Arrest Caused Commencement 'Lock-Down'

The arrest of a Palestinian activist and suspected terrorist in Harvard Square just a week before Commencement led the University to institute a “lock-down” during June’s Commencement exercises, according to recent interviews with people involved with the incident.

Speaking publicly for the first time on the incident, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley says that a number of issues—including the controversy behind the “American Jihad” speech by Zayed M. Yasin ’02, a World Bank protest at MIT planned for the day after Harvard’s Commencement and post-Sept. 11 concerns—led HUPD to plan for heightened security at the June 6 Commencement ceremony.

But it wasn’t until the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) arrested 24-year-old Jaoudat Abouazza on traffic violations and dangerous weapon charges near the Au Bon Pain in Holyoke Center that the University decided to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Yard on Commencement Day and bring in extra assistance from other state and federal agencies.

“There was enough concern, coupled with many other factors, that led the University administration to decide for the first time to put all 30,000 people through metal detectors and high level security screenings,” Riley says. “We even had bomb technicians, bomb-sniffing dogs, members of federal agencies and the National Guard at Commencement.”

Riley and other University administrators stress, however, that there was never a credible or specific threat against Commencement.

For their part, Abouazza’s lawyer and supporters say that his arrest was unwarranted.

Steve Kirschbaum, a pro-Palestine activist who knows Abouazza, says Abouazza’s arrest was unjust and that he has never posed a threat to the community.

“The fact that HUPD would attempt to use the Jaoudat Abouazza case as one in which to heighten their security really highlights that we need security from the egregious police-state actions from these authorities,” says Kirschbaum, who said he was initially unaware of any relation between the arrest and Commencement security.

Efforts to reach Abouazza were unsuccessful.

The Arrest

University officials had already reevaluated security at Harvard’s 351st Commencement because of concerns of terrorism after Sept. 11 and because of heightened tensions surrounding the national attention and controversy over Yasin’s Commencement address.

However, an investigation following Abouazza’s arrest raised additional concerns among federal and area law enforcement officials that Commencement might be the target of a plot to disrupt the exercises.

According to police reports, a CPD officer first became suspicious of Abouazza on the night of May 30—less than a week before Commencement—after routinely running through a computer the license plate number of a Chevy Corsica driven by Abouazza.

After the plates came up as stolen in the computer, the officer stopped the car on Dunster Street and conducted a “field investigation,” and determined that Abouazza’s license had been suspended nearly seven months earlier.

The officer searched the car and found a double-edged knife, a can of mace and leaflets for a June 9 protest at an Israeli Independence Day festival in Boston.

Abouazza was arrested on seven counts—operating a motor vehicle on a suspended license, driving an unregistered motor vehicle, operating a motor vehicle without insurance, attaching plates, possessing stolen property under $250 and two counts of possession of a dangerous weapon.

Police concerns piqued during the traffic stop and subsequent field investigation when Palestinian activist Amer Jubran, who was sitting at Au Bon Pain, saw the police interrogating Abouazza and offered his services as a translator. (According to court records, Abouazza does not speak fluent English.)

Jubran, who has been a leader in pro-Palestine activism in the Northeast and active in Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.), walked over to observe the police interrogation of Abouazza and ensure his rights were not violated, according to Kirschbaum.

The presence of Jubran and another Arab organizer at Au Bon Pain at that moment, combined with the passing presence of Abouazza, sparked concern among law enforcement.

Jubran has been a frequent leader of protests against the Israeli state, including a large protest on Israeli Independence Day in 2001 in Brookline in which Jubran was arrested. The charges in that incident were later dropped.

Last Monday, Jubran was taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and FBI at his home in Cumberland, R.I., on charges that he was in the U.S. illegally. Currently, he is being held in a Rhode Island jail.

“This is a pattern and practice of the government pinpointing individuals who are activists and trying to silence them,” says Abouazza’s immigration attorney Nelson Brill.

Riley says that Abouazza’s arrest did not have anything to do with Harvard besides its Dunster Street location.

“We had no information that there was any threat posed towards Harvard,” Riley says.

Nevertheless, the strange confluence of people on May 30, the follow-up investigations by law enforcement agencies and the already-heightened tensions surrounding Commencement led Riley just days before the June 6 exercises to recommend that metal detectors be used.

The Defendant

According to Kirschbaum and Brill, Abouazza is a Palestinian activist with Canadian citizenship.

Court records were filed under the name “Abouassa,” but also refer to him as “Abouzza” and “Abouazza.”

But friends refer to the defendant as Abouazza, as seen on numerous pro-Palestine websites with articles about his arrest and subsequent detention.

Police reports indicate that Abouazza was living in Dorchester at the time of his arrest.

Kirschbaum, who says that he is a member of A.N.S.W.E.R.with Abouazza, says the two organized several protests together, including an April 6 demonstration in Boston and a protest in front of the Israeli consulate.

“His only so-called crime was to be out on the streets defending his people of Palestine,” Kirschbaum says.

But as soon as Abouazza was released from jail on June 3, the INS took him into custody and held him on grounds that he was in the country illegally.

An INS spokesperson did not return calls for comment.

Seth I. Horowitz, spokesperson for the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, says such intervention by the INS in a criminal case is not unusual.

“If a defendant’s citizenship is in question, it’s not uncommon for INS to become involved, and in this case they did,” he explains.

Brill says it is unclear whether Abouazza was in the country illegally.

“He came as a visitor from Canada, but Canadian’s aren’t given any kind of entry documentation with a certain time to leave,” Brill says. “It’s a very gray area.”

Ultimately, the court permitted Abouazza to voluntarily return to Canada.

Brill says that his client was wrongly suspected of being a terrorist, and police and government officials were looking for ways to keep him in custody for additional questioning.

“They held him in jail for a number of weeks, and the FBI was interviewing him on a regular basis,” Brill says. “On their end they thought he was suspicious—which was groundless.”

FBI spokesperson Gail Marcinkiewicz said she could not “confirm or deny” that the FBI had interrogated Abouazza.

She declined to comment further on the incident or the FBI’s involvement.

Ultimately, Brill says, the court granted Abouazza voluntary departure to return to Canada in early July, but because he still has criminal charges against him—and was not released from INS custody to appear in court—Abouazza cannot return to the U.S.

Since Abouazza’s return to Canada, Kirschbaum says he has continued his activism there, organizing a Sept. 28 protest in Ottawa.

A Cautious Approach

Now, five months after Abouazza’s arrest and the last-minute decision to use metal detectors at Commencement, Riley says he has no regrets.

“We were playing it on the safe side,” he says. “We didn’t have enough of a threat to tell people to stay away from Commencement. This was purely pro-active.”

Riley describes the atmosphere during the week before Commencement as “relatively tense.”

MIT, knowing that the World Bank protest was scheduled for Commencement, had planned for months to use metal detectors, Riley says.

But with its last-minute demand, Harvard was forced to get its metal detectors from New York.

Security at the exercises was unprecedented—including the presence of the FBI and other federal law enforcement, local sheriff deputies, CPD, Massachusetts State Police, National Guard troops and officials from the Army’s biological terrorist group.

And nothing happened.

“Commencement was great. There was only one minor complaint about the disruption and delays from security,” Riley says. “I don’t know if we averted anything but any potential that was there obviously didn’t happen.”

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.