The West should bet on freedom in Egypt

By Natan Sharansky, Published: December 16
The Washington Post

The results of the recent parliamentary elections in Egypt and the harsh scenes of soldiers beating protesters this weekend have fueled a new round of anxiety in the West over the direction of the Arab Spring. Hopes raised to a fever pitch by the events of January and February have suffered a crushing blow. Observing the victory of the Islamist parties last month, liberals’ miserable showing and the military’s determination to maintain an iron grip, some ask whether the end of Egyptian democracy is already in sight. Others are asking whether democracy, “our” Western heritage, is really for “them.”

These are the wrong questions, and the attitude behind them, if encapsulated in policy, will ensure the return of dictatorship or worse.

This same reflexive attitude long undergirded Western support for Egypt’s dictatorial rulers as the guarantors of “stability.” That support, in turn, helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, suffocating other, better political options. Are we now bent on repeating the same dreary cycle, lending our consent to repression in the name of a false stability?

Consider how unprepared Western governments were for the events of the Arab Spring. They shouldn’t have been. At a 2007 democracy conference in Prague, Egyptians such as Saad Ibrahim, Iraqis such as Mithal al-Alusi and other Arab democratic dissidents assured the participants, including President George W. Bush and other Western statesmen, that their region was ripe for popular revolt. What had happened in the Soviet Union, they said, was already happening in the Middle East: Ordinary people were losing their fear, daring to exercise their long-suppressed faculty to not only speak but also think freely. It was merely a matter of time before the actions of a few would multiply and become, in the end, irrepressible.

The Western officials gathered in Prague loved what they heard from these dissidents. But after they went home, nothing changed in their governments’ policies. The stability model continued to reign and, with it, the rationale that in Egypt there was no alternative but the Muslim Brotherhood or chaos.

The Arab Spring gave the lie to the stability model, which — as the Prague dissidents knew and as millions went on to demonstrate this year — was in fact a recipe for instability. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square the people spoke, and what did they demand? Not the destruction of Israel. Not the damnation of America. They demanded the right to live in a society where minds would no longer be controlled. Their demand was local, but their message was universal.

One Western response to the Egyptian revolution was to back elections. These are far from a bad thing, but they are not the main thing. Thus far, post-Mubarak elections in Egypt have sparked further turmoil, alarm, disillusionment and fatalism among Western observers beguiled by the dream of a democratic triumph. “It’s not the French Revolution,” moaned an Israeli columnist.

This is, inadvertently, an instructive point. For if the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution proves anything, it is that a gap exists between the moment people decide they will no longer live in a society ruled by fear and the moment a democratic society forms — a society that will protect not only “correct” thinking but also the thoughts one hates.

Nothing is instantaneous in politics. To think of elections as a panacea, let alone a sure road to real democracy, is to evince a failure of historical imagination. The proper role of the free world is not to encourage or to stop elections. Its role should be to formulate, and to stick by, a policy of incremental change based on creating the institutions that will lead ineluctably to pressure for more and more representative forms of government. The free world should place its bet on freedom — the hope and demand of Tahrir Square — and work toward a civil society defined by that value.

In executing such a policy, Western governments and nongovernmental organizations would donate funds only to individuals and groups working for the same goal; foster joint business ventures able to contribute to a liberal economy, which are desperately needed in a country on the verge of bankruptcy; encourage bottom-up enterprises in education, media and social reform; and collaborate with students, women’s groups, trade unions, liberal democrats and others pressing the cause of a free press, freedom of religion, the freedom to organize and the rule of law.

Whether, in Egypt’s case, the process will be lengthy or relatively brief depends on the Egyptian people. But it depends no less on the West’s determination to get on the side of those desirous of change, to influence the direction of change and to help shape the emergence of a new generation of leaders. Our choice does not lie between a corrupt military dictatorship and a totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood. If, between Western and Egyptian leaders, at least one of the two parties is wholeheartedly insistent on forging a free civil society, a democratic outcome is a strong possibility; if both parties are against it, all will truly be lost.

Keeping the Arab Spring alive

By Editorial Board, Published: December 16 2011
The Washington Post

IT WAS a year ago Saturday that fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself aflame in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, improbably providing the spark for what has become a regional revolution. The Arab Spring acquired its name in part because early commentators likened it to the upheavals that brought an end to dictatorship in other parts of the world — including the former Soviet bloc, East Asia and Latin America. It seemed logical that Middle Eastern states would, at last, follow the same path that led in other places from dictatorship and economic stagnation to free elections, free markets and integration into a global economy.

A year later, it’s clear that the Arab revolutions are different in some fundamental ways — and may not deserve the label of “spring.” Democratic transformations in other parts of the world since 1980 were largely peaceful, as autocrats from the Philippines to Chile yielded to “people power.” But while that paradigm mostly worked in Tunisia and in Egypt early this year, the subsequent months have been dominated by scenes of slaughter, as Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh have chosen to fight — even to the death — rather than give up. Mr. Gaddafi is gone, and the Assad and Saleh regimes may soon follow. But the thousands of deaths they caused have cast a pall over their countries; no one yet knows when and how the killing will end or whether there will be reconciliation.

A second difference in the Arab transformation is the worrying economic prospects of newly liberated countries. Eastern European and Asian countries adopted liberal market policies that led to booming growth; so, after a few years of drift, did most of Latin America. But Egypt and other Arab states so far are leaning toward a populism that could inhibit foreign investment and trade. They are also unlikely to receive as much Western aid as helped the new democracies of the 1980s and ’90s. Libya will prosper with oil. But many young Arabs may find that their aspirations for jobs remain unmet.

A final distinction is the nature of the political movements coming to power in the revolution’s aftermath. Though the Islamists of Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere say that they are democrats, they are not liberal — and their relations with the West are uneasy at best. The true liberals of the Arab world — those who plotted the uprisings on Facebook and brought the secular middle classes to the street — risk being marginalized. They lack the organization of mosque-based movements or the foreign funding supplied by conservative states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In Egypt, they also remain the prime target of a military establishment that hopes to preserve an outsize measure of power.

In retrospect, it’s not surprising that the Middle East’s modernization is proving bumpier than elsewhere: The troubles reflect some of the reasons that the 20th-century model of autocracy lasted decades longer there than in Latin America or Asia. But the messiness should not be a reason to regret the revolution, or worse, support the attempts of the Egyptian or Syrian armies to check the Islamists or “restore order” by force.

The best cure for what ails the Middle East is what it has lacked: free debate and democracy. In the short term, that may lead to mistaken policies or greater friction with the West. But over time extremists and fundamentalists are more likely to be discredited. The Arab world’s huge and rising young generation wants the freedom and prosperity it sees spreading in much of the rest of the world — and the rest of the world should be betting on that.

Congress moves to restrict money for Egypt, Pakistan in foreign aid bill that avoids deep cuts

By Associated Press, Published: December 16, 2011

WASHINGTON — Congress would impose restrictions on aid to Egypt, Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority in a $53.3 billion bill that avoids the deep cuts in foreign assistance and State Department funding that Republicans had pursued this year.

The legislation is part of a sweeping, $1 trillion-plus year-end spending package that provides money for 10 Cabinet agencies through September. The House passed the measure on Friday and the Senate is expected to vote sometime this weekend.

Foreign aid amounts to just 1 percent of the federal budget, but lawmakers intent on cutting the deficit, especially conservative tea party Republicans, have clamored for significant reductions in spending overseas. Democrats and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed to spare the accounts.

The legislation would provide $53.3 billion for foreign assistance and the State Department — $42.1 billion for the base budget and $11.2 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations account. That account pays for the State Department’s role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other expenses. Lawmakers shifted costs for security and economic assistance, funds for the State Department and for the U.S. Agency for International Development into the account, increasing the amount from $7.6 billion to $11.2 billion.

Still, the base budget is some $6 billion less than the current level and $8.7 billion below what President Barack Obama sought for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The bill does provide $3.1 billion in security assistance for ally Israel.

“In a difficult economic and political climate, this bill meets our national security needs and global responsibilities while implementing tough restrictions and requirements on recipients of U.S. assistance,” said Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid.

Reflecting concerns about uncertainty within the Egyptian government, the bill would block release of $1.3 billion in security assistance to Cairo and $250 million in economic assistance until the secretary of state makes several assurances to Congress. She must certify that Egypt is abiding by a 1979 peace treaty with Israel and that military rulers are supporting the transition to civilian government with free and fair elections and “implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion and due process of law.”

The military took over in Egypt after longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolt in February. On Friday, Egypt held its second round of parliamentary elections.

The legislation freezes aid to Pakistan until the secretary can certify that Islamabad is cooperating on counterterrorism, including taking steps to prevent terrorist groups such as the Haqqani network from operating in the country. The aid amount was unspecified in the legislation as Congress gave the Obama administration flexibility to figure out the funds.

A separate defense bill would hold back $700 million for Pakistan until the defense secretary provides Congress a report on how Islamabad is countering the threat of improvised explosive devices.

The bill continues the existing restrictions on aid to the Palestinian Authority, requiring the secretary to certify that it is committed to a peaceful co-existence with Israel and is taking appropriate steps to combat terrorism. Economic assistance for the Palestinians is in jeopardy if they pursue statehood recognition in the United Nations over the objections of the United States and Israel, which wants to resume talks.

The amount was not spelled out, again leaving it to the administration to sort out.

The restrictions carry a waiver for national security.

In a victory for congressional Democrats and the Obama administration, the bill dropped a House-backed ban on federal money for international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide abortion information, counseling or referrals.

The policy has bounced in and out of law for the past quarter century since Republican President Ronald Reagan first adopted it 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office. Within days of his inauguration, Obama reversed the policy.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Former child slave brought to Calif. from Egypt to work for family becomes US citizen

By Associated Press, Published: December 15 2011

MONTEBELLO, Calif. — More than a decade ago, 10-year-old Shyima Hall was brought to Southern California by an affluent Egyptian couple who forced her to sleep in a cold garage at night and spend her days working as a maid.

For nearly two years, Hall ironed clothes, washed dishes and handled other domestic chores until authorities freed her.

On Thursday, she met with officials again but this time to proudly take the oath of allegiance to America as a newly minted U.S. citizen — a key step on her path to becoming a police officer or immigration agent to help other victims of human trafficking.

“Now I can move on with my career and start my life the way I want it,” the 22-year-old said, her eyes sparkling after the ceremony on Thursday in Montebello. “It’s just something I’ve waited for for a long time.”

Hall was sent to work for an Egyptian couple as a domestic servant in Cairo when she was 9. The following year, Abdel Nasser Youssef Ibrahim and his then-wife Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd El Motelib arranged for someone to apply for a tourist visa on her behalf and brought her to the United States, U.S. court records show.

In 2000, Hall set foot in California — but only inside the spacious home where Ibrahim and Motelib lived with their five children in Irvine. She was not allowed to play outside the house or with the other children, but rather slept in the garage without electricity and manually washed her clothes in a bucket, the documents show.

Both Ibrahim and Motelib slapped Hall and told her police would arrest her if they saw her outside the home, the documents show, adding they knew her visa had expired and did nothing to extend it.

For nearly two years, she lived in the garage, worked full time and was not allowed to attend school. A neighbor became suspicious and called police.

After her rescue, Hall wound up in foster care and bounced around from home to home. She was adopted by a family in Beaumont and was able to obtain legal status to remain in the country and eventually got her green card.

Hall — who took her adoptive family’s surname — said she felt like the family was more enamored of her case than of her and weren’t supportive of her efforts to start her career, which prompted her to move out and start a life of her own.

She took classes at college and got a job. She is now a sales supervisor at an upscale watch store and volunteers for her local police department in the hopes of becoming an officer. Now, with her naturalization certificate in hand, she can pursue her dream.

“No one really can tell you you can’t do that or you can’t be that person,” she said after the naturalization ceremony for 900 new citizens. “I can be who I want to be and that’s the most important part for me.”

Hall said she doesn’t dwell on the past and tries to look forward. She would also like to get her U.S. passport and visit Egypt to see her 10 brothers and sisters.

Mark Abend, a supervisory special agent at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he met Hall when she was a frightened child rescued by police.

Over time, she began to confide in investigators about her experience, learned English, graduated from high school and has become an impassioned advocate for trafficking victims, speaking about her experience at training sessions held by law enforcement.

“For her to be able to go through all that and still keep her head up and not be suffering from severe depression... for her to actually pull it all together and become very successful is really amazing to me,” said Abend, who attended the ceremony along with Hall’s friends and attorneys.

In 2006, Ibrahim and Motelib pleaded guilty to holding Hall in involuntary servitude, forced labor, conspiracy and harboring an illegal immigrant. Ibrahim was sentenced to 36 months in prison and Motelib was sentenced to 22 months. Both were ordered to pay $76,000 to Hall for her work for the family.

The Associated Press reported on the case in a series in 2008 on the exploitation of children in Africa.

Moteilb was deported to Egypt in 2008. Ibrahim was determined to be subject to deportation, but an immigration judge ruled he could remain in the country.

Ibrahim is under an order of supervision and regularly reports to immigration authorities, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gingrich remarks on Palestinians ‘divisive and destructive,’ Levin says

Posted at 01:46 PM ET, 12/10/2011
The Washington Post
By Felicia Sonmez

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Saturday sharply criticized Newt Gingrich’s remark this week that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, calling the statement by the former House speaker and GOP presidential contender “divisive and destructive.”

“Next Gingrich is wrong to think his attempt to turn the Palestinians into a non-people with no claim to a state will appeal to his audience on the Jewish Channel, on which they are apparently to be aired on Monday,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement.

“The vast majority of American Jews (including this one) and the Israeli Government itself are committed to a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side as neighbors and in peace,” he added.

Gingrich, whom polls show surging in several early primary states less than a month before the nominating process starts, made the remark Wednesday in an interview expected to broadcast Monday on The Jewish Channel. News of the comments was first reported by Politico’s Ben Smith on Friday afternoon.

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state,” Gingrich says in the interview. “It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and I think it’s tragic.”

The remarks represent a shift by Gingrich away from the long-standing U.S. policy goal of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a position that has been advocated by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Most Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have declined to weigh in on the GOP presidential primary, although House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last month mocked Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) request for a “public debate” with the California Democrat, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) claimed Perry was “pandering to the tea party” by proposing that lawmakers’ salaries and time spent in Washington be slashed.

That Gingrich’s comments drew such a strong rebuke from Levin suggests that while the former speaker may have made them in an attempt to appeal to social conservatives in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, the remarks could wind up backfiring, particularly within the foreign policy community.

In his statement, Levin argued that Gingrich’s “cynical efforts to attract attention to himself with divisive and destructive statements will not help his presidential ambitions since they are aimed at putting the peace between Israel and the Palestinians that Americans yearn for even further out of reach than it is today.”

“Gingrich offered no solutions — just a can of gasoline and a match,” he added.

Beyond Guantánamo, a Web of prisons across US for terrorism inmates

Aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people

By SCOTT SHANE
12/11/2011
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — It is the other Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate.

An aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people. They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare.

Among them is Ismail Royer, serving 20 years for helping friends go to an extremist training camp in Pakistan. In a letter from the highest-security prison in the United States, Mr. Royer describes his remarkable neighbors at twice-a-week outdoor exercise sessions, each prisoner alone in his own wire cage under the Colorado sky. “That’s really the only interaction I have with other inmates,” he wrote from the federal Supermax, 100 miles south of Denver.

There is Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, Mr. Royer wrote. Terry Nichols, who conspired to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building. Ahmed Ressam, the would-be “millennium bomber,” who plotted to attack Los Angeles International Airport. And Eric Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
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In recent weeks, Congress has reignited an old debate, with some arguing that only military justice is appropriate for terrorist suspects. But military tribunals have proved excruciatingly slow and imprisonment at Guantánamo hugely costly — $800,000 per inmate a year, compared with $25,000 in federal prison.

The criminal justice system, meanwhile, has absorbed the surge of terrorism cases since 2001 without calamity, and without the international criticism that Guantánamo has attracted for holding prisoners without trial. A decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, an examination of how the prisons have handled the challenge of extremist violence reveals some striking facts:

Big numbers. Today, 171 prisoners remain at Guantánamo. As of Oct. 1, the federal Bureau of Prisons reported that it was holding 362 people convicted in terrorism-related cases, 269 with what the bureau calls a connection to international terrorism — up from just 50 in 2000. An additional 93 inmates have a connection to domestic terrorism.
Lengthy sentences. Terrorists who plotted to massacre Americans are likely to die in prison. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, is serving a sentence of life without parole at the Supermax, as are Zacarias Moussaoui, a Qaeda operative arrested in 2001, and Mr. Reid, the shoe bomber, among others. But many inmates whose conduct fell far short of outright terrorism are serving sentences of a decade or more, the result of a calculated prevention strategy to sideline radicals well before they could initiate deadly plots.
Special units. Since 2006, the Bureau of Prisons has moved many of those convicted in terrorism cases to two special units that severely restrict visits and phone calls. But in creating what are Muslim-dominated units, prison officials have inadvertently fostered a sense of solidarity and defiance, and set off a long-running legal dispute over limits on group prayer. Officials have warned in court filings about the danger of radicalization, but the Bureau of Prisons has nothing comparable to the deradicalization programs instituted in many countries.
Quiet releases. More than 300 prisoners have completed their sentences and been freed since 2001. Their convictions involved not outright violence but “material support” for a terrorist group; financial or document fraud; weapons violations; and a range of other crimes. About half are foreign citizens and were deported; the Americans have blended into communities around the country, refusing news media interviews and avoiding attention.
Rare recidivism. By contrast with the record at Guantánamo, where the Defense Department says that about 25 percent of those released are known or suspected of subsequently joining militant groups, it appears extraordinarily rare for the federal prison inmates with past terrorist ties to plot violence after their release. The government keeps a close eye on them: prison intelligence officers report regularly to the Justice Department on visitors, letters and phone calls of inmates linked to terrorism. Before the prisoners are freed, F.B.I. agents typically interview them, and probation officers track them for years.

Both the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress often cite the threat of homegrown terrorism. But the Bureau of Prisons has proven remarkably resistant to outside scrutiny of the inmates it houses, who might offer a unique window on the problem.

In 2009, a group of scholars proposed interviewing people imprisoned in terrorism cases about how they took that path. The Department of Homeland Security approved the proposal and offered financing. But the Bureau of Prisons refused to grant access, saying the project would require too much staff time.
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“There’s a huge national debate about how dangerous these people are,” said Gary LaFree, director of a national terrorism study center at the University of Maryland, who was lead author of the proposal. “I just think, as a citizen, somebody ought to be studying this.”

The Bureau of Prisons would not make any officials available for an interview with The New York Times, and wardens at three prisons refused to permit a reporter to visit inmates. But e-mails and letters from inmates give a rare, if narrow, look at their hidden world.

Paying the Price
Consider the case of Randall Todd Royer, 38, a Missouri-born Muslim convert who goes by Ismail. Before 9/11, he was a young Islamic activist with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, meeting with members of Congress and visiting the Clinton White House.

Today he is nearly eight years into a 20-year prison sentence. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to helping several American friends go to a training camp for Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. The organization was later designated a terrorist group by the United States — and is blamed for the Mumbai massacre in 2008 — but prosecutors maintained in 2004 that the friends intended to go on to Afghanistan and fight American troops alongside the Taliban.

Mr. Royer had fought briefly with the Bosnian Muslims against their Serbian neighbors in the mid-1990s, when NATO, too, backed the Bosnians. He trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp himself. And in 2001, he was stopped by Virginia police with an AK-47 and ammunition in his car.

But he adamantly denies that he would ever scheme to kill Americans, and there is no evidence that he did so. Before sentencing, he wrote the judge a 30-page letter admitting, “I crossed the line and, in my ignorance and phenomenally poor judgment, broke the law.” In grand jury testimony, he expressed regret about not objecting during a meeting, just after the Sept. 11 attacks, in which his friends discussed joining the Taliban.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t come out and clearly say that’s not what any of us should be about,” he said.

Prosecutors call Mr. Royer “an inveterate liar“ in court papers in another case, asserting that he has given contradictory accounts of the meeting after Sept. 11. Mr. Royer says he has been truthful.
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Whatever the facts, he is paying the price. His 20-year sentence was the statutory minimum under a 2004 plea deal he reluctantly took, fearing that a trial might end in a life term. His wife divorced him and remarried; he has seen his four young children only through glass since 2006, when the Bureau of Prisons moved him to a restrictive new unit in Indiana for inmates with the terrorism label. After an altercation with another inmate who he said was bullying others, he was moved in 2010 to the Supermax in Colorado.

He is barred from using e-mail and permitted only three 15-minute phone calls a month — recently increased from two, a move that Mr. Royer hopes may portend his being moved to a prison closer to his children. His letters are reflective, sometimes self-critical, frequently dropping allusions to his omnivorous reading. His flirtation with violent Islam and his incarceration, he says, have not poisoned him against his own country.

“You asked what I think of the U.S.; that is an extraordinarily complex question,” Mr. Royer wrote in one letter consisting of 27 pages of neat handwriting. “I can say I was born in Missouri, I love that land and its people, I love the Mississippi, I love my family and my cousins, I love my Germanic ethnic heritage and people, I love the English language, I love the American people — my people.

“He said he believed some American foreign policy positions had been “needlessly antagonistic” but added, “Nothing the U.S. did justified the 9/11 attacks.”

Mr. Royer rejected the notion that the United States was at war with Islam. “Conflict between the U.S. and Muslims is neither inevitable nor beneficial or in anyone’s interest,” he wrote. “Actually, I suppose it is in the interest of fanatics on both sides, but their interests run counter to everyone else’s.” He added an erudite footnote: “ ‘Les extrémités se touchent’ (the extremes meet) — Blaise Pascal.”
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He expressed frustration that the Bureau of Prisons appears to view him as an extremist, despite what he describes as his campaign against extremism in discussions with other inmates and prison sermons at Friday Prayer, “which they surely have recordings of.”

“I have gotten into vehement debates, not to mention civil conversations, with other inmates from the day I was arrested until today, about the dangers and evils of extremism and terrorism,” Mr. Royer wrote in a yearlong correspondence with a reporter. “Can they not figure out who I am?”

A scorched-earth approach
In 2004, prosecutors believed they knew who Mr. Royer was: one of a group of young Virginians under the influence of a radical cleric, Ali al-Timimi, whose members played paintball to practice for jihad and were on a path toward extremist violence. After Sept. 11, federal prosecutors took a scorched-earth approach to any crime with even a hint of a terrorism connection, and judges and juries went along.

In the Virginia jihad case, for instance, prosecutors used the Neutrality Act, a little-used law dating to 1794 that prohibits Americans from fighting against a nation at peace with the United States. Prosecutors combined that law with weapons statutes that impose a mandatory minimum sentence in a strategy to get the longest prison terms, with breaks for some defendants who cooperated, said Paul J. McNulty, then the United States attorney overseeing the case.

“We were doing all we could to prevent the next attack,” Mr. McNulty said.

“It was a deterrence strategy and a show of strength,” said Karen J. Greenberg, a law professor at Fordham University who has overseen the most thorough independent analysis of terrorism prosecutions. “The attitude of the government was: Every step you take toward terrorism, no matter how small, will be punished severely.”

About 40 percent of terrorism cases since the Sept. 11 attacks have relied on informants, by the count of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which Ms. Greenberg headed until earlier this year. In such cases, the F.B.I. has trolled for radicals and then tested whether they were willing to plot mayhem — again, a pre-emptive strategy intended to ferret out potential terrorists. But in some cases prosecutors have been accused of overreaching.

Yassin M. Aref, for instance, was a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq and the imam of an Albany mosque when he agreed to serve as witness to a loan between an acquaintance and another man, actually an informant posing as a supporter of a Pakistani terrorist group, Jaish-e-Muhammad. The ostensible purpose of the loan was to buy a missile to kill the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Aref’s involvement was peripheral — but he was convicted of conspiring to aid a terrorist group and got a 15-year sentence.

That was a typical punishment, according to the Center on Law and Security, which has studied the issue. Of 204 people charged with what it calls serious jihadist crimes since the Sept. 11 attacks, 87 percent were convicted and got an average sentence of 14 years, according to a September report from the center.

Federal officials say the government’s zero-tolerance approach to any conduct touching on terrorism is an important reason there has been no repeat of Sept. 11. Lengthy sentences for marginal offenders have been criticized by some rights advocates as deeply unfair — but they have sent an unmistakable message to young men drawn to the rhetoric of violent jihad.

The strategy has also sent scores of Muslim men to federal prisons.

Special units
After news reports in 2006 that three men imprisoned in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had sent letters to a Spanish terrorist cell, the Bureau of Prisons created two special wards, called Communication Management Units, or C.M.U.’s. The units, which opened at federal prisons in Terre Haute, Ind., in 2006 and Marion, Ill., in 2008, have set off litigation and controversy, chiefly because critics say they impose especially restrictive rules on Muslim inmates, who are in the majority.

“The C.M.U.’s? You mean the Muslim Management Units?” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The units currently hold about 80 inmates. The rules for visitors — who are allowed no physical contact with inmates — and the strict monitoring of mail, e-mail and phone calls are intended both to prevent inmates from radicalizing others and to rule out plotting from behind bars.

A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman, Traci L. Billingsley, said in an e-mail that the units were not created for any religious group but were “necessary to ensure the safety, security and orderly operation of correctional facilities, and protection of the public.”

An unintended consequence of creating the C.M.U.’s is a continuing conflict between Muslim inmates and guards, mainly over the inmates’ demand for collective prayer beyond the authorized hourlong group prayer on Fridays. The clash is described in hundreds of pages of court filings in a lawsuit. In one affidavit, a prison official in Terre Haute describes “signs of radicalization” in the unit, saying one inmate’s language showed “defiance to authority, and a sense of being incarcerated because of Islam.”

One 2010 written protest obtained by The New York Times, listing grievances ranging from the no-contact visiting rules to guards “mocking, disrespecting and disrupting” Friday Prayer, was signed by 17 Muslim prisoners in the Terre Haute Communication Management Unit. They included members of the so-called Virginia jihad case of which Mr. Royer was part; the Lackawanna Six, Buffalo-area Yemeni Americans who traveled to a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan; Kevin James, who formed a radical Muslim group in prison and plotted to attack military facilities in Los Angeles; and John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban.

An affidavit signed by Mr. Lindh, who is serving 20 years after admitting to fighting for the Taliban, complained that a correctional officer greeted male Muslim inmates with “Good morning, ladies.” (“No ladies were in the area,” Mr. Lindh writes.) Prison officials say in court papers that Mr. Lindh has repeatedly challenged guards and violated rules.

Unlike those at the Supermax, inmates in the segregated units have access to e-mail, and some were willing to answer questions. Mr. Lindh, whose father, Frank Lindh, said his son believed the news media falsely labeled him a terrorist, was not. In reply to a reporter’s letter requesting an interview, he sent only a photocopy of the sole of a tennis shoe. Since shoe bottoms are considered offensive in many cultures, his answer appeared to be an emphatic no.

There is some evidence that the Bureau of Prisons has assigned Muslims with no clear terrorist connection to the C.M.U.’s. Avon Twitty, a Muslim who spent 27 years in prison for a 1982 street murder, was sent to the Terre Haute unit in 2007. When he challenged the assignment, he was told in writing that he was a “member of an international terrorist organization,” though no organization was named and there appears to be no public evidence for the assertion.

Mr. Twitty, working for a home improvement company and teaching at a Washington mosque since his release in January, said he believed the real reason was to quash his complaints about what he believed were miscalculations of time off for good behavior for numerous inmates. “They had to shut me up,” he said.

Another former inmate at the Marion C.M.U., Andy Stepanian, an animal rights activist, said a guard once told him he was “a balancer” — a non-Muslim placed in the unit to rebut claims of religious bias. Mr. Stepanian said the creation of the predominantly Muslim units could backfire, adding to the feeling that Islam is under attack.

“I think it’s a fair assessment that these men will leave with a more intensified belief that the U.S. is at war with Islam,” said Mr. Stepanian, 33, who now works for a Princeton publisher. “The place reeked of it,” he said, describing clashes over restrictions on prayer and some guards’ hostility to Islam.

Yet Mr. Stepanian also said he found the “family atmosphere” and camaraderie of inmates at the unit a welcome change from the threatening tone of his previous medium-security prison, where he said prisoners without a gang to protect them were “food for the sharks.” When he arrived at the C.M.U., he said, he found on his bed a pair of shower slippers and a bag of non-animal-based food that Muslim inmates had collected after hearing a vegan was joining the unit.

He was wary. “I thought they were trying to indoctrinate me,” he said. “They never tried.” The consensus of the inmates, he said, “was that 9/11 was not Islam.” “These guys were not lunatics,” he said. “They wanted to be back with their families.”

Reflection
It may be too early to judge recidivism for those imprisoned in terrorism cases after Sept. 11; those who are already out are mostly defendants whose crimes were less serious or who cooperated with the authorities. Justice Department officials and outside experts could identify only a handful of cases in which released inmates had been rearrested, a rate of relapse far below that for most federal inmates or for Guantánamo releases.

For example, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a Kuwaiti Canadian who plotted with Al Qaeda to attack American embassies in Singapore and Manila, pleaded guilty in 2002 and began to work as an F.B.I. informant. But F.B.I. agents soon discovered he was secretly plotting to kill them — and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Nearly all of these ex-convicts, however, lie low and steer clear of militancy, often under the watchful eye of family, mosque and community, lawyers and advocates say. A dozen former inmates declined to be interviewed, saying that to be associated publicly with a terrorism case could derail new jobs and lives. As for Mr. Royer, he is approaching only the midpoint of his 20-year sentence.

Did he get what he deserved? Chris Heffelfinger, a terrorism analyst and author of “Radical Islam in America,” did a detailed study of the Virginia jihad case, and concluded that Mr. Royer’s sentence was perhaps double what his crime merited. But he said the prosecution was warranted and probably prevented at least some of the men Mr. Royer assisted from joining the Taliban.

“I think a strong law enforcement response to cases like this is appropriate nine times out of 10,” Mr. Heffelfinger said. Mr. Royer himself, in his long presentencing letter to Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, said he understood why he had been arrested. “I realize that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from terrorism,” he wrote, “and that in this post-9/11 environment, it must take all reasonable precautions.”

Today, Mr. Royer’s only battle is to serve out his sentence in a less restrictive prison nearer his children. In what he called in a letter “a heroic sacrifice,” his parents, Ray and Nancy Royer, moved from Missouri to Virginia to be close to their son’s children, now aged 8 to 12.

“I found it necessary to be a surrogate father,” said Ray Royer, 70, a commercial photographer by trade, in an interview at the retirement community outside Washington where he and his wife now live. When his son, who still goes by Randy in the family, converted to Islam at the age of 18, his parents did not object. Later, when he headed to Bosnia, they chalked it up to his active social conscience. “Religion is a personal thing,” the elder Mr. Royer said. “He’d never been in trouble.”

Ray Royer was at his son’s Virginia apartment in 2003 when the F.B.I. knocked at 5 a.m., put him in handcuffs and took him away. Now, years later, he alternates between defending his son and expressing dismay at what Randy got himself into.

“He did help his buddies get to L.E.T.,” or Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group later designated as a terrorist organization. “He admitted to it. He should pay the price.” Still, he added, “maybe he deserved five years or so. Not 20.”

Ray Royer sat at his home computer one recent evening, looking through a folder called “Randy Pics” — photographs tracing his son’s life from childhood, to fatherhood, to prison.

“He loved his family,” the father said of his son. “Why would he put this cause ahead of his family? I still don’t really know what happened. I’m still trying to figure it out.”