Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace
Feb. 12, 2007

TAMPA– Today Dr. Sami Al-Arian enters his fourth week of a hunger
strike to protest government harassment and the prolongation of his
imprisonment. Attorney General Gonzales promised to release Dr. Al-
Arian and expedite his deportation last May. Ask him to keep his
promise and free Dr. Al-Arian NOW (see details below).

Also, please read the following two pieces about Dr. Al-Arian’s case
by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, and Sarah
Shields, a professor of Middle East history at UNC/Chapel Hill.

I. The Road Map to Despotism, truthdig.com
By Chris Hedges
Feb. 11, 2007

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070211_the_roadmap_to_despotism/

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.

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.

—
No Defense Against Persecution, TomPaine.com
By Sarah Shields

February 1, 2007

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/01/no_defense_against_persecu
tion.php

Sarah Shields teaches Middle East history at UNC/Chapel Hill.

“Has anyone told you that you look like Gandhi?” my companion asked
Professor Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian was sitting behind a plastic wall,
wearing striped prison clothes and speaking into two telephones.

It was easy not only to see the resemblance, but also to feel it. Dr.
al-Arian has a strikingly similar smile, Gandhi-like eyes and�the
same lean frame as he finished the first week of his hunger strike.
More remarkable, after being both prosecuted and persecuted, he
maintains his confidence in the rule of law, the American system of
justice and the basic goodness of his persecutors. And he has come
through it all with his good nature and sense of humor, despite his
weakening condition.

Dr. Sami al-Arian has now spent four years in jail, three of those in
solitary confinement while awaiting trial. In December 2005, despite
years to prepare the case against him, and an estimated $80 million
dollars of American tax money to pursue it, Dr. al-Arian was
acquitted of eight of the 17 charges against him, including
conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to murder and maim
people abroad, conspiracy to support a foreign terrorist organization
(two counts), mail fraud (two counts) and obstruction of justice (two
counts). After agreeing in a plea bargain to a single charge in
exchange for being released and deported,�more than a year after his
acquittal he is still imprisoned. We visited him at Northern Neck
Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, where he is being held for
contempt of court for refusing to testify in an unrelated matter.

The United States government was deeply embarrassed after this
acquittal in a high-profile trial that was to have been a showcase
for the USA PATRIOT Act. After being imprisoned under conditions
condemned by Amnesty International, in lock-down 23 hours a day for
37 months before his trial, regularly shackled and strip-searched,
denied religious services, refused adequate access to the documents
necessary to prepare his defense (tens of thousands of pages of
transcripts from years of electronic surveillance), after being
brought into the courtroom heavily shackled and treated as a
terrorist, al-Arian was gracious in victory.

For Sami al-Arian, the jury’s verdict reinforced the confidence he
had always held in both the United States and her system of justice.
Addressing the court, he thanked his attorneys and his adopted
country:

This process, your Honor, affirmed my belief in the true meaning of a
democratic society, in which the independence of the judiciary, the
integrity of the jury system and the system of checks and balances
are upheld, despite intense political and public pressures … It’s
also my belief that an impartial and conscientious jury, as well as
principled judicial rulings that uphold the values of the
constitution, are the real vehicles that win the hearts and minds of
people across the globe, especially in the Arab and Muslim world.

The American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the government arguing
that a retrying Dr. Al-Arian “following the recent acquittal of all
serious charges lodged against him would appear to be pointless and
vindictive.”�

As the government refused to preclude a retrial, and with exhausted
attorneys and inadequate funds to pursue a defense against the
remaining counts (on which two jurors remained unconvinced), the
defendant decided to conclude a plea deal.�Dr. Al-Arian pled guilty
to one of the remaining charges against him solely in order to be
finished with his ordeal.�He agreed to deportation in return for the
termination of all legal proceedings against him, and what Al-Arian
believed was a good-faith commitment relieving him of the obligation
to testify against others.

U.S. District Judge James Moody seemed unswayed even by the arguments
of the prosecutors, and sentenced Dr. al-Arian to another�11 months
jail, to be completed in April 2007. But it seems the government is
unwilling to carry out this agreement.

In October 2006 U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg asked a grand jury to
subpoena Professor al-Arian to testify in a case involving a Muslim
think-tank. Pointing out that testifying had been explicitly deleted
from the plea bargain, with the specific consent of the prosecutors
in Florida, he refused. As he explained it to us last week, his
refusal comes from two places. First, he considers it inconsistent
with his faith and his values to testify. Second, he anticipates that
any testimony would be used to create new “facts” to re-arrest him.
His fear seems well-founded. At a hearing in 2000, a government
attorney asked whether Dr. al-Arian believed that Islam could only be
liberated through violence. Professor al-Arian’s response, of course,
was “No.”

One of the 17 counts against him in 2003 was perjury:�The government
contends he lied when responding that violence was not required to
liberate Islam.

Responding to being placed in civil contempt, al-Arian pointed out
that he had “no contempt whatsoever for this honorable court, but all
the respect in the world for it.” It seems, instead, that it is the
government that has contempt for the legal system al-Arian has relied
upon and admired for decades. Instead of respecting the plea
agreement, Kromberg referred to it as a “bonanza.” Despite having
been found guilty of nothing by a U.S. court, Judge Moody and
Kromberg persist in their belief in al-Arian’s culpability. It
appears that Kromberg’s attitude is based in part on Sami al-Arian’s
religion.

Attorney Jack Fernandez requested that Kromberg delay al-Arian’s
transfer to Virginia until the end of Ramadan. Fernandez quoted
Kromberg’s response in an affidavit, “If they can kill each other
during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury, all they can’t
do is eat before sunset. I believe Mr. al-Arian’s request is part of
the attempted Islamization of the American justice aystem. I am not
going to put off Dr. al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist
in what is becoming the Islamization of America.” Gordon Kromberg has
denied a request to recuse himself in this case.

It was both Sami al-Arian’s religious faith, and his faith in our
system of government that got him arrested in 2003. Al-Arian actually
believes what we say about freedom of worship, and has spent years
trying to inform Americans about Islam. Stunned by the events of
9/11, he agreed to talk with Bill O’Reilly about Muslim responses to
the tragedy. To his surprise,�the FOX News host attacked him ,
relentlessly interrogating him about an investigation dating back to
1993, in which al-Arian had been found blameless years earlier.

Within days, Professor al-Arian had been fired from the University of
South Florida,�where he had taught for 15 years, despite his tenure.
As opposition mounted, and the American Association of University
Professors threatened sanctions against the University of South
Florida, the university’s president got the help she needed: the FBI
resurrected the old allegations and al-Arian was arrested.

It appears now that, despite being exonerated by a jury of his peers,
Sami al-Arian has been found guilty�guilty of being a Muslim and a
Palestinian. In the years since 9/11, more and more Muslims and Arabs
have been accused of terrorism, their lives put on hold, their
families divided, their freedom denied. In the face of new
legislation suspending habeus corpus and stripping even U.S. citizens
of their rights to a swift and fair trial, Professor al-Arian’s
experience is a frightening foreshadowing of the futures of those who
would count on American freedoms of religion, speech and�dissent.

Dr. al-Arian continues to have faith in our system and in our
country. He told the court at his sentencing:

As I leave I harbor no bitterness or resentment. Looking back at my
three decades in America, I’m indeed grateful for the opportunities
afforded to the son of stateless Palestinian refugees in a foreign
country, while denied such opportunity in his country of origin and
the countries where he was born or raised. I’m grateful that my five
wonderful children were born and raised in a society that provided
them with freedom and equal opportunities in order to reach their
potential.

Sami al-Arian’s children, and my children, need the American system
of justice to prevail.�Time is running out for Professor al-Arian as
he continues to refuse food to protest the injustice of his
continuing imprisonment. Time is running out for justice if Americans
refuse to insist on the enforcement of our constitution.

—

ACTION ALERT:
Please write to the following individuals to ask for an immediate end
to Dr. Al-Arian’s suffering:

1- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314

2- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
BY E-MAIL:
E-mails to the Department of Justice, including the Attorney General,
may be sent to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

3- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

4- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(299029)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

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