About Us

Our Story

The Coalition for Civil Freedoms (CCF) has its origins in the handwritten notes of a political prisoner, smuggled to his attorney while awaiting trial in the Special Housing Unit of a maximum security federal prison. In 2003, professor and prominent political activist, Sami Al-Arian, was arrested on politically-motivated “terrorism” charges of which a jury refused to convict after a six-month-long trial. Despite his innocence, Al-Arian would spend most of the next decade in solitary confinement and under house arrest fighting for his freedom. 

Knowing that there were others like him who were targeted unjustly for exercising their civil rights, and family members who were often abandoned by their communities, Al-Arian spent much of his time in prison drafting a vision for an organization that would support political prisoners and their families.

In 2010, leaders of prominent civil rights groups across the country such as the National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as local grassroots organizations defending victims of America’s domestic “War on Terror” such as Project SALAM, Friends of Human Rights, and the Muslim Legal Fund of America, convened at Al-Arian’s apartment in D.C. where he was still under house arrest. Along with former prisoners and family members, they discussed the post-9/11 crackdown on political dissent, the criminalization of Muslim communities, and the cruel and unusual treatment of America’s growing population of political prisoners.

Al-Arian’s prison notes, along with input from these organizations who were willing to center the needs of political prisoners and their families, became the building blocks of a new coalition focused on ending the abuses of the “War on Terror.” In working directly with and empowering family members to advocate for their imprisoned loved ones serving harsh sentences and facing inhumane treatment, CCF became the first organization of its kind to focus on prisoner and family support. 

In the years since, our work in the areas of education and outreach, grassroots organizing, legislative advocacy, and post-conviction legal services has also grown. CCF’s representation across the country includes over a dozen member organizations and over 100 impacted family members spanning 18 states. Our national presence is perhaps most strongly felt each year in dozens of congressional meetings in Washington organized by CCF to advocate against discriminatory laws that target innocent people.

CCF’s support for 200 political prisoners ranges from an annual Ramadan gift and regular correspondences to responding to prison conditions and even getting some prisoners released. The efforts of our legal team have led to significant legal victories including a number of prisoners being granted compassionate release. As a result of advocacy for those unjustly held behind bars, we continue to receive countless letters from prisoners who describe CCF as a "light behind [their] dark walls." 

Our Focus

As an organization founded by political prisoners and their families for political prisoners and their families, working alongside attorneys and human rights advocates with experience in post-9/11 “terrorism” trials, CCF has identified five key stages of government overreach that form the “life cycle” of a sham terrorism case. Our organization is set up to directly tackle these five issues through our various efforts, which can be read in more detail here Inventing Terrorists.

Below is a short description of the issues CCF is set up in response to, as demonstrated in the five stages of the life cycle of politically-motivated investigations, arrests, and convictions in the domestic “War on Terror.” 

Narrative

The criminalization of Muslim communities after 9/11 first and foremost relies on a substantial amount of misinformation and a parroting of the government’s narrative by uncritical media outlets. These false narratives of a “looming Muslim threat” serve to legitimize the abusive tactics employed by government agencies before and during investigations, and to influence citizens who enter the courtroom as jurors ready to convict following the skewed media coverage after an arrest is made. The perpetual regurgitation of a false narrative in the media, which is also demonstrated through governmental policies and approaches, that any violence perpetrated by Muslims is rooted in ideology and that Muslims possess a unique propensity to turn “extremist” has been debunked through countless studies. Nonetheless, this narrative plays the crucial and initial role of presenting Muslim communities in the U.S. as a unique security threat to the country, and that such a threat requires billions of dollars worth of investment in surveillance. Like any investment, a pay-off in the form of a “terrorism” conviction is expected from the start, even if the government has to invent a case all on its own. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this government-created narrative seeks to control the limits of acceptable political discourse and dissent, defining any opposition to certain government policies within the realm of “radicalism,” and more specifically, “Muslim extremism,” and subject to governmental abuse, investigation, and harassment.

Surveillance and Policing Communities

While the security state’s mass surveillance program has been the subject of much discussion and news coverage since at least the Snowden leaks in 2013, far less attention has been devoted to the specific surveillance of Muslim community spaces and institutions since 9/11. The effects mass surveillance have had on tearing at the fabric that binds Muslim communities in the U.S. together cannot be overstated. These surveillance tactics—paired with efforts to have certain community leaders, social workers, teachers, and public health providers ostensibly assist the government in identifying Muslims that may be “at risk” of becoming violent extremists through their “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) initiatives—have directly contributed to a large decrease in mosque attendance due to fear of government informants on the prowl to entrap Muslims in concocted faux crimes, as well as self-policing within communities to prevent political dissent due to its classification as potentially “radical” and worthy of government intervention. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in countless reports of community members and leaders turning on and isolating those the government deems suspect due to fear instilled in them through the FBI’s intimidation tactics. 

Dismantling Institutions, Targeting and Entrapping Muslims

After substantial resources are spent surveilling and infiltrating communities, the government identifies key individuals and institutions seen to be influential among communities and considered hostile by the government due to their opposition to the infringement of their rights and the targeting of their communities. The government arrests several of these leaders and shuts down prominent institutions and charities, creating a chilling effect that limits activism and isolates activists and their families, in a manner not unlike the FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) that targeted the Black American community at the height of the Black Power Movement. After dismantling prominent institutions and imprisoning noteworthy leaders, the FBI, along with local police forces who cooperate in the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), does not stop there. Using the debunked approach that CVE programs advocate, which link violence with ideology rather than social, economic, and political factors, the FBI identifies potential “terrorists” who may be prone to committing violence. Using its paid informants, who often have criminal records themselves, the government concocts a “terrorist attack” that it funds and encourages willing participants, often through financial incentives or manipulation, to carry out. CCF terms this unjust method of entrapping marginalized Muslims, who often suffer from mental health issues, preemptive prosecution. Preemptive prosecutions are the basis of a flawed and underhanded strategy by the FBI to target Muslims before they have committed any crime. The creation of these fake terror plots by the government serves to justify the dishonest narrative that the United States is under imminent threat from Muslims, which allows the life cycle of sham terrorism investigations to continue. Perhaps most worryingly, in recent years, the FBI has started to expand this harmful approach to other, non-Muslim communities in the United States, as well.

Pleas, Trials, and Sentencing

As CCF’s prisoners database shows, the majority of the cases that turn into arrests result in plea bargains, where the defendant—who often was targeted and entrapped successfully due to the government taking advantage of their mental health or socio-economic difficulties—pleads guilty to a “crime” they usually did not know they were committing. Other cases that do go to trial, especially those in which the defendant was a prominent leader or head of an institution that was targeted for political reasons, rely especially on two ingredients to produce a guilty verdict: A jury that has been exposed to dishonest news coverage of a case in particular and an anti-Muslim narrative in general; and unjust laws and underhanded legal tactics that put the defendant at a disadvantage. These laws include material support laws that use the fearmongering generated by the threat of “terrorism” to criminalize constitutionally-protected activities like speech, association, charity, peace-making, and social hospitality. Conspiracy laws, meanwhile, treat friendships and organizations as criminal conspiracies and, as a result, their members as guilty by association, even when most members of the group have not been involved in criminal activity and may not even be aware of it. Other underhanded tactics include the use of secret evidence, where the evidence of a crime is considered “classified” and the defense is not allowed to see what evidence is keeping their client imprisoned, regardless of whether or not they have a security clearance. Finally, once the guilt of the defendant is established, cruel “terrorism enhancement” clauses allow judges to sentence these individuals to dozens of extra years in prison and subject them to harsh treatment.

Torture and Family Isolation

Even after demonizing Muslims through a false narrative, infiltrating these communities and spreading fear, dismantling their institutions and charities, imprisoning individuals—spanning prominent leaders to those already marginalized in communities due to their social difficulties—and, finally, rigging their chances at finding justice in the courtroom through unjust laws, the government then takes steps to ensure that these political prisoners, newly-branded “terrorists,” are imprisoned under the harshest conditions, creating every effort to isolate them and their families entirely. In addition to prolonged solitary confinement, persistent discrimination on religious grounds, and other forms of torturous mistreatment, including lack of medical attention to those who need it, Muslim political prisoners are often confined to restrictive wings in federal prisons essentially created just for them. Dubbed “Gitmo North” by human rights observers, the Communication Management Units (CMUs) are highly restrictive sections in maximum security prisons that are almost exclusively meant to isolate Muslim political prisoners from the outside world and restrict their ability to remain close to their families, even denying them contact by having their visits behind a plexiglass divider. Furthermore, the incessant harassment that families of political prisoners face from government agencies, along with the lessons that communities often take away from these experiences to distance themselves from anyone targeted by the government due to the abuse and intimidation tactics often inflicted on them, only serves to prove that the government’s intention is to completely isolate anyone they deem a threat. CCF believes that communities and people of conscience forgetting these prisoners—and any extension of them—is what ultimately allows the government’s abuse to continue unchecked.