On Dec. 8, federal authorities in Chicago announced charges against Derrick Shareef, a young Black Muslim male who also goes by the name Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef. The indictment against the 22-year-old alleges a plot that validates the so-called “war on terror.”
What an affidavit of the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force agent in charge of the investigation reveals is that the young man’s anger and frustration with racist U.S. society and U.S. imperialism were taken advantage of and directed by a paid informant.
Just as in the arrests of five African-American and two Haitian men in Florida earlier this year, it seems that a federal informant directed and delivered an oppressed youth to federal authorities.
The official charges against Shareef are one count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The alleged weapons of mass destruction are four grenades, shrapnel from metal garbage cans and a 9-millimeter handgun.
The investigators said that Shareef was acting alone. Robert Grant, the agent in charge of the Chicago FBI office, said, “He fixed on a day of December 22nd on Friday ... because it was the Friday before Christmas and thought that would be the highest concentration of shoppers that he could kill and injure.”
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a news release, “While these are very serious charges, at no time was the public in any imminent peril.”
Even according to the official story, the plan to attack a mall on Dec. 22 during the shopping rush was not Shareef’s idea, but the idea of the FBI’s “confidential source.” The affidavit says the informant asked Shareef if it would be better to “hit the mall,” and further says, “I mean, alright, we gotta look at it this way, we want to disrupt Christmas.”
Shareef had no connections to get weapons other than the informant. The informant fed him plans about what to do and how to do it and what would be most effective, and it was the informant who drove him and whose car was to be used on the day of the supposed attack.
While the affidavit says Shareef was under investigation since September 2006, it makes no mention of how the informant came into contact with the young man.
Was Derrick Shareef angry? That is to be expected. Any truly compassionate person need only look at life for an oppressed youth under capitalism to understand the young man’s anger, given the daily indignities of his life.
This arrest, as well as the round-ups of Arab, Southeast Asian and Muslim people shortly after 9/11 and the recent roundups of immigrant workers, along with increased state repression being felt in poor and communities of color around the country, shows the hardening of U.S. rulers’ state agents in wake of a rising global rebellion and a deepening capitalist crisis.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, some of the same policy makers behind the current Bush regime began plotting what they felt would be an unimpeded assault on the global working class.
The oil reserves and other riches in Arab lands, Africa and South America were up for grabs, and “rogue states” that dared defy U.S. imperialism would feel its weight.
Reality now has smashed those well-laid plans. The Iraqi resistance has shown a people’s resolve cannot be simply ground into dust by tank treads or blown to bits by high-tech weaponry, but is forged by history and is stronger than the aims of Western world imperialism and the designs of capitalist rulers.
Though not yet at movement pitch, the workers’ struggle and the struggles against racism and imperialist war in the U.S. have been emboldened by the courage and strength of immigrant workers, who have much to lose.
On May Day of this year, immigrant workers launched the first general strike against oppressive federal legislation. The response from the Bush administration has been more oppression and round-ups, using the racist and vile excuse of the “war on terror” as part of its reasoning.
This latest arrest of Derrick Shareef is part of the Bush regime’s ploy of repression and obfuscation to whip U.S. workers into a frenzy. But whether headed by Republicans or Democrats, the government’s policies are driven by the nature of capitalist production.
While the U.S. wages war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia and supports oppressive regimes around the world, it wages a constant war here at home. The police are occupiers in communities of color and terrorize the inner city as part of a nationwide trend of gentrification of urban areas.
What is needed is for the movement to engage youth, many of whom face a bleak future, as part of a struggle of the masses against a common oppressor. That struggle should take up the banner of socialism and show that there is an answer to the ills of capitalism—and the answer is socialism.
Copyright © 1995-2006 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
Page printed from:
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/fbi-1228/
No comments:
Post a Comment