All charges against Syed Hashmi arise from a visit by his friend
Junaid Babar, who arrived at Mr. Syed's apartment in London with a suitcase full of "miltary equipment" which eventually found its way to a high-ranking al Qaeda operative in Pakistan.
And what did that sinister suitcase contain? Was it bombs or guns or a surface-to-air-missile?
Prosecutors have said that Hashmi's friend, Junaid Babar, stayed at his London apartment for two weeks, while Hashmi was studying for a master's degree in Britain. Babar stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in the apartment. Babar later delivered them to the third-ranking member of al Qaeda in Pakistan.
And that's all there was to it, at the time, but after Junaid Babar had been arrested and confronted with a sentence of 70 years in prison... and who knows what other inducements applied to himself or his family in Pakistan... he began to unfold a life-story which rivals the finest productions of compulsively talkative al Qaeda luminaries like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who eventually took credit for every evil deed in the history of the universe except assassinating Abraham Lincoln and bombing Pearl Harbor, and after one more round of waterboarding, who knows what other confessions his CIA jailers could have rinsed out of him?
So now Syed Hashmi's previously unknown friend Junaid Babar has "admitted" running multiple training-camps for al Qaeda in Pakistan, as well as participating in multiple attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, and if he were not "cooperating" with the FBI, he would be facing the death penalty in Pakistan.
Meanwhile Syed Hashmi remains in solitary confinement in New York, and that means...
...23-hour solitary-confinement lockdown and 24-hour surveillance including when he showers and goes to the bathroom. He was not allowed family visits for months. Now, he can see one person for an hour and a half, every other week.
He is permitted to write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper per letter. Within his own cell, he is restricted in his movements and he is not allowed to try to talk guards or other inmates.
Hashmi is forbidden any contact - directly or through his attorneys - with the news media. He can read newspapers, but only those portions approved by his jailers - and not until 30 days after publication. He is forbidden to listen to news radio stations or to watch television news channels.
He is also under 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside of his cell. He is allowed one hour of recreation every day - which is periodically denied - and not given fresh air but must exercise alone inside a cage.
One of Hashmi's Brooklyn College professors, Jeanne Theoharis, who has attended the hearings in his case, told IPS that Hashmi's "mental health appears to be deteriorating."
Syed Hashmi's mental health appears to be deteriorating! What a fantastic surprise!
And after a few more months of solitary confinement and "toilet monitoring" and exercising in a cage, and all the rest of it, Mr. Hashmi will probably arrive at approximately the same state of mind as Jose Padilla, when he was finally tried after three years of solitary confinement in the Navy brig in Charleston, and he walked through his trial like a zombie.
