronic devices, international travel, and alleging "co-conspirators." The warrants hyped potential documents indicating any contacts/facilitation with FARC, PFLP, and Hezbollah - what it called "FTOs" or "foreign terrorist organizations".

They mentioned seeking information on the alleged "facilitation of other individuals in the US to travel to Colombia, Palestine and any other foreign location ins upport of foreign terrorist organizations including but not limited to FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah".

The wording of the warrant appears to indicate the government seeks to create divisions among social justice and international soldarity activists by hyping alleged connections to what they call "foreign terrorist organizations."

Follow the story on Twin Cities Indymedia: http://tc.indymedia.org/

Also see:
http://www.startribune.com/local/103716104.html

Nigel Parry comments

Two of the activists whose homes were raided, Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby, are very well known anti-war activists in the Twin Cities, where I lived for a decade.

This investigation is totally bogus and seems to be related to a very public delegation they organized to Palestine. It is as impossible to visit Palestine without meeting with PFLP members—or HAMAS members for that matter—as it is impossible to visit America and not meet any Republicans or Democrats.

Take HAMAS for example, the Palestinian political party that the US most likes to apply the "terrorist" label to. HAMAS was democratically elected as Palestine's government in January 2006. Prior to the elections, HAMAS practiced a unilateral ceasefire for over a year. Israel did not.

HAMAS was displaced as the legitimate government in the West Bank by a U.S. funded coup. Directly after the 2006 elections, Condi Rice visited Palestine and gave their defeated opposition, Fatah, tens of millions of dollars in weapons and a green light to attack HAMAS. See http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6243.shtml for more information.

I lived in Palestine for 4 years and had many friends who would self-identify as members of HAMAS or the PFLP (or Fatah or the DFLP or the PPP etc). It's impossible not to, just like it would be impossible to live in the US and not have friends who were Democrats or Republicans.

To define entire mainstreams of the Palestinian political spectrum as "terrorist" is a position entirely indefensible when the on the ground reality in Palestine and other countries we presume to bring "democracy" to is examined.

America—a country whose wars around the world continue to kill and injure hundreds of thousands of civilians—has become a self-destructive entity whose concept of "enemies" and "terror" is fundamentally delusional. All of us who live in the United States will ultimately pay the price for this delusion.