Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace
April 25, 2007
Subject: My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat; Bad News, Good News Day for Al-Arian
I. My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat
II. Bad News, Good News Day for Al-Arian
III. Political Prisoner Suffers Isolation while Doc Wows Toronto Audiences
IV. New article on “USA vs. Al-Arian”
V. Write to Dr. Sami (NEW ADDRESS)
I. My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat, Huffingtonpost.com, April 24, 2007
By Laila Al-Arian
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before
the grand jury. 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.”
— federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg
“The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both
during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing appear to
be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”
— Amnesty International
My father, a Palestinian professor named Sami Al-Arian, was arrested
over four years ago on trumped up terrorism charges and submitted to
a prosecution over the course of six months that bordered on the
farcical. Though he was ultimately acquitted by a jury of the most
serious charges against him, the Bush administration has prolonged
his imprisonment indefinitely. My father now languishes in a
Virginia jail, another victim of the demagogic politics of the so-
called war on terror.
Many have wondered why my father would be targeted so vigorously,
especially after the government lost a case that cost $50 million.
But as with its firing of the eight federal prosecutors who “chafed”
against its radical agenda, the administration of President George
W. Bush has injected its politics into the system, prolonging my
father’s imprisonment to punish him for the humiliation his
acquittal caused them.
Last month, my father completed a 60-day hunger strike to protest
his continued imprisonment that left him in such a weakened state he
was confined to a wheelchair. Soon after receiving medical
treatment, he was transferred to a Federal Correctional Institute in
Petersburg, Virginia. Upon my father’s arrival, a prison guard
remarked while strip-searching him: “Where are you from?
Afghanistan?” Though my father refused to answer the demeaning
question, the guard repeated it several times. He went on:
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from. 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 s***.”
This is not the first time this guard harassed my father. In
January, he told him: “You’re a terrorist. I can tell by your name.”
This time there was a witness to the abuse, though he wasn’t exactly
a friendly one. Upon hearing his underling’s outburst, the
lieutenant in charge took my father aside and shackled his arms and
legs. The shackles were so tight my father lost sensation in his
extremities for the duration of the four-hour trip to his final
destination, a detention center in Alexandria. On the way, the
lieutenant joined in the abuse, unleashing a stream of obscenities
at my father and repeatedly telling him to “Shut the f*** up.” When
they arrived, the lieutenant violently shoved my father against a
wall.
The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the
government’s treatment of my father. “The conditions under which Dr.
Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and
since his sentencing,” Amnesty wrote in a February letter to the
Attorney General, “appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”
My father immigrated to the United States in 1975 and eventually
earned tenure as a computer engineering professor at the University
of South Florida. As the son of Palestinians forcibly removed from
their land after the creation of Israel in 1948, he considered it
his obligation to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian
people from his position of influence in the United States. He held
conferences and published literature to tell the story of
Palestinians living under occupation.
His activism earned the ire of some of the most reactionary figures
of the right, from self-declared “terror experts” like Steven
Emerson to Bill O’Reilly, whose expertise on Middle Eastern affairs
apparently does not extend to the falafel.
(See here, here and here to learn about Emerson’s long history of
hysterical, discredited claims.)
As the shrill cries for my father’s prosecution intensified after
9/11, the Bush administration arrested him. According to an
anonymous FBI source, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally
ordered the indictment against my father, a mandate that puzzled the
many career professionals assigned to the case. The political nature
of the charges was apparent from the beginning. A jury empaneled by
the federal government would reach the same conclusion three years
later, concluding that the Bush administration’s case was not much
of a case at all.
But first my father would suffer under extremely restrictive,
inhumane conditions clearly meant to psychologically break him
before trial, including being placed in solitary confinement for 27
months. At one point, he was denied phone calls for six months, and
while convicted felons were allowed to hug their families, my
father, a pre-trial detainee, had to visit us behind glass. Even
then, he was strip-searched before and after our visits. The cards
were stacked against us.
When my father’s trial finally began in June 2005, the government
presented 71 witnesses, including nearly two dozen from Israel,
paraded before the jury for sheer emotional effect. Four hundred
phone calls out of half a million the government recorded during a
decade of relentless, indiscriminate surveillance of my family were
also presented. The prosecutors acted out the phone calls on the
13th floor of a courtroom in downtown Tampa, giving new meaning to
the phrase political theater.
The government’s evidence against my father largely consisted of
speeches he gave, magazines he edited, lectures he presented,
articles he wrote, books he owned (4 out of 5,000), conferences he
organized, rallies he attended, and news he heard. In one
particularly bizarre instance, the prosecutors presented as evidence
a conversation a co-defendant had with my father in a dream.
Some of my father’s detractors say that his criticism of Israel was
overly strident. Often they deliberately de-contextualize his
remarks, made nearly two decades ago, to undermine the credibility
of the Palestinian narrative they have long sought to suppress. But
whatever you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you
hopefully agree that the criminalization of political speech is un-
American and violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
Because the government based its case on my father’s expressed
political views, our lawyers rested without presenting a single
witness. Our defense was the First Amendment.
On Dec. 6, 2005, my father was acquitted of 8 of the 17 charges
against him, though the jury voted 10 to 2 for full acquittal. Those
holding out for conviction were the only two who listed themselves
as readers of the Tampa Tribune, a paper which had slandered him for
over a decade. Two of my father’s three co-defendants were fully
acquitted; the jury did not return a single guilty verdict in over
100 charges. The verdict was a testament to the hollow nature of
government’s case–an especially strong statement in the midst of
post 9/11 hysteria.
Following the trial, the government had the option of dropping the
charges against my father, but chose not to, once again revealing
the political nature of his case. At the same time, they decided to
casually drop tax-evasion charges against the founder of Hooters
whose jury split evenly on his conviction.
Facing the prospect of a new trial that would drain my family
emotionally and financially, my father decided to plead guilty to
one charge of nonviolently supporting a designated terrorist group.
In return, the government signed a plea agreement promising to drop
the remaining charges, recommend the minimum sentence (which would
have basically amounted to time-served) and allow my father to walk
free on the condition that he leave the country. Disregarding the
prosecutors’ recommendation and dismissing the jury’s verdict, the
judge in the case gave my father the maximum sentence, which pushed
his release date to this month.
Sadly, our story does not end there. An overzealous federal
prosecutor with a documented record of bigoted remarks against
Muslims, Gordon Kromberg, is trying to force my father to testify
before a grand jury in Virginia in direct violation of his plea
agreement. This is a ploy to bring further charges against my father
and prolong his imprisonment -and our suffering–as much as
possible. Kromberg himself bitterly referred to the plea agreement
as a “bonanza” for my father.
Shortly before the Muslim observance of Ramadan began last October,
Kromberg revealed an ulterior political motive behind his
prosecution. When my father’s attorney requested to delay a prison
transfer during the holy month, a time he would have liked to spend
with visits from his family, Kromberg responded:
“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before
the grand jury. 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.”
Kromberg’s racist outburst clearly calls his objectivity into
question. Another reason my father has been reluctant to testify
before a grand jury is because we fear Kromberg is setting up a
perjury trap. The prosecutor did just that with another Muslim
defendant in Virginia, who was acquitted by a federal judge.
Following his acquittal, Kromberg summoned him to testify before a
grand jury and charged him with making false statements when he
didn’t like his answers. The man, Sabri Benkhala, is now facing 25
years in prison.
My father has endured a decade of surveillance and government
harassment, a draining six month trial, and the demonization of his
entire family by self-serving right-wing demagogues, all the while
hoping his nightmare would end. It should have when he was acquitted
by a jury and the government promised his freedom. Surely, the
fulfillment of that promise is not too much to ask.
(To learn more about Sami Al-Arian or to join the campaign for his
freedom, visit freesamialarian.com)
===
II. Bad News, Good News Day for Al-Arian
New York Sun, April 20, 2007
By Josh Gerstein
http://www.nysun.com/article/
A former Florida college professor at the center of a celebrated
terrorism prosecution, Sami Al-Arian, saw a federal appeals court
dash his hopes for relief today, only to have the same court revive
them a short time later.
Last month, a three-judge panel of the Richmond, Va.-based 4th
Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a contempt order issued
against Al-Arian after he refused to testify before a grand jury
investigating Muslim charities in Northern Virginia. As is
customary, Al-Arian’s attorney filed a petition asking the panel to
reconsider its ruling and asking that the full 10-judge bench of the
4th Circuit rehear the case.
Today, the 4th Circuit issued an order denying Al-Arian’s request.
However, a short time later, the court withdrew the denial.
The court’s chief deputy clerk, Mark Zanchelli, confirmed that the
court denied the petition and “immediately thereafter” cancelled the
denial. He said he could not elaborate on the reasons for the
unusual back-to-back orders.
A Pennsylvania attorney who has a blog about appellate courts,
Howard Bashman, said such apparent indecision is uncommon. “It
happens very rarely,” he said.
Mr. Bashman noted that denials of petitions for rehearing are
followed quite closely by attorneys involved, since those denials
start the 90-day period to ask the Supreme Court to take up a
case. “Most of the time that’s not anything that disappears,” he
said.
Al-Arian’s attorney for the appeal, C. Peter Erlinder of William
Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., said he had “no idea” why
the court apparently waffled.
Lawyers familiar with appeals court procedures said the back-to-back
orders probably reflect an internal miscommunication at the court.
However, the discrepancy could also indicate that at least one of
the 4th Circuit’s judges believes that Al-Arian’s appeal warrants
further attention.
Al-Arian, a former engineering professor at the University of South
Florida, pleaded guilty last year to one felony count of aiding a
designated terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The plea
followed a six-month trial in 2005 in which Al-Arian was acquitted
on eight charges while jurors could not reach verdicts on nine other
counts. He contends the plea deal he reached included an agreement
that he would not have to appear before any grand jury.
A spokesman for prosecutors in Northern Virginia, James Rybicki, had
no comment on today’s developments.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, is considering
another appeal by Al-Arian, in which he contends his plea agreement
was misinterpreted by the Tampa, Fla.-based judge who oversaw his
trial.
Under the terms of that deal and his 57-month prison sentence, the
Kuwaiti-born professor could have been released and deported as soon
as last week.
However, his criminal sentence has been put on hold while he serves
up to 18 months for civil contempt. Earlier this year, Al-Arian
undertook a two-month hunger strike to protested the government’s
actions against him.
==
III. Political Prisoner Suffers Isolation while Doc Wows Toronto
Audiences
The Norwegian documentary “USA vs Al-Arian” premiered Friday at
HotDocs, eliciting moviegoers’ outrage towards the US justice system
and its treatment of the Al-Arian family. The film portrays an
American Muslim family facing charges of terrorism through the trial
of Sami Al-Arian.
Two of his adult children, Abdullah and Leena Al-Arian, attending
the international premiere and the midnight reception Friday, were
touched by the standing ovation from the audience. “We weren’t sure
how a North-American audience would react to the film, but the
responses we got were overwhelmingly positive,” Leena said. “At the
reception after the film, we were approached by many people in the
film industry who said they were appalled by the treatment of our
father by the US government.”
While his children traveled to the Toronto premiere of “USA vs Al-
Arian”, imprisoned Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian has been on a
special tour of his own. So far this year, he has been transferred
from prison to prison nine times, four times in April alone. Al-
Arian went through a six-month trial in which he was acquitted on
the most serious charges. Although the jury voted 10-2 in favor of
acquittal on the remaining counts, the government threatened a re-
trial on those charges. In a 2006 agreement, Al-Arian plead guilty
to one count of giving non-violent assistance to immigrants
associated with an illegal organization and the government agreed to
release him and allow him to leave the country. However, they have
not honored this agreement.
Currently Al-Arian is held under severe conditions in a prison about
1000 miles away from his family, making it extremely hard for them
to keep in touch with him. Al-Arian recently went through a 60-day
hunger strike to protest the government’s treatment. “The conditions
under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial
detention, and since his sentencing appear to be unacceptably harsh
and punitive,” the human rights group Amnesty International wrote in
a February letter to the US Attorney General.
“It was quite a strange experience to see our lives portrayed on the
big screen like this. But seeing everything that happened during the
trial again brings back both good and painful memories,” Abdullah
said.
After the Toronto premiere Friday, director Line Halvorsen received
a lot of praise, but also some accusations of bias.
“It is a personal story seen through the eyes of a family, but the
film is clear on the facts. We give the government a lot of screen
time and the opportunity to present its point of view. But in the
end, what we have is a man found innocent who is still harassed by
the justice system. I hope the film will make people aware of the
faces behind the headlines and the cases behind the laws.”
The film screens again Tuesday 11.30 at the ROM theatre, and the
director, Line Halvorsen will be present for a Q&A after the
screening.
Download press pictures from Toronto here:
http://www.dalchowsverden.no/
Other pictures and presskit here:
http://www.dalchowsverden.no/
More info on the films web: http://www.usavsalarian.com/
SAMI AL-ARIAN’S MULTIPLE PRISON TRANSFERS 2003-2007
April 2007:
4/20/07 to Present: Northern Neck Regional Jail
4/12/07 to 4/20/07: Alexandria Regional Jail, Alexandria, VA
4/10/07 to 4/12/07: FCI Petersburg, Petersburg VA
2/14/07 to 4/10/07: FMC Butner, Butner, NC
January to March 2007
1/19/07 to 2/14/07: Northern Neck Regional Jail
1/18/07 to 1/19/07: Alexandria Regional Jail, Alexandria, VA
1/17/07 to 1/18/07: FCI Petersburg, Petersburg VA
1/3/07 to 1/17/07: USP Atlanta
9/25/06 to 1/3/07: Northern Neck Regional Jail, Warsaw, Virginia
2006:
9/21/06 to 9/25/06: Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Oklahoma
9/20/06 to 9/21/06: USP Atlanta
6/22/06 to 9/20/06: FCC Coleman Medium Security, Coleman, Florida
6/8/06 to 6/22/06: USP Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia
5/4/06 to 6/8/06: Federal Correctional Institution (FCI)
Tallahassee, Florida
2/9/05 to 5/4/06: Orient Road Jail, Tampa
2003-2005:
3/27/03 to 2/9/05: U.S. Penitentiary (USP) Coleman, Coleman, Florida
2/20/03 to 3/27/03: Orient Road Jail, Tampa
==
IV. There is a new story on hotdocs.bside.com about USA vs. Al-Arian:
http://www.hotdocs.ca/daily.
By Courtney Price
Thirteen-year-old Lama Al-Arian knows what is so special about
a `contact visit.’ It means she gets to see her father without a
pane of glass separating them.
It was her last chance to have such a visit before going to live
with her grandmother in Egypt. Her family was sending her there in
order to spare her the trouble the rest of them would face in the
upcoming months.
But unfortunately for Lama, the authorities did not allow her to hug
her father.
This is just one of the heart-wrenching traumas the Al-Arian family
of seven experiences at the hands of the American justice system in
Line Halvorsen’s USA VS AL-ARIAN.
An award-winning filmmaker, Halvorsen records the Arab-American
family’s journey during the trial of their father Sami Al-Arian,
charged with assisting foreign terrorist organizations.
A Palestinian refugee, Sami came to America in 1975 to pursue the
American dream. He became a successful professor and vocalized the
plight of his people as a Palestinian rights and peace activist. It
is this fight for Palestinian recognition that garners the attention
of authorities who arrest Sami under charges of assisting the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Direct links to this
group are never made clear as the prosecutors seek to make an
example of this man while subverting the principles of the American
justice system in the process.
“I understand that they felt they had to do something [in reaction
to the] shock and fear,” says Halvorsen. “They had to make the
country safe, but what we need to look at now is – are the laws
implemented making them safer?”
Halvorsen became interested in these issues after living in the West
Bank and moving to America. At the screening of her last film, A
STONE’S THROW AWAY, a chance meeting with Nahla, the matriarch of
the Al-Arian family, sparked Halvorsen’s interest in Sami’s case.
She was only familiar with the plight of the Al-Arians from negative
media coverage.
“When I met Nahla her story was completely different than what I had
heard,” says Halvorsen. “She’s very charismatic, friendly and
intelligent, but also she had gone through a lot and was very
frustrated and depressed. The family had very little access to him
sometimes for six months at a time. Even convicted murderers got
contact time.”
After spending two and a half years awaiting trial, Sami appeared in
court to defend himself from the sweeping measures enacted after
September 11, 2001 that were intended to make American society safer.
“The Patriot Act opens up the possibility to spy on their citizens,”
says Halvorsen. “It is such an infringement on people’s civil
liberties. When I went to the States I was quite surprised. I met a
lot of people who are afraid and intimidated to speak out and say
what they think… I think it is really through the PA that we see
what they are doing to fundamental privacy protection. I think it
can create another McCarthy era.”
Throughout the film, the Al-Arian family perseveres by way of the
media attention and an exhausting and seemingly endless court fight.
The family’s tribulations leave them tattered but they continue in
the faith that they will see Sami as a free man.
While accused of bias, the film personalizes the rhetoric of U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and U.S. President Bush, and gives a
face to the controversial Patriot Act, highlighting the
contradictions in the policies that have seen over 6000 people
arrested as terrorist suspects.
“Of course it is biased,” says Halvorsen. “It is a personal story
seen through the eyes of a family, but it is not biased on the
facts. You give the government a voice in the film, but here is a
man found not guilty and he is still harassed by the justice system.
I hope the film will make people aware of the faces behind the
headlines and the cases behind the laws.”
==
V. Last week Dr. Sami was moved from Alexandria to Warsaw, Virginia.
His new address is:
Sami Al-Arian (#19638)
Northern Neck Regional Jail
P.O. Box 1060
Warsaw, VA 22572
END.
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