Joe Dibee looks out of a window at his family's home on Wednesday, February 17, 2021, in Seattle.
Megan Farmer / KUOW
In the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, federal law enforcement in the United States talked about animal rights and environmental activists as one the most significant domestic national security threats.
After dozens of incidents and tens of millions of dollars in damage across the West, the government ultimately brought charges against 18 activists involved with the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front.
“Terrorism is terrorism, no matter what the motive,” then-FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters on Jan. 20, 2006, while announcing a 65-count indictment. “This indictment marks significant progress in our efforts to combat animal rights extremism and eco-terrorism.”
Almost all have been convicted. But one of the defendants charged in that case awaits trial. Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, now 53, was an international fugitive for 12 years before he was arrested in Cuba in 2018.
The FBI put out a wanted poster with a $50,000 reward, searching for Joseph Dibee after he was indicted for his alleged role in crimes committed by the Earth Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation Front.
via Federal Bureau of Investigations
In January, Dibee was released from federal custody in Portland. He faces charges in Oregon, Washington and California, which carry a maximum prison sentence of up to 20 years and potentially millions of dollars in restitution.
In a wide-ranging interview — his first since being released from jail —Dibee told OPB his story.
Related: The many lives of Joseph Dibee
He revealed how his youth shaped his views on environmentalism.
“I could see all the clear cuts in every direction and I realized it wasn’t just my space that they had taken, but they had done horrible things to places all over,” Dibee said. “I thought, ‘Well, somebody has got to do something about it. And that somebody was me.”
He also discussed why he fled the country in 2005 after FBI agents said they were bringing charges.
“I’m a Middle Eastern person, and it’s not lost on me the implications of that in the United States,” Dibee said. “So, the government started the conversation by saying, ... ‘Do you want to do what we tell you to, or are we going to come get you?’ That’s a very thinly veiled threat. I took it as that.”
Dibee talked about his life as a fugitive in Syria and Russia, where he worked on environmental projects. He also talked in detail for the first time about what transpired during his capture in Cuba.
“I got tortured, there’s no other way to say it,” Dibee said. “I was definitely threatened.”
Dibee’s facing a possible trial at the same time Congress and federal law enforcement debate what constitutes domestic terrorism, especially in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Decades ago as charges were first brought against Dibee and his co-defendants, the federal government labeled them as terrorists. And for Dibee that label has stuck, at least in the eyes of the Justice Department, which in 2018 announced agents had arrested a “domestic terrorism suspect” in Cuba. Now, law enforcement is under pressure to more clearly define whether property damage is the same as acts that threaten life or democratic process.
Dibee’s case and interview with OPB offer insight into pressing questions about whether federal law enforcement needs more power to quash domestic extremism, or if this moment is a chance to reconsider the word terrorism and when its applied.