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Show WedHTiursFri, May 19-21, 2004 The Park Record A-7 Muslims rally for anti-terrorism petition ' WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (AP) A group of Utah Muslims are supporting a global Internet petition peti-tion called "Not in the Name of Islam" that condemns acts of terrorism. ter-rorism. The petition by the Council on American-Islamic Relations was started in response to the beheading behead-ing in Iraq of American civilian Nick Berg in retaliation for the treatment of Iraqis detained by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison. Nora Abu-Dan, 11, wants peace in the world and feels that it's her duty as a Muslim to speak out against war and terrorism. "You have to stand up," said Nora, a fifth-grader at Stansbury Elementary School. "Maybe one person can make a difference." Islam means "peace," her father, Deeb Abu-Dan, said following a prayer service and sermon at West Valley's Khadeeja mosque on the Quran's call to treat prisoners of war "as if they are part of your family." fam-ily." The petition by the Washington-based Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy advo-cacy group reads, in part: "No injustice injus-tice done to Muslims can ever justi fy the massacre of innocent people, and no act of terror will ever serve the cause of Islam." While no official tally of signatures signa-tures was immediately available, Muslims from 45 countries had signed the petition since it started Thursday, council spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said Friday. Council on American-Islamic Relations spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed said the petition is a symbolic sym-bolic action to help dispel complaints com-plaints her organization receives that Muslims dont speak out against terrorism. Prison abuse investigators question hiring of former Utah prison boss SALT LAKE CITY (AP) U.S. Justice Department officials have come under fire for hiring a former Utah prison boss with a history of human rights complaints to oversee prisons in Iraq. O. Lane McCotter, 63, was in Baghdad from May to September last year overseeing the reconstruction reconstruc-tion of Abu Ghraib as part of a team picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft. He was corrections director direc-tor in Texas from 1985-87, New Mexico from 1987-91 and Utah from 1992-97. McCotter advocated the use of restraining chairs in Utah prisons, causing the death in 1997 of a mentally men-tally iff inmate who spent 16 hours strapped to one. He resigned from his post two months later, and the department subsequently stopped using the chairs. In October 1988, a court-appointed prison monitor accused New Mexico state prison officials of erasing eras-ing a portion of a videotape of a prison disturbance to cover up acts of brutality. McCotter accused the prison monitor of "fabricating atroc ities," and said he believed the tape erasure was accidental. McCotter 's critics say the pictures of abuse and humiliation at Abu Ghraib are eerily similar to video and written records that detail the plight of bound and naked Utah prisoners in the former isolation chamber at Utah's Point of the Mountain prison. "If our government had a serious commitment to the humane treatment treat-ment of prisoners, why would they send somebody to Iraq with a history histo-ry of hostility to prisoner rights?" ' Carol Gnade, a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Utah who battled McCotter, told the Salt Lake Tribune. "What it shows is the U.S. government really doesnt take civil rights abuses in our own prison systems seriously." McCotter has condemned the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, but told the Tribune he's also angry about sweeping condemnations of the U.S. military. "We worked with military police every day," McCotter said. "We traveled trav-eled with them, they helped us, and they provided the security so we could get (Abu Ghraib) open and operational ... The military police are literally on the front lines every day in Iraq. They were absolutely essential essen-tial to everything we were doing." McCotter has said his primary duty in Iraq was to evaluate the structural status of the prisons, and that he did not train guards. Congress, meanwhile, is asking questions about how Ashcroft, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld chose the civil contractors who worked with the military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib. Lawmakers also want to know how Ashcroft found McCotter, whose selection is reviving outrage about the spotty history of human rights in U.S. prisons. McCotter insists he cant recall who from the Bush administration asked him to go to Iraq. "I'm retired military, my name probably surfaced from that," he says. "I got a call from them and they said I'd been recommended. I have no idea who." "This is one way people will be able to see Muslims from around the world, not just in America, joining join-ing hands and condemning these types of acts," she said. Donna Lee Bowen, professor of political science at Brigham Young University, said Muslims have been speaking out against terrorism locally but that their efforts arent getting broad media coverage. 'What I've noticed, there is an enormous need to hear Muslims . condemn terrorism," she said. "This has been impossible to do because Islam has no central hierarchy." hierar-chy." Imam Shuaib-Ud Din of the Khadeeja mosque said Utah's estimated esti-mated 25,000 Muslims are speaking out through efforts such as a blood drive that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist ter-rorist attacks. "I would disagree with the premise prem-ise we have not made a stand, because we have," he said. "We dont have a religious hierarchy, no pope, to make a statement." K-mti-u- ft Utahn gets nod as Belgian envoy SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A Utah native who's been involved in the rebuilding of postwar Iraq has been tapped to become U.S. ambassador to Belgium. Tom Korologos, 71, is an influential influ-ential Washington lobbyist, and has been serving as senior counsel to Paul Bremer, who has overseen the rebuilding of Iraq. He's also the primary liaison to Congress about developments there. Korologos took the job in Iraq after he recently retired as head of the lobbying firm of Timmons and Co. He has been a close adviser to all GOP presidents since Richard Nixon, and run operations for several sev-eral Republican National Conventions. He graduated from "the University of Utah and has a master's mas-ter's degree from Columbia University. no oftftftVfEMll Ii His villi1 1 Tr Huff v-t' Hp'' m S& IH-t 110 II Vt I '$' Vim - r !. Hi i KK f . Mtli'tl v 0'$ tW n Din, Spring ahead with A' SunWSnow Park City's Premier Landscape company with 22 years experience. 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