In Ahmed's words at the start of the interview:
"I was picked up by the FBI on May 30th. They came to my apartment and picked me up for what they said at the time was immigrations violation. After that I was taken to Champaign County Jail and interrogated by the FBI and then put in a lockup for the night, and then picked up by the INS the next day and taken to Sangamon County jail where I was held by a week, supposedly detained by the INS, and questioned again by the FBI about links to terrorism and questioned like that. I was then transferred up to DuPage County Jail. I've been housed here since then."
Beginning with an overview of Ahmed's arrest, transport and imprisonment, the conversation covered the implications of a nascent wave of detentions targeting Palestinian rights activists, Ahmed's explicit anti-authoritarian stance, organizing national support for the thousands of immigrant political prisoners, the connections between the struggles faced by the Palestinian and African-American communities, the USA-PATRIOT Act, "homeland security," the divestment from Israel campaign and other topics.
Interviewed by Chris Geovanis IMC-Chicago, Dick Reilly IMC-Chicago, and Wajid Jenkins IMC-Madison.
NOTE: the webcast was interrupted numerous times by technical server failures, causing engineering difficulties and other problems. I have edited out the truncated parts. In an effort to duplicate lost segments of the live interview, we asked some questions more than once. Forgive the flaws in these files: occasional heavily over-modulated sections and some redundancy in theme.
Click here to access Radio4all.net to hear both segments of the interview.
Click here to read recent background coverage on IMC-Urbana-Champaign.
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