 Randall "Ismail" Royer saw himself as a bridge, a white Muslim convert from suburban St. Louis uniquely positioned to help other Americans understand his faith. The U.S. government had a different view - that Royer was part of a shadowy band of Islamist extremists, bent on holy war. In legal terms, the government view prevailed.
Royer, 32, now sits in a Pennsylvania medium-security federal prison. He's serving a mandatory 20-year term after pleading guilty of using firearms in support of a militant Muslim group battling Indian forces over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
But while officials including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed Royer's guilty plea last year as a victory in the U.S. war on terrorism, the plea agreement acknowledged no act or plot against U.S. interests here or abroad. Under the plea deal, other charges that could have sent Royer to prison for life were dropped.
Federal prosecutors defend the long sentences meted out to Royer and others in what became known as the "Virginia Jihad" cases, also called the "paintball cases" because defendants had played war games at local paintball courses.
But to Royer and his family, and to many Muslims around the country, the disposition of the cases sent a different signal - one of a government overreaching when national fears run high, and understanding low.
Royer still sees himself as uniquely positioned to drive that message home to non-Muslims who haven't experienced it firsthand. "I think the American people need to be concerned," Royer said in a letter to the Post-Dispatch from prison that arrived this week, "because once the system is bent to start putting a minority in prison, the system stays bent."
| Victim card, nicely played. |
Mirsada Stabancic and Ramon Royer have Ismail Royer in common - her husband, his son.
Stabancic's background is wartime Bosnia. Royer's is farmland Illinois, Army service, a career in commercial photography and suburban St. Louis. Together they're coping with a life that neither envisioned.
Stabancic, 27, is raising the couple's four children, ages 2 to 7. She lives in an apartment building a block from the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church. The senior Royer and his wife, Nancy, live down the hall; they moved from St. Louis this summer to help with the children. A support group at the mosque pays Stabancic's rent and also tuition at the local Islamic school.
| 'support group'? Mayhaps the gov't should quietly check the financing of the 'support group'? |
Since August, Stabancic and her children have been unable to visit Royer at the Allenwood, Pa., prison or even to talk with him on the telephone. He has been denied phone and visit privileges for six months because prison officials said he had once called home without getting approval first. Prison officials declined to comment on an individual inmate situation but said such disciplinary procedures are common.
The youngest of Royer's children, 2-year-old Hassan, knows his father mostly from photographs. "Hassan says he's in the kitchen when people ask where his dad is," Stabancic said, "because that's where his photograph is."
Stabancic met Royer when she was still in high school. She immigrated from Bosnia to the United States and moved to St. Louis knowing no English. She learned the language watching "Days of Our Lives" on television, and now speaks fluently and expressively.
Adjusting to American life wouldn't have been easy even with a more conventional husband. Stabancic wears a full hijab that covers her head to foot, including all of her face except her eyes. Today she wears jeans under the long cloak and a ring on one of her toes. But eight years ago, as a new arrival in middle America, she got looks standing in line at a St. Louis McDonald's. "Someone said 'Look at how she dresses. She's in America. She can take that off now. She shouldn't let her husband do that to her.'
"And I said, 'What are you talking about? It's not my husband. He has nothing to do with this.'"
More recently, on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart with a friend, also covered, she overheard a man in the parking lot tell his wife, 'There go the Saudis. There go the terrorists.' Inside the store, she caught up with the man. "I said, 'What if I called you a rapist?' He said, 'But I'm not a rapist.' And I said "Well, I'm not a terrorist, either.'"
| You just married one, that's all. |
But those are the exceptions, not the rule, Stabancic is quick to add. She loves America, she says. "There are a lot more nice people here than ignorant people," she says.
When Frank Brostrom of the St. Louis FBI office called in fall 2001, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ray Royer was happy to answer questions about the activities of his Muslim convert son. "I spent three years in the Army," the elder Royer said. "I gave my oath - and I don't take that lightly.
"I let them know that I was on their side. I said that if anything Randy was involved in risked harming this country I would have told them - but that there wasn't anything."
Brostrom, a 15-year bureau veteran, confirmed that he had met half a dozen times with the senior Royer between fall 2001 and his son's arrest in June 2003. Some of the meetings took place at Denny's restaurants. Others were at the family's home, with Royer making a specialty dish that he now calls "FBI spaghetti."
"I think it shows that we're human, too," Brostrom said. "I sat down and had spaghetti with the father of someone who had problems. I treated them with respect and I had sympathy for their situation."
The Royers were of interest not just because of their son but also for a stream of young Muslims who had rented rooms in their Manchester house. One of them was Zihad Sadaqa, also known as Zihad Khaleel, who bought a satellite telephone that ended up in the hands of senior al-Qaida operatives. Sadaqa was never charged with a crime; he died in an mysterious automobile accident in Saudi Arabia in 2002. "I think these people took advantage of the fact that the Royers were allowing people a place to stay," Brostrom said. "I wish Mr. and Mrs. Royer the best. They're very patriotic people."
Ramon Royer says he wonders if the FBI took advantage of him, manipulating the law enforcement system to build a case against his son. His experiences remind him, he says, of a famous passage in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." "I guess in this country, too, all people are created equal," Ramon Royer says. "It's just that some are more equal than others."
| If only you'd put a little more time into knowing what your son was doing ... |
The activities of Randall "Ismail" Royer were scarcely a secret. The Parkway South graduate had found Islam as a 19-year-old and became an ardent proselytizer and explainer of the faith, on Web sites and as communications director for two of the biggest Muslim associations in America.
He had fought alongside Muslims in Bosnia's civil war in the mid-1990s and in 2000 visited a Muslim training camp on the disputed border of Kashmir between Pakistan and India. He even took the opportunity to fire a gun in the "general direction," he said, of Indian forces. And from 2001 on he voluntarily discussed his activities with Brostrom and other FBI agents.
He also attended lectures by Ali al-Timimi, an Iraqi-American Muslim imam, or preacher, known for his inflammatory anti-American rhetoric. Timimi was convicted this year of inciting terrorism and sentenced to life in prison. His alleged urgings that Royer and others in the paintball group join Jihad forces abroad were a key factor in the government's prosecution of the case.
| As it should have been. Let's see: goes to Kashmir, check. Gets weapons training, check. Pals around with known Islamist kook, check. Fights in a foreign country, check. I think I could build a case with that. |
Royer says his own condemnation of violence was clear. In August 2001, a month before the 9/11 attacks, a posting by Royer on a Chicago-based Muslim Web site singled out a Hamas attack on a Sbarros restaurant in Jerusalem. "If the Israelis are unjust for killing a Muslim child, then this action is just as horrifying," he wrote. "How miserable I would feel to stand before Allah with this action on my record of deeds."
In a letter from prison last month Royer stressed that he had "never thought for an instant, or even discussed, any kind of anti-American actions."
The law he pleaded guilty of violating was the rarely enforced Neutrality Act, a law dating to the 18th century that bars citizens from joining military action against nations friendly to America. Royer pleaded guilty of using weapons and explosives in violation of the act.
| 'Rarely enforced' doesn't mean 'never enforced', nor does it mean 'shouldn't be enforced'. |
Sources close to the case say Royer could have negotiated a shortened sentence but forfeited the opportunity when prosecutors learned last spring that he had communicated improperly with al-Timimi, the imam, then on trial. Royer says the real problem was his refusal to back up the government's claim that the group had planned to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere against U.S. forces.
Three of the paintball defendants said they had intended to fight U.S. forces; they received reduced sentences. Three others were acquitted and six convicted, with sentences ranging from 15 years to 85 years.
Royer's father put the issue bluntly. The prosecutors "were very angry with Randy," he said, "for not agreeing to lie for them."
| There's an alternate explanation ... |
In his recent letters, Royer says he is determined to make the best of life in prison, even as he reflected the resentment that many Muslims feel about law enforcement tactics. "In our situation, what you have is a passel of prosecutors and FBI agents who are taking advantage of post-9/11 hysteria to build their careers," Royer says. "This is not to say that there are not Muslims in the world who are dangerous to U.S. security," Royer wrote. "But we were just not those people." 
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