Reno criticizes White House over Muslim policies

Reno criticizes White House over Muslim policies

by Jasmine Kripalani
The Miami Herald
09/14/2003

Former Attorney General Janet Reno criticized the White House on Saturday, describing the Bush administration as filled with ``secrecy and silence.''

At a panel discussion on U.S.-Islamic relations at Nova Southeastern University, Reno said Americans should know the identities of the thousands of Muslims or Arabs detained after the Sept. 11 attacks.

She compared it to the detainment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.

''I had the privilege as attorney general to send letters of apology and checks of compensation to Japanese-Americans. When the decision was made to intern them, there was no record that they were a security threat,'' Reno told the audience of about 100 people. ``Fifty years later, I delivered letters of apology. We have got to get it right the first time.''

After 9/11, the Bush administration detained more than 1,200 foreigners, holding secret immigration hearings and requiring special registration for men from Muslim nations.

But despite a study that ruled those methods inefficient in finding terrorists, Attorney General John Ashcroft has defended the handling of detainees. He said most were guilty of immigration violations and were eventually deported.

Veiled women sat in the audience. Among them was Sahar Ullah, 20, of Davie who nodded in agreement with Reno's remarks.

''It was nice to see someone in government outright condemn government policies,'' Ullah said after the two-hour long forum.

Ullah said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, she stopped taking Tri-Rail. Instead, her father would drive her from Davie to the University of Miami campus where she is majoring in religious studies.

''He would tell me to be careful and watch what I said,'' Ullah said of her father's advice following the attacks.

Ullah said the fact she was friends' with one of the organizers drew her to Saturday's forum. But others had personal reasons for being there.

Coral Springs resident Sue Rosenblum, whose son Joshua died on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center in New York, made opening remarks, saying she still had hope for a better world. He was a trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, an international brokerage firm at the Trade Center.

''At first, I blamed the flight attendants, then I blamed the government,'' Rosenblum said after her speech. ``I just know I had to turn to something more positive.''

Arthur Teitelbaum, director of the southern chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, and Muqtedar Khan, a foreign policy studies scholar at the Brookings Institution, also spoke at the forum. Hosting the discussion were the Americans for Informed Democracy, an American student organization based in Oxford, England, and the International Muslim Association at NSU.