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March 31, 2007
People's Weekly World
Palestinian activist ends prison hunger strike
By Tim Wheeler,
WASHINGTON- Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist, ended his 60- day hunger strike at a Federal prison hospital in North Carolina, March 24, bowing to his children's pleas that he not risk death protesting his unjust imprisonment.
His wife, Nahla, and daughter, Laila, were at his side during a prison news conference when he announced an end to the water-only fast. He lost 54 pounds or 25 percent of his body weight during the two-month ordeal.
Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation told the news conference, "Dr. Al-Arian was never convicted by a jury of his peers of any wrongdoing or crime. It is time that our government respects the jury's verdict and release him. The sacrifice that Dr. Al-Arian and his family have made in the cause of justice compels us to work more intensely for his unconditional release so that he can be reunited with his family."
In a telephone interview from the Al-Arian home in Tampa, Nahla Al- Arian told the World, "We visited him in the prison hospital and insisted he stop the hunger strike because he had reached a very critical, dangerous phase of the fast."
The younger children, 13 and 16 years old, she added, "were horrified when they saw their father. They told him they needed his love. They needed him alive. We convinced him that everyone knows about his situation. He received messages of support from everywhere in the world as well as from across the U.S."
A documentary film about Dr. Al-Arian's plight was recently shown to the Norwegian parliament.
Al-Arian, a former computer science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, began the fast at a County jail in Virginia to protest the Justice Department's attempt to force him to testify before a grand jury. He argued that it violated a plea agreement he signed last year in which he pleaded no contest to charges he had assisted a Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad. In exchange, the government agreed to release him from prison and deport him April 13, 2007. When he refused to testify, Federal Judge Gerald Lee, sentenced him to 18 months for contempt.
Al-Arian was recently transferred to the Federal prison hospital in North Carolina when he fainted from weakness in the Virginia jail.
Nahla Al-Arian pointed out that a twelve member jury in Tampa, in Dec. 2005, refused to convict Al-Arian of any of the 51 charges leveled by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The sensational case was a centerpiece of the Bush administration's hysteria- mongering "war on terror."
The Tampa jurors found Al-Arian innocent of eight criminal charges including that he belonged to a "front group" that funneled financial contributions to "terrorists" in Palestine. But the jury deadlocked when two of the jurors refused to go along with the majority in acquitting Al-Arian and three co-defendants on nine lesser charges.
Judge Moody then "aborted the jury's deliberations." Ever since, the Bush Justice Department has flagrantly violated the "innocent until proven guilty" rule in holding Al-Arian in prison.
Nahla, mother of five children and a U.S. citizen, has waged a determined struggle to win freedom for her husband. "I could not have held up without the support of my fellow Americans," she said. "The people have given us support throughout, rallied for us, written to the Justice Department and their Congressmen. I am so grateful for all they have done."
There is misunderstanding about the plea agreement, she said. "Look at the `Statement of Facts' in that plea. There was no crime committed. They exploited the climate of fear to crack down on political activists to silence them and to prevent them from exercising their political rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. The government targeted Palestinian activists who need those rights more than anyone else in the world."
She said she is resigned to going into exile with her husband and two younger children when Sami is freed. Her three older children, two in graduate school and the third a journalist, would remain in the U.S.
The next step in Al-Arian's struggle, she said, is to convince Judge Lee to lift the 18-month contempt sentence. "Sami and his lawyers will tell the Judge that Sami is not going to change his mind. Ordering him to testify is contrary to the plea agreement we signed last year."
She concluded, "People who want to help us win justice, go to our website `freesamialarian.com.' You can read about our case and look for what you can do to help."
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