Rosser Guest Op-Ed: Innocent Kurdish-Americans Victimized by Patriot Act

"On June 26, three Kurdish men in Harrisonburg, Virginia (Rasheed Qambari, Ahmed Abdullah, and Amir Rashid) will be sentenced for sending money to Iraqi Kurdistan without a license to their families and those of fellow members of their community via the traditional hawala system (a fourth man, Fadhil Noroly, will be tried on July 11). This is a felony offense under amendments to the Patriot Act introduced after 9/11.

No longer does the transfer have to be linked in any way to any illegal activity or terrorism, nor does the party doing the transferring have to know that what they are doing is illegal. Even the FBI and prosecuting attorneys agree that none of these transfers through the traditional halawa system had anything to do with terrorism or anything of the sort. Indeed, one prosecutor declared to Rasheed Qambari during his trial on January 31, "we know that you are not the bad guys." What is going on here? "
Juan Cole

You know we Cubans send money with friends that travel to the island all the time. It's a regular occurrence. You get a better exchange rate, or even better yet you family in Cuba can use the dollars to get stuff not sold to the natives. I hope they are aware of the danger in sending cash back home with tio cuco.