As Health Deteriorates, Jailed Palestinian Professor Sami Al-Arian
Enters 54th Day of Hunger Strike to Protest Indefinite Imprisonment
Friday, March 16th, 2007
Link: Click here

Sami Al-Arian is in dire condition. The jailed Palestinian professor
has lost over 50 pounds as he enters the 54th day of a hunger strike
to protest the circumstances of his continued imprisonment. We speak
with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian.
________________________________________
Sami Al-Arian has spent the past four years in jail despite a jury’s
failure over a year ago to return a single guilty verdict on any of
the 17 charges brought against him. He eventually signed a plea deal
with the government in exchange for being released and deported.

This past January, with just three months left before his scheduled
release, a judge found him in contempt after he refused to testify
before a Virginia grand jury. The date of his release could now be
extended by a year and a half. On January 22nd, Al-Arian – who is a
diabetic – stopped eating in protest. Last month he was transferred
to the Federal Medical facility in Butner Virginia as his health
deteriorated. A week before his transfer, we spoke with Sami Al-Arian
from prison in his first broadcast interview since his 2003 arrest.
He explained why he was on hunger strike.
* Sami Al-Arian, speaking from prison on Democracy Now! [Click
for full interview]
His wife, Nahla Al-Arian, is going to Virginia today to visit him
along with their five children. She joins me now from Tampa, Florida
where she lives.
* Nahla Al-Arian, Sami Al-Arian’s wife.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Sami Al-Arian is in dire condition. The jailed
Palestinian professor has lost over fifty pounds, as he enters the
fifty-fourth day of a hunger strike to protest the circumstances of
his continued imprisonment. Al-Arian has spent the past four years in
jail, despite a jury’s failure over a year ago to return a single
guilty verdict on any of the seventeen charges brought against him.
He eventually signed a plea deal with the government in exchange for
being released and deported.

AMY GOODMAN: This past January, with just three months left before
his scheduled release, a judge found him in contempt after he refused
to testify before a Virginia grand jury. The date of his release
could now be extended by a year and a half. On January 22, Al-Arian,
who is a diabetic, stopped eating in protest. Last month, he was
transferred to the federal medical facility in Butner, [North
Carolina], as his health deteriorated. A week before his transfer, we
spoke with Sami Al-Arian from prison in his first broadcast interview
since his 2003 arrest.

In a moment, we’ll speak with his wife. But now, we turn to an
excerpt of that interview with Professor Sami Al-Arian. He explained
why he was on a hunger strike.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, I believe that freedom and human dignity are
more precious than life itself. In essence, I’m taking a principled
stand, that I’m willing to endure whatever it takes to win my
freedom. I’m also protesting the continuous harassment campaign by
the government against me because of my political beliefs. This
campaign was supposed to have ended when we concluded the plea deal
last year, but unfortunately it hasn’t. And if you’d like, I can
elaborate further on that.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, please do.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: OK. Well, you know, after two-and-a-half years in
pretrial detention with Guantanamo-like conditions, mostly under 23-
hour lockdowns, followed by a six-month trial with eighty witnesses,
including twenty-one from Israel, thousands of documents, phone
interceptions, physical surveillance, websites, hearsay evidence,
anything and everything they could think of, preceded by twelve years
of investigations, tens of millions of dollars, some even say over
$80 million spent on this investigation, with ninety-four charges
against me and my co-defendants and with my defense only being four
words — “I rest my case” — how did the jury see it? They gave them
zero convictions.

Unfortunately, however, the judge stopped the deliberations, because
of a distressed juror, and they ended up with some hung counts,
although they were mostly ten-to-two in my favor. What happened was
that the government had the power to retry me on these hung counts.
My attorneys had prior commitments and would have left, which meant I
probably would have to hire a new legal team and wait perhaps for
another year or more for a new trial.

Meanwhile, in my attorneys’ judgment, the government was desperate to
settle after its total defeat. I was, at the time, perplexed, because
I wasn’t sure what offense I would plea to. But one of my attorneys
said that even if there was none, we had to invent one to get you
out. I authorized them to explore this option, and they concluded a
deal with essentially time served and deportation, were I to plea to
giving some services to people associated with an organization on
their terrorist list. And if you’d like, I could go over quickly and
briefly —

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Go through what your plea agreement was.
SAMI AL-ARIAN: Yeah. Well, number one, that I sponsored a researcher
in 1994 and ’95 to come to the United States to conduct research and
edit a magazine, which he certainly did. Two, that I wasn’t candid or
forthcoming when interviewed by a journalist in November ’95 — and
don’t ask me why this is an offense. And three, that I helped my
brother-in-law to get out of prison when he was detained on secret
evidence between ’97 and 2000. These are the only three things that —

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mazen Najjar?
SAMI AL-ARIAN: That was Mazen Al-Najjar, that’s correct. My main
concern with this deal was that the judge got out of hand, because
association is constitutionally protected. And everyone kept saying
that this was just a face-saving way for the government to end this,
and no one is going to object. And, indeed, you know, no one did.

Amy, during the plea negotiations, the government wanted a
cooperation provision, which I totally ruled out. I told my lawyers
that if they insisted, then to break off all these negotiations and
proceed to a new trial. The government immediately took this off the
table and never raised it again.

Now, they want me to testify before a grand jury in Virginia, which
is contrary to our agreement of no cooperation. We also believe that
this is either a perjury or contempt trap. See, back in August of
2000, I was also subpoenaed before an immigration court, and I was
asked if I believe in the freedom of Islam through violence. My
answer was one word: no. But this was nonetheless one of the counts
against me, which the jury acquitted me of. Now, I have been held in
contempt for the total of over a month last year, and then that grand
jury expired. Then they reconvened another grand jury this year, and
I have been held now in contempt since January 22nd. That’s why I’m
on a hunger strike.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami al-Arian, speaking from prison last month. He’s
just entered the fifty-fourth day of a hunger strike. He is
hospitalized. His wife Nahla Al-Arian is going to Virginia today to
visit him along with their five children. She joins us now before she
heads on the flight from Tampa, where she lives. Welcome to Democracy
Now!, Nahla Al-Arian.

NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Thank you. Thanks so much for inviting me, especially
when we see that the corporate media is completely silent concerning
Sami’s case. I cannot believe that political prisoners are being
treated this way in this country by the media. You know, I’m talking
about corporate media here. I feel there is some kind of complicity
on the side of the corporate media in supporting the government’s
oppression towards Palestinian activists, especially, and political
prisoners in general.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How was your husband the last time you spoke with him?
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Well, last night I talked to him for about five
minutes, and still he is very weak, and he told me he is exhausted.
And, you know, he hasn’t eaten for fifty-four days. And that’s a lot.
He lost fifty-two pounds. He cannot even walk. He is on a wheelchair
now. And my friend went to see him last week, and then she said to me
that she managed to feel the bones of his legs. So, you know,
everybody who went and saw him felt shocked by the way he looks now,
because he’s very, very thin.

AMY GOODMAN: The Irish hunger strikers years ago, famous, Bobby Sands
and others, started to die after sixty days of being on hunger
strike. What exactly is his condition? Sami Al-Arian is a diabetic,
is that right?
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Yeah, he is. He stopped taking, of course, his
diabetes medicine a long time ago, because he doesn’t eat. But last
time when they checked his blood sugar, it was 62, and that’s, I
think, very low. They haven’t started force-feeding him. They put him
in a 24-hour lockdown in a small room, and there is a camera in the
room. And it’s like, you know — I don’t know — like they treat him
as a lab animal or something. Why are they watching him? That’s it.
They are not doing anything else besides that.

We’re very worried, and that’s why our visit — God willing — will
be an end to this hunger strike. We don’t want him to continue. All
of us, my children and I want to try our best to make him stop. But
hopefully, that next week, next Friday, we’re going to have good news
from the Fourth Circuit, because they are going to issue their
ruling. And, you know, because our case is very strong, we are
hopeful that they will rule in our favor and they will stop this
contempt of court. So, let’s all pray for this happy ending to this
miserable situation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, you have five children?
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What do you tell them? Your husband has been in jail
now for four years, yet to be convicted of any crime, and yet the
government continues to hold him. How do you explain all of this to
them?

NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Well, my older children understand that their father
is a political prisoner, and they are doing tremendous work to help
their father and to speak on his behalf. And my younger children are
the ones who were affected the most, because they were deprived of
their father’s love and guidance, and what happened here in Tampa was
so much for them. I had to send my daughter, who is thirteen, I had
to send her to Egypt to stay with her grandmother, because she
couldn’t handle some of the abuses at the public school she went to.
It wasn’t easy for us. All the time I look at my home, and I feel
it’s not a home anymore without Sami. I want him back. And the
government wants to keep him in jail forever. And this is sadistic,
you know. I cannot understand why they love to torment people this
way.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, your husband said — well, just on the record, the
seventeen counts against him, he was not found guilty on any of them.
On the majority, he was acquitted; on others, they were deadlocked.
He said in a plea agreement that he had — it was understood that he
would not have to cooperate with any grand jury investigation of
other people. And now, there has been a grand jury impaneled. He
doesn’t know how many future ones will be impaneled simply to hold
him in jail if he refuses to cooperate. What would stop his hunger
strike right now? And is there a point where it will become your
decision? And, Nahla, will you decide to have him force-fed?

NAHLA AL-ARIAN: I will do my best to stop him from, like, fasting all
this time, because we want him alive, we want his love and his
support to continue, even though he’s in jail. But what’s happening
is that, God willing, as I said, on Friday next week we will hear
something from the Fourth Circuit. Hopefully this will make him stop
the hunger strike, when we get a ruling from the Fourth Circuit,
although I’m pessimistic in a way, because the atmosphere in our
country is very, very depressing, especially when it comes to judges.

I don’t know what’s wrong with many, many judges here who are not
really standing up to the government. But there are courageous
judges, and hopefully they will rule in our favor. But even if they
are not, God forbid, we have to stop Sami from, you know, killing
himself, because this is not good. The government doesn’t care. The
government is sending to Iraq so many soldiers, and they don’t care
about their safety. How about the safety of my husband and his
health? You know, this is a government that does not have any ethics,
any compassion, nothing. And we’re dealing with a monster here,
unfortunately.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Throughout this long ordeal, what’s your sense or your
opinion about why your husband has been targeted in this way by the
federal government?
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Well, I feel, first of all, because he was very
effective in talking about the Palestinian cause and in establishing
ties with the larger society and in empowering the Muslim community,
making them integrate into the larger society and exercise their
political rights. Sami was very good in talking to everybody, helping
and working with everybody, and what made things worse —

AMY GOODMAN: Also very good in supporting President Bush in his first
run for office. The pictures of him and President Bush as they
campaign through Florida — as Bush campaigned through Florida, Sami
was with him.
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Because Bush deceived us. Bush lied to the Muslim
community. Bush gave us a picture of a compassionate person, and
that’s completely the opposite. Later on, unfortunately, we found
out. Al Gore was so arrogant, and he rejected talking to the Muslim
community and addressing the issues that the Muslim community was
worried about, such as the use of secret evidence against Muslims and
Arabs. So that’s why, you know, we went to support Bush, because he’s
the one who, in the second debate, came out and said we should
support or we should stop the use of secret evidence and we should
stop profiling Muslims and Arabs, so he was very outspoken. And that
was unfortunately, you know, a very deceitful act. It wasn’t coming
from his heart, as we found out later.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you calling for right now, Nahla Al-Arian? We
only have thirty seconds.
NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Well, what I want is for the government to stop the
abuse of the power by one of the employees there, the federal
prosecutor Mr. Kromberg. He is doing this based on his ideology that
is racist and anti-Arab and -Muslim.
And what we are saying to the government: keep your promise, release
Sami, deport him as you said, and let him live in peace with his wife
and children. We suffered enough. They stole ten years from our
lives, not only four years that Sami spent in jail, but ten years,
because of the harassment and the campaign, the vicious campaign by
the media for a long, long time. We deserve some peace. For how long
they are going to torture us?

AMY GOODMAN: Nahla Al-Arian, I want to thank you very much for being
with us. Nahla Al-Arian is Sami Al-Arian’s wife. She heads to see him
today with her five children. They are all American citizens. That
does it for our broadcast. Sami al-Arian, the fifty-fourth day of a
hunger strike; he was acquitted of eight of seventeen charges against
him, deadlocked on the rest; never convicted on a charge yet remains
indefinitely in prison. You can look at the photographs on our
website at democracynow.org.