Denied Entry
A leading member of Britain’s Muslim community, headed to New York for an academic conference, was forced to leave his transatlantic flight without explanation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security earlier today.
The removal of Kamal Helbawy, the 80-year-old founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, came just minutes before his American Airlines flight was due to take off from London’s Heathrow Airport. The incident is the latest instance in which U.S. security officials have denied prominent Muslim leaders entry to the United States.
The move startled officials at New York University Law School who had invited Helbawy to be a featured speaker at a conference the organization is sponsoring Thursday night on the Muslim Brotherhood movement. “He’s a really respected guy,” said Paul Cruickshank, a fellow at the law school’s Center for Law and Security, which had organized the conference. “He’s very influential within the Muslim community in Britain and his name is recognized throughout the world.”
Spokesmen for the Homeland Security Department and FBI declined any immediate comment on why Helbawy, a British citizen with a valid passport, was removed from the plane. A senior U.S. government official, who declined to be identified talking about sensitive matters, said he was puzzled by the incident because there appeared to be no intelligence reporting linking Helbawy to terrorism.
Helbawy, an Egyptian-born Islamic scholar, was for years a leading spokesman in Europe for the Muslim Brotherhood, a secretive organization founded in Egypt that some U.S. officials say is dedicated to spreading a radical brand of Islam throughout the world.
While not denying his affiliation with the Brotherhood, Helbawy described himself in a telephone interview today as a moderate who has publicly denounced terrorism “thousands of times.” He also noted that he serves on the Muslim Council of Britain—a semiofficial British government advisory committee that works to turn British Muslims away from violence.
As recounted by Helbawy, he had already settled into his seat on American Airlines Flight 105 this morning when he heard his name called on the loudspeaker just a few minutes before the plane was due to take off. After reporting to the front of the aircraft, a member of the flight crew asked him to step off the plane for two minutes. When he did so, he was greeted by a U.S. Homeland Security official who began questioning him about his background, his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and his reasons for attending the conference in New York.
“If you want to ask me any more questions, my solicitor should be here,” Helbawy said he then told the Homeland Security agent. The agent replied that if he wanted to go to the United States, he should go to the U.S. Embassy in London and get a visa—an explanation that Helbawy said made no sense because British citizens generally don’t need to apply for a visa in advance of a temporary visit to the United States.
“This is stupidity,” Helbawy said about the decision to evict him from the plane. “They shouldn’t be preventing moderates from talking and discussing. The extremists are going to point to this and say, ‘This is your American administration. Look at what they are doing. You talk about trying to bring peace. This is what is going to happen to you'.”
The action against Helbawy comes just a few weeks after the State Department denied a visa to Tariq Ramadan, another prominent Islamic scholar, for the second time. That action provoked widespread criticism from civil-liberties groups who noted that, like Helbawy, Ramadan has publicly disavowed violence.
Both cases, however, may suggest heightened U.S. government sensitivity about the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose precise goals and methods have become a subject of increasingly intense debate. Ramadan, for example, is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Although he no longer serves as the spokesman for the group in Europe, Helbawy said he is still a member of the Brotherhood. Officials familiar with U.S. intelligence estimates say the Brotherhood itself is generally not regarded as a terrorist organization, although factions that have splintered from the group—some of which later became part of Al Qaeda—did later turn to violence.
Karen Greenberg, the executive director of New York University’s Center for Law and Security, said that Helbawy was the second Brotherhood member invited to this week’s conference who was denied entry to the United States. Abdel Monem Abul ElFotouh, a leading member of the Brotherhood in Egypt, was also denied a visa to enter the United States after already being announced as a speaker at the conference.
Greenberg said the controversy about the Brotherhood, and its ultimate goals, is one of the reasons her organization thought it was so important to have a conference on the subject. Her goal, she said, was to have members of the Brotherhood speaking at the conference rather than simply American or European academics talking about what they think the Brotherhood represents.
“They didn’t want to have his conversation to happen in public,” said Greenberg about the U.S. government officials who prevented Beldawy from coming to the country. “It looks like they are afraid of the words that are going to come out of somebody’s mouth.”
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Mark Hosenball joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in November 1993, covering a range of issues for the National Affairs department. Most recently, he has written and reported numerous stories on terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks on America. He has also covered campaign finance, the Monica Lewinsky controversy, the death of Princess Diana, Whitewater, the crashes of EgyptAir flight 990 and TWA flight 800, as well as related air safety issues.
Hosenball came to Newsweek from "Dateline NBC," where he worked as an investigative producer. He also worked extensively as a print journalist, writing for a number of British and American publications, including the London Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard, Time Out, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. In addition, he has done commentaries for American Public Radio.
Hosenball has been honored with a number of prestigious awards. Most recently, along with a team of Newsweek correspondents, he was awarded the Overseas Press Club's most prestigious honor, the 2002 Ed Cunningham Memorial Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Newsweek's coverage of the war on terror. His reporting and that of his colleagues earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002 for its coverage of September 11 and its aftermath. And a story he co-authored was highlighted in a citation Newsweek received by the White House Correspondents' Association when it awarded the magazine the 2002 Edgar A. Poe Award for "excellence on a story of national or regional importance. "Newsweek's September 11 coverage started long before the attacks. An article in the magazine's February 19, 2001 issue warned with chilling accuracy: 'The threat posed by (Osama) bin Laden is growing -- and coming ever closer to home."
Hosenball was a contributor to the CANAL + TV documentary, "L'Argent de la Drogue" (Drug Money), which was awarded the "Sept D'Or," the French equivalent of an Emmy. He also contributed to NBC News' coverage of the BCCI scandal, which earned a 1991 Peabody Award.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College in Dublin. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and son.
Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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