A teenage Muslim girl was arrested and detained on an un-evidenced suicide-bomber claim
Evidence
On March 24, 2005, Adama Bah, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl, awoke at dawn to discover nearly a dozen armed FBI agents inside her family’s apartment in East Harlem. They arrested her and her father, Mamadou Bah, and transported them to separate detention facilities. A government document leaked to the press claimed that Adama was a potential suicide bomber but failed to provide any evidence to support this claim. Released after six weeks in detention, Adama was forced to live under partial house arrest with an ankle bracelet, a government-enforced curfew, and a court-issued gag order that prohibited her from speaking about her case. In August of 2006, Adama’s father was deported back to Guinea, Africa. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 577
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SHARE: A concrete worst-case story of the colorblind-detention mechanism for someone following civil-liberties and CARA/immigration-detention reporting.