American Muslims Told to Not Help FBI By Scott Hogenson CNSNews.com Executive Editor September 27, 2001

(CNSNews.com) - A New York-based group of "progressive church leaders and activists" is telling Arabs and Muslims living in America to not cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In a communique entitled "Know Your Rights - Don't Talk to the FBI," a group called the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) warns, "The FBI is looking for information to use against you, your family and/or your community."

While the undated IFCO message to not help the FBI doesn't specifically reference the September 11 attack and the investigation into it, the IFCO memo does say, "The FBI has a history of harassing and harming minority and immigrant communities. Some people are spending a long time in jail because they or their friends talked to the FBI."

IFCO is advising its constituents that, "you or your friends could be deported, or if citizens, jailed 10 years" for making contributions to certain foreign charities, many of them in the Middle East.

"The FBI is collecting information about such donations in Arab, Muslim and other immigrant communities," according to one of the IFCO's subsidiaries called The National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom.

Neither officials with the IFCO or the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom were immediately available for comment.

Law enforcement officials from around the country are pursuing tens of thousands of leads in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, according to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and much of the investigation is centered on people of Middle Eastern backgrounds.

The attacks are believed to have been masterminded by millionaire terrorist Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident whom the U.S. is seeking in connection with the attacks that have left as many as 7,000 missing or dead.

The left-leaning IFCO is also encouraging people to participate in a September 29 "Convergence" in Washington, D.C., and links to the protest-planning group Beat Back Bush, a leftist coalition planning to protest the anticipated U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001