Public letter to the Boston Globe

To the Editor,

The Boston Globe recently published two stories on Daniel Maldonado: "Mass. native held in terror case" by Raja Mishra (Feb. 14, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2lz6ur) and "From N. H. to Somalia: Recalling a suspect's zeal" by Charles Radin (Feb. 17, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2dqtoa). Normally newspaper stories grab the reader's attention with an attention-grabbing title quickly explained by the initial paragraphs, which describe who, what, where and when.

Mishra quickly tells the reader that Daniel Maldonado is under arrest for alledgedly conspiring with al-Qaeda in Somalia according to FBI papers filed in Houston yesterday.

Radin quickly elucidates Maldonado's suspicious acts. He used to have tattoos and dreadlocks. Then he converted to Islam, became rather strict in observance and moved to Somalia, where he participated in unspecified "terrorist acts."

Instead of explaining the "terrorist acts" Radin continues to describe Maldonado's suspicious behavior. He began to wear Arabic clothes. He tried to grow a beard, but because of his Puerto Rican heritage (and the probable African ancestry that his picture indicates) he could not. His wife wore a burkah, and his daughter wore a hijab.

Maldonado was no longer eager and humble but became arrogant and memorized the Quran better than anyone else in his community. He was charismatic. He traveled to Yemen to learn Arabic. Then he moved to Egypt and finally to Somalia, where he learned something about weapons and lost his wife to malaria. Until just recently, he was raising his children as a single dad in Mogadishu.

When the US-backed Ethiopian army invaded Somalia and destroyed the modicum of stability that the Somali Islamic courts had established, he fled with his children to Kenya, where he was arrested and turned over to the FBI. Maldonado was understandably outraged at US policy like many other Americans, who have grown increasingly horrified at the policy of the Bush administration.

The record of the Bush administration in such cases makes it highly probable that the FBI either falsified Maldonado's statements after taking custody of him or obtained them under torture.

In summary, Maldonado is a terror suspect because he converted to Islam, memorized the Quran, became an "uppity Negro" as white racists used to say in the fifties, learned Arabic, and relocated to the Islamic world. While living in a city where one often needs a gun to go shopping (like some US inner city areas), he sensibly undertook some basic military training.

After stripping out the propaganda, the innuendo, and the prejudice against Blacks, Muslims and Arabs, the two articles together tell the reader that Maldonado's "terrorist acts" consist of being armed while he was fleeing an invasion and of later shooting off his mouth probably out of an understandable combination of anger and fear.

The reporters completely missed or buried the story of a troubled youth, who tried to put his life together in a foreign land and who then as a struggling single father desperately tried to save his family from the mortal threat of US-sponsored military aggression.

Sincerely yours,

Joachim Martillo Sphere: Related Content