My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat, Huffingtonpost.com, April 24, 2007
By Laila Al-Arian
Link: Click here
“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)