The repeated arrests of 41-year-old Rezwan Masud, a Bangladeshi nuclear scientist living in the United States, has provoked an uproar. Suspected of terrorist activities, on March 17, 2004, FBI agents stormed the scientist’s home in Cromwell, Connecticut, and kept his wife and six-year-old daughter blindfolded during the day-long raid.
Though he became a U.S. citizen in 1997, Masud has been detained repetitively and harassed by interrogators while re-entering the United States from abroad. However, his problems do not stop there. While visiting the Arab Emirates last September, Masud was detained there overnight, suspected of being a CIA operative. Released through the intervention of the U.S. embassy, on his way home he was again detained by German authorities in Frankfurt, and once again when entering the United States by Homeland Security. Masud has demanded an explanation from the U.S. government for his repeated arrests and the raid on his home but has not gotten a response, given that no charges have been brought against him.
Masud granted CNN news anchor Paula Zahn a long interview but no date has been set for broadcasting it.
Since the raid on his home, Masud has been arrested three times by federal agents. Last week, on route to Italy for business, Masud spoke to Bangla Patrika at Kennedy Airport: "As citizens of the United States, we love this country. We expect equal treatment before the law. We don’t know why this kind of harassment is being leveled at us."
During the March 17 raid of his house, federal agents confiscated his computer, documents of his bank accounts and credit card transactions. An examination of his records revealed Masud had donated money on humanitarian grounds to several Muslim volunteer organizations. According to a source, Masud’s name come up in connection to a British Muslim suspected to be a terrorist supporter, whose name is as yet undisclosed. This connection, however, proved to be totally unfounded.
Masud and his wife Awatef, who is a native of Tunisia and is also a scientist, live with their three children in the Cromwell house, which also serves as the office for their export business, North American Technical Service. They sell radiation detectors and water purification systems to several Asian and Middle East countries. His trip to United Arab Emirates was to install radiation detectors at different ports there. On September 28, when he reached the airport in Dubai, his passport was seized and he was handcuffed and taken into custody. Though everything was taken away from him, airport authorities overlooked a cell phone in his pocket. Masud sneaked into a bathroom and made contact with the U.S. embassy there. When they found his membership card to the National Republican Congressional Committee in his bag, they called out derisively, "We got Bush." After his release, Masud was instructed to appear before a prosecutor before leaving the country. When Masud again returned to UAE on business on Oct. 18th, U.S. embassy personnel instructed him not to come back.
According to information given by FBI agents, the Bangladeshi scientist had donated more than $10,000 on several occasions to the Benevolence International Foundation, an Islamic charity based in Illinois.
"If the organization is involved with any terrorist activity, I don’t understand how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued them a tax identification number," said Masud. He added, “I also donated money to Christian charity organizations. There is no other reason other than humanitarian for these donations.”
Ibrahim Hopper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said, " We don’t know of any other incident similar to what has happened had happened to Syed Masud."
"What has happened to me is a glaring example of the American image crisis around the world as well as a crisis of trust in the Muslim community in the United States."
