Thanks to Alexander Cockburn for so economically and ably presenting the case and the details of the torture that the heroic Al-Arian is undergoing. From many of the details below, it's clear that the events of 9/11 and the attendant anti Muslim fervor are an essential element and an excuse for the behavior of many of the individuals involved in the torture, from the fanatic judge, to the several prosecutors and their teams, to the individual jailer/torturers. You'd think that this alone would encourage many on the left to look more closely into the (lack of) evidence implicating young Muslim terrorists. If only for the sake of Sami.
(For more on Stephen Emerson's anti-Muslim viciousness, check out the DESIP website below.)
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Weekend Edition
March 3 / 4, 2007
A Federal Witchhunt
The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian
www.counterpunch.org
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
One of the first big show trials here in the post-9/11 homeland was of a Muslim professor from Florida, now 49, Sami al-Arian. Pro-Israel hawks had resented this computer professor at the University of South Florida long before Atta and the hijackers flew their planes into the Trade towers, because they saw al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait of parents kicked out of their Homeland in 1948, as an effective agitator here for the Palestinian cause. As John Sugg, a fine journalist, then based in Tampa, who's followed al-Arian's tribulations for years, wrote in the spring of 2006 on this website:
"When was al-Arian important? More than a decade ago, when Israel's Likudniks in the United States, such as [Steven] Emerson, were working feverishly to undermine the Oslo peace process. No Arab voice could be tolerated, and al-Arian was vigorously trying to communicate with our government and its leaders. He was being successful, making speeches to intelligence and military commanders at MacDill AFB's Central Command, inviting the FBI and other officials to attend meetings of his groups. People were beginning to listen and to wonder why only one side of the Middle East debate was heard here. That was the reason for Al-Arian's political prosecution."
Now the United States is a country that is blessed by a constitution, a Bill of Rights and the rule of law, all of them upheld with degrees of enthusiasm that rise and fall according to sex, income and ethnicity. The fall is particularly drastic if your name is Arab, you publicly profess the justice of the Palestinian cause. Living in Florida doesn't help either.
At the direct instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft, the feds threw the book at al-Arian in February 2003. He was arrested with much fanfare and charged in a bloated terrorism and conspiracy case. He spent two and a half years in prison, in solitary confinement under atrocious conditions. To confer with his lawyers, he had to hobble half a mile, shackled hand and foot, his law files balanced on his back.
The six-month trial in US District Court in Tampa featured 80 government witnesses (including 21 from Israel) and 400 intercepted phone calls (the results of a decade of surveillance and half a million recorded calls). The government's evidence against Al-Arian consisted of speeches he gave, magazines he edited, lectures he presented, articles he wrote, books he owned, conferences he organized, rallies he attended, news he heard and websites no one accessed. One bit of evidence consisted of a conversation a co-defendant had with al-Arian in his dream. The defense rested without calling a single witness or presenting any evidence since the government's case rested entirely on First Amendmentprotected activities.
The man presiding over al-Arian's trial was US District Court Judge James Moody, a creature from the dark lagoon of Floridian jurisprudence. Hospitable to all testimony from Israelis, Moody ruled that al-Arian and his associates could not say a single word about the military occupation or the plight of the Palestinian people. During closing arguments, the prosecution noted a document that mentioned UN Resolution 242. Moody nixed that on the grounds that it showed Palestinians in altogether too warm a light and therefore might tax the objectivity of the jurors. As Sugg wrote after that ruling, if MLK had been on trial in Judge Moody's courtroom for disturbing the peace, he wouldn't have been allowed to mention Jim Crow or lynchings.
In December 2005, despite Moody's diligence, the jury acquitted al-Arian of the most serious charges. On those remaining, the usual prosecutorial flailings under conspiracy statutes, jurors voted 10 to 2 for acquittal. Two co-defendants were acquitted completely. It was a terrible humiliation for the Justice Department, which had flung an estimated $50 million into the trial.
A jury split 10-2 in a defendant's favor doesn't augur well for conviction in a retrial. Indeed in the spring of 2006 the government declined to retry a wealthy Tampa businessman (the founder of Hooters) on tax evasion charges because the jury was hung 6 to 6, and therefore the proportion was too high to realistically expect a conviction during a retrial.
But the feds insisted they wanted to put al-Arian through the wringer again and -- prudently, given Moody's prejudice-al-Arian's lawyers urged him to make a plea and put an end to his ordeal and end the suffering of his family.
The terms of the plea agreement were in line with Al-Arian's long-standing contention, despite the government's accusations, that he never contributed to the violent actions of any organization. The government settled for a watered-down version of a single count of providing services to people associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Statement of Facts in the agreement included only these innocuous activities:
(1) hiring an attorney for his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, during his deportation hearings in the late 1990s;
(2) filling out immigration forms for a resident Palestinian scholar from Britain; and
(3) not disclosing details of associations to a local reporter. (I remain completely baffled as to why it should be a crime to withhold information from a newspaper reporter.)
A central aspect of the plea agreement was an understanding that al-Arian would not be subject to further prosecution or called to cooperate with the government on any matter. The government recommended the shortest possible sentence.
On May 1, 2006, al-Arian came before Judge Moody for sentencing. Watching the proceedings Sugg, as he reported on the CounterPunch website, noted a smug air among the prosecutors. He also noted that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez had arrived in the Tampa area five days earlier. Under the plea, al-Arian's sentence amounted to little more than time served, followed by his departure from the United States. But Judge Moody sentenced al-Arian to the maximum, using inflamed language about al-Arian having blood on his hands, a charge one juror said the jury emphatically rejected.
Now al-Arian faced eleven months more in prison, with release and deportation scheduled for April 2007. But the feds' appetite was far from slaked. In October, Gordon Kromberg, an assistant federal prosecutor in Virginia notorious as an Islamophobe, called al-Arian to testify before a grand jury investigating an Islamic think tank. The subpoena was a outright violation of al-Arian's April plea agreement and his attorneys filed a motion to quash it. The motion included affidavits by attorneys who participated in the negotiations attesting to the fact that "the overarching purpose of the parties' plea agreement was to conclude, once and for all, all business between the government and Dr. al-Arian." The defense lawyers insisted that al-Arian would never have entered a plea that left him vulnerable to government fishing expeditions.
Al-Arian's lawyers feared that their client was being set up for a perjury trap. Up in Virginia, Kromberg ranted to al-Arian's attorney about "the Islamization of America," while down in Tampa, Judge Moody ruled that federal marshals could drag al-Arian to Virginia to testify. On November 16, al-Arian was brought before the grand jury and placed in civil contempt for refusing to testify.
One month after al-Arian was placed in civil contempt, the grand jury term expired, so Kromberg promptly impaneled a new one. Al-Arian was again subpoenaed and again expressed his ethical stance against testifying. This judge also held him in contempt, which could prolong his imprisonment by up to 18 months.
Al-Arian, who is diabetic, then went on a hunger strike. February 26 marked the sixth week of his water-only hunger strike, in which he has lost 40 pounds and has grown considerably weaker. On the 23rd day of his hunger strike, Al-Arian collapsed and hit his head; he has since been moved to a federal prison medical facility in Butner, North Carolina.
On January 22, when Al-Arian appeared before Judge Lee on the charge of contempt, he had this to say about his recent treatment:
"In the past three weeks, I have been to four prisons. I spent fourteen days in the Atlanta penitentiary under 23-hour lockdown, in a roach and rat infested environment. On two occasions, rats shared my diabetic snack. When I was transported from Atlanta to Petersburg (Virginia) and from Petersburg to Alexandria, they allowed me only to wear a t-shirt in subfreezing weather during long walks. In the early morning, the Atlanta guard took my thermal undershirt which I purchased from the prison and threw it in the garbage and when I complained, he threatened to use a lockbox on my handcuffs which would make them extremely uncomfortable. In Petersburg, the guard asked me to take off my clean t-shirt and boxers and gave me dirty and worn out ones. When I complained, he told me to 'shut the f up.' And when I asked why he was treating me like that, he said 'because you're a terrorist.' When I further complained to the lieutenant in charge, he shrugged it off and said if I don't like it, I should write a grievance to the Bureau of Prisons. When I said he had the authority to give me clean clothes, he refused and said if I don't like it I should write a grievance to the Bureau of Prisons. During one of the airlifts, an air marshal further tightened my already tightened handcuffs, and asked me 'Why do you hate us?' I told him, 'I don't hate you.' He said, 'I know who you are, I've read your s-h-i-t.' These are examples of the government's harassment campaign against me that's been taking place for years because of my political beliefs."
Measured against José Padilla, a man driven insane on Rumsfeld's orders, I guess al-Arian is lucky. He's alive, and still sane, though getting weaker by the day. He needs all the support we can muster. Across the globe, where al-Arian's case has aroused much outrage, respect for the US commitment to Constitutional freedoms sinks lower still.
For information on the case, go to www.freesamialarian.com.
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Chris Hedges: The Case of Sami Al-Arian: A Road Map to Despotism
The Road Map to Despotism
By Chris Hedges
Editor’s note: Despite spending an estimated $80 million, the government was unable to prove that Dr. Sami Al-Arian was a terrorist, yet he remains in prison and his sentence will likely be extended. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges warns that the abusive imprisonment of this nonviolent Palestinian dissenter does not bode well for the rest of us.
02/11/07 "Truthdig" --- - Professor Sami Al-Arian, whose persecution and show trial are parts of a long string of egregious acts of injustice perpetrated by the Bush administration, has been on a hunger strike since Jan. 22 to protest the prolongation of his imprisonment.
Al-Arian’s travels through the halls of American justice, and now the subterranean corridors of the nation’s Stygian prison system, reads like a bad rip-off of Kafka. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of the 17 counts against him by a Florida jury, which deadlocked on the rest. He agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges four months later in exchange for being released and deported. The judge gave Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under a plea deal—57 months at his sentencing. He was set to be released this April, something that now appears unlikely.
The trial was a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration’s drive to turn the American judicial system into kangaroo courts. Over the six-month trial a parade of 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, attempted to brand the Florida professor as a terrorist. The government submitted thousands of documents, phone interceptions and physical surveillance culled from 12 years of investigations. The trial cost taxpayers an estimated $80 million. The 94 charges against Al-Arian and his co-defendants resulted in no convictions. But because Al-Arian has twice refused to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in a case involving a Muslim think tank, he has now been charged with contempt of court. The date of his release could be extended by as much as 18 months.
Al-Arian, who is a diabetic, began a hunger strike in response.
“I believe that freedom and human dignity are more precious than life itself,” he said in a telephone interview from Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. “In, essence I am taking a principled stand that I am willing to endure whatever it takes to win my freedom.
“I am still OK,” he said. “I have lost 26 pounds by today. It’s definitely not easy, but I am determined to continue. It’s not a decision you make haphazardly or something that you take lightly. In the end, you have to make difficult decisions because of the larger cause. I drink four large cups of water a day, about 12 ounces each.”
Dr. Al-Arian said he will remain on a hunger strike until the government ends its campaign against him and allows him to return to his wife and children.
The case and continued harassment sets a dangerous precedent for American Muslims, who since 9/11 have been monitored, detained and deported in large numbers. But it bodes ill for the rest of us as well. The new legislation suspending habeas corpus and creating the possibility of legally stripping U.S. citizens of their right to a fair and timely trial is a taste of what awaits us all should we enter a period of instability or national crisis. In many ways the assault against Al-Arian is an assault against the judicial system that lies like a barrier between us and despotism.
“Much of the government’s evidence against me were speeches I gave, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I conducted, news I heard and websites no one accessed,” he said. “It was reminiscent of the thought crime of Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ The scary part was not that these were offered into evidence, but that a federal judge admitted them. That’s why I am so proud of the jury, who acted as the free people that they were and saw through Big Brother’s tactics.
“I’ve been to nine prisons in nine months,” he explained. “I spent the first 23 months in Coleman Federal Penitentiary, where the conditions were Guantanamo-plus, that is they were like those of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay ‘plus’ one phone call a month and visits with my family behind glass. I was in a nine-foot-by-eight-foot cell, where I was held under 23-hour lockdown. During the first few months, they wouldn’t even allow me to exercise unless I was strip-searched, which I refused to submit to, so I was inside 24 hours. During the first month, I was allowed only one 15-minute phone call, and for six months after that I was not allowed to make any calls.
“I was shackled and handcuffed every single time I left my cell for any reason,” he said. “When I needed to take my legal papers for meetings with my attorney, the guards would not carry them for me, even though they did for other prisoners. Though I was shackled, they forced me to carry them on my back, as I was bent over. I had to walk like that for half a mile. I should also mention the use of fire alarms in trying to disrupt life. In the Special Housing Unit [SHU], a punitive section of the prison where I was the only pretrial detainee, alarms and emergency sirens would go off 15 to 20 times every single day, at 12 a.m., 2 p.m., any time of the day. It was a deafening noise that would continue for five to 10 minutes. It was clearly deliberate. In the SHU, commissary was almost nonexistent. All they offered was potato chips, whereas in the general compound everything was available. The SHU was designed for disciplinary purposes, not for housing a pretrial detainee.
“Not only did they place me in the SHU, but they imposed additional restrictions on me,” he went on. “For instance, everybody else was granted contact visits, while I had to see my family behind glass. They also insisted on strip-searching me before and after these behind-the-glass visits. In May 2003, my wife drove two hours to see me, but they denied her the visit when I would not submit to a strip search.”
Al-Arian is a Palestinian. The injustice meted out to him in America is writ large in the Middle East. He has no passport, no home, no country. He must live on the charity of others, stateless, as most Palestinians are, and without the rights of the citizens around him. He once thought America would be his home. He was, before this charade, in the process of gaining citizenship. All this is over. In George Bush’s America there is no place for activists or dissidents. And when they finish with those on the margins of our society they will turn, if we let them, on the rest of us.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
By Chris Hedges
Editor’s note: Despite spending an estimated $80 million, the government was unable to prove that Dr. Sami Al-Arian was a terrorist, yet he remains in prison and his sentence will likely be extended. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges warns that the abusive imprisonment of this nonviolent Palestinian dissenter does not bode well for the rest of us.
02/11/07 "Truthdig" --- - Professor Sami Al-Arian, whose persecution and show trial are parts of a long string of egregious acts of injustice perpetrated by the Bush administration, has been on a hunger strike since Jan. 22 to protest the prolongation of his imprisonment.
Al-Arian’s travels through the halls of American justice, and now the subterranean corridors of the nation’s Stygian prison system, reads like a bad rip-off of Kafka. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of the 17 counts against him by a Florida jury, which deadlocked on the rest. He agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges four months later in exchange for being released and deported. The judge gave Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under a plea deal—57 months at his sentencing. He was set to be released this April, something that now appears unlikely.
The trial was a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration’s drive to turn the American judicial system into kangaroo courts. Over the six-month trial a parade of 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, attempted to brand the Florida professor as a terrorist. The government submitted thousands of documents, phone interceptions and physical surveillance culled from 12 years of investigations. The trial cost taxpayers an estimated $80 million. The 94 charges against Al-Arian and his co-defendants resulted in no convictions. But because Al-Arian has twice refused to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in a case involving a Muslim think tank, he has now been charged with contempt of court. The date of his release could be extended by as much as 18 months.
Al-Arian, who is a diabetic, began a hunger strike in response.
“I believe that freedom and human dignity are more precious than life itself,” he said in a telephone interview from Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. “In, essence I am taking a principled stand that I am willing to endure whatever it takes to win my freedom.
“I am still OK,” he said. “I have lost 26 pounds by today. It’s definitely not easy, but I am determined to continue. It’s not a decision you make haphazardly or something that you take lightly. In the end, you have to make difficult decisions because of the larger cause. I drink four large cups of water a day, about 12 ounces each.”
Dr. Al-Arian said he will remain on a hunger strike until the government ends its campaign against him and allows him to return to his wife and children.
The case and continued harassment sets a dangerous precedent for American Muslims, who since 9/11 have been monitored, detained and deported in large numbers. But it bodes ill for the rest of us as well. The new legislation suspending habeas corpus and creating the possibility of legally stripping U.S. citizens of their right to a fair and timely trial is a taste of what awaits us all should we enter a period of instability or national crisis. In many ways the assault against Al-Arian is an assault against the judicial system that lies like a barrier between us and despotism.
“Much of the government’s evidence against me were speeches I gave, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I conducted, news I heard and websites no one accessed,” he said. “It was reminiscent of the thought crime of Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ The scary part was not that these were offered into evidence, but that a federal judge admitted them. That’s why I am so proud of the jury, who acted as the free people that they were and saw through Big Brother’s tactics.
“I’ve been to nine prisons in nine months,” he explained. “I spent the first 23 months in Coleman Federal Penitentiary, where the conditions were Guantanamo-plus, that is they were like those of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay ‘plus’ one phone call a month and visits with my family behind glass. I was in a nine-foot-by-eight-foot cell, where I was held under 23-hour lockdown. During the first few months, they wouldn’t even allow me to exercise unless I was strip-searched, which I refused to submit to, so I was inside 24 hours. During the first month, I was allowed only one 15-minute phone call, and for six months after that I was not allowed to make any calls.
“I was shackled and handcuffed every single time I left my cell for any reason,” he said. “When I needed to take my legal papers for meetings with my attorney, the guards would not carry them for me, even though they did for other prisoners. Though I was shackled, they forced me to carry them on my back, as I was bent over. I had to walk like that for half a mile. I should also mention the use of fire alarms in trying to disrupt life. In the Special Housing Unit [SHU], a punitive section of the prison where I was the only pretrial detainee, alarms and emergency sirens would go off 15 to 20 times every single day, at 12 a.m., 2 p.m., any time of the day. It was a deafening noise that would continue for five to 10 minutes. It was clearly deliberate. In the SHU, commissary was almost nonexistent. All they offered was potato chips, whereas in the general compound everything was available. The SHU was designed for disciplinary purposes, not for housing a pretrial detainee.
“Not only did they place me in the SHU, but they imposed additional restrictions on me,” he went on. “For instance, everybody else was granted contact visits, while I had to see my family behind glass. They also insisted on strip-searching me before and after these behind-the-glass visits. In May 2003, my wife drove two hours to see me, but they denied her the visit when I would not submit to a strip search.”
Al-Arian is a Palestinian. The injustice meted out to him in America is writ large in the Middle East. He has no passport, no home, no country. He must live on the charity of others, stateless, as most Palestinians are, and without the rights of the citizens around him. He once thought America would be his home. He was, before this charade, in the process of gaining citizenship. All this is over. In George Bush’s America there is no place for activists or dissidents. And when they finish with those on the margins of our society they will turn, if we let them, on the rest of us.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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