From Free Mike Hawash:

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms parking lot. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR.

Here are some facts:

Mike is not charged with any crime, and it has not been suggested that he will be;

Mike is a U.S. citizen of middle-eastern descent;

The warrants and subpoenas in Mike's case are all secret, sealed by the court at the U.S. government's request;

The U.S. has held other middle-eastern men for as long as 15 months without charge as "material witnesses";

Historically, "material witness" arrests were solely for grand-jury or trial witnesses who were either a "flight risk" or represented a "danger" to the community. Mike has a job, a home, a family, and deep roots in his community.

What you can do

Write your Congressmen! Write to your U.S. Senators and representative. Most have webmail forms on their congressional websites, and all have their postal addresses on their sites.  Here is one letter that has been sent.

Go to www.senate.gov to find your Senators, and www.house.gov to find your U.S. Representatives.  If you live in Oregon, your Senators are Senator Wyden and Senator Smith.

Your U.S. Represenative may be one of: Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Gregory Walden and David Wu.

The host of the site is a former Intel Corp. Vice President and was Mike's boss at Intel during much of the 1990s. Thanks to Atrios and Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review for the link.

We wonder whether this arrest is a result of information obtained from a cooperating defendant in the federal terrorism case pending in Oregon against six suspects. Ziska has more links to the case, which the LA Times suggested may be more of a case of bumbling holy warriors than terrorism. Via Cursor, here's more.