Speech by Nahla Al-Arian
Rally in front of the Department of Justice

April 13, 2007

As-salaamu-Alaikum and good afternoon everyone. Thank you all for coming to commemorate the day in which my husband was supposed to have been finally released and reunited with us.

I arrived from Tampa yesterday, leaving my two youngest children with unanswered questions. They asked me, “Why isn’t our government releasing our father? Is he going to stay in jail forever? Are we ever going to be able to be with him? Is this an endless nightmare?” These are the questions my children are asking. As a mother of five children, born and raised in America, it is tough for me to answer these and so many other questions they have, like why they are being treated differently than other Americans. They feel that their rights are violated and their father is the target of a vicious campaign by people who have abused their power. I don’t want their faith in the system to be shaken, but at the same time the government is making it difficult for me as a mother to say that everything is fine with our country. Nothing is fine with what’s happening now.

Over the course of his four-year imprisonment, my husband has been subjected to repeated abuse and racism by prison guards and government officials. Just yesterday morning, he was threatened and abused by racist and bigoted prison guards in Petersburg, Virginia. A Correctional Officer who was strip-searching my husband threatened his life and told him “If I had my way, you wouldn’t be in prison. I’d put a bullet in your head and get it done with. You’re nothing but a piece of (expletive)”

This guard also abused my husband last January. It is clear that there are parallels between this guard who has blatantly abused his power to torment my husband and the federal prosecutor who is intent on abusing the law to prolong his imprisonment indefinitely. Furthermore, these racist and abusive statements are clearly sanctioned by a government that has a history of persecuting political activists and this administration in particular, which has perfected it. The legal process has been manipulated and exploited to target my husband, a scholar and political activist who was acquitted by a jury following a six-month trial in which our government wasted millions of tax-payer dollars.

My husband and children have suffered enough. For ten years, Sami endured a government-led vicious media attack against him that was meant to dehumanize him, to deprive him of his job and any semblance of a normal life with his family. Last year, we signed a government face-saving deal which should have ended our nightmare once and for all. In return, the government agreed to release my husband to another country. They have not kept this promise.

The only hope we have is to ensure that there is accountability of this government, which has repeatedly abused its power and shunned the voices of its outraged citizens, who sent thousands of letters condemning the persecution of my husband and asking for his immediate release.

Throughout the years, my children have been traumatized continuously: whether it was when they saw their father demonized on television, in political ads, and by the government lawyers during the 6-month trial, or when they visited him in prison when he went on a 60-day hunger strike and his life was in grave danger. These memories will stay with them forever, reminding them that something frightening is happening from their own government. The message they asked me to deliver is simply: WE WANT OUR FATHER BACK NOW. The government must listen to the voices of these children.