Within two weeks, news of the arrest and detention of American Maher (Mike) Hawash, despite the lack of criminal charges against him, has spread from a sympathetic website, " Free Mike Hawash" to the New York Times.

For the last two weeks, Maher Hawash, a 38-year-old software engineer and American citizen who was from the West Bank and grew up in Kuwait, has been held in a federal prison here, though he has not been charged with a crime or brought before a judge. Relatives and friends of Mr. Hawash, who works for the Intel Corporation and is married to a native Oregonian, say he has no idea why he was arrested by a federal terrorism task force when he arrived for work at the Intel parking lot in Hillsboro, a Portland suburb. The family home was raided at dawn on the same day..."

Hawash has not been interrogated and is being kept in solitary confinement. The FBI only will say that Hawash is being held as a "material witness" in an ongoing terrorism investigation.

As a material witness, he is being held to compel testimony. But supporters say he has not been told anything about what the government may want from him.

"Our friend has fallen into some kind of `Alice in Wonderland' meets Franz Kafka," said Steven McGeady, the former Intel executive, who started a legal defense fund and a Web site for Mr. Hawash.

"You hear about this happening in other countries and to immigrants and then to American citizens," Mr. McGeady went on. "And finally you hear about it happening to someone you know. It's scary."

As with Jose Padilla and Yser Hamdi, the Bush Administration and Attorney General Ashcroft in particular once again are abusing the legal system in the name of the war on terror. In Hawash's case, the government's action is more deplorable, because Hawash is not suspected of committing a crime--the government just wants his testimony. And they have yet to meet with him and tell him what they want to know from him.

"The government doesn't have and should not have the power to arrest and detain someone without charging them," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project. "If this kind of thing is permitted, then any United States citizen can be swept off the street and locked up without being charged."

Relatives of Hawash believe, as we speculated last week, that his arrest is connected to the case of the six people charged in Portland with providing aid to terrorists.

Hawash emigrated to America in 1984 and became a U.S. citizen in 1988. He graduated from the University of Texas. He has worked for Intel since 1992. He is being held at the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon.

FCI Sheridan
P.O. Box 8000
Sheridan, Oregon 97378-9601
503-843-4442
Fax: 503-843-3408

Update: Yale Law Professor and Blogger Jack Balkan has more on the use and abuse of the material witness statute.

Update 2: Here's more from Wired News. And this from CNN.