Travel advisory

[abdul zanabli]

From my personal experience and reading everyones experience, certainly we all can feel by now that the Syrian Americans are under an increased scrutinizing by US government at this time. This has multiple reasons including some intelligence reports probably by regime supporters who are concerned about the increased influence of SAMS as well as the fear of terrorism at US due to the conflict or a shift in US position on the Syrian conflict. Traditionally the US stood beside the winners in any conflict.

Regardless to the cause, we need to understand it is not about SAMS conference or organization since other Syrians who are traveling to other countries were questioned as well. certainly this is not going to stop at a SAMS conference and it will include any activity by any Syrian organization. 

The purpose is not to press charges against us for treating the refugees within Turkey or inside Syria. The propose is to identify individuals that might have terrorism ties or have any involvement with the conflict. Secondary benefits from this process are to intimidate and deter us from any humanitarian or political activities, also to black mail individuals to provide further intelligence.

The work of SAMS is the most transparent and trusted by the US government, SAMS has not received any official inquiries regarding its activities inside Syria by any regulatory agency in US.

Our partners in medical relief work is USAid and its subsidiaries which only highlights the legitimacy of our operation.

I do agree that this is a situation that we should not take lightly and it is a time for unity and action. Such action needs to be coordinated and be done on a national level.

I suggest we wright to senator John Mccain (to ask him to sponsor a bill or wright to his colleagues to acknowledge the importance of work of Syrian NGOs and stop the harassment of the involved personnel by FBI and borders control officers) also reach out to other supporting senators in a unified message and action plan, we should get CAIR national involved, ACLU and Human right watch. We should publicize this with CNN (Anderson Cooper and/or Christiane Amanpour).

We also need to work within ARC, reach out to SAC and other Syrian organizations to enhance this campaign. We need to form a special committee to pursue this very important task. We need to share this plan with our members and  supporters in order for everyone to feel they are not left alone and we are working together on this issue.

I suggest we consult with CAIR and ACLU legal teams and have them on stand by for all the potential ramifications that may follow this initial screenings by border control. The reason our contact information are verified are only to follow up on this initial interview with further FBI interrogations. Each of our conference attendees may be approached within the next few weeks, if we cant provide adequate support to our members, this will result in huge pubic image damage to SAMS.

I suggest we schedule a meeting to discuss this with a legal advisor, then communicate a plan with our concerned members. 

 

Abdulrahman Zanabli, MD

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