St. Petersburg Times
March 20, 2007
Gaunt Al-Arian shocks family
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By Meg Laughlin

Sami Al-Arian has been on a hunger strike for 58 days to protest
being held beyond his prison sentence. On a water-only diet, he has
lost 53 pounds. The former University of South Florida professor can
no longer walk, speaks in a whisper and trembles constantly because
of low body temperature, said family members who visited him last
weekend at a federal medical prison in Butner, N.C.

“We were stunned when we saw him. His deterioration is shocking,”
said Al-Arian’s son, Abdullah, 26.

Al-Arian, 49, is bedridden in an isolation cell. A nurse checks on
him twice a day, and a videocamera records his every move, say
officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Three hot meals are
placed in his cell every day, for two hours at a time. Then they are
removed, untouched.

“We will not let him die. We will force feed him before that
happens,” said Nikki Credic of the U.S. Marshals Service.

But Al-Arian’s family is calling his condition dire.

“We are extremely worried for his life,” said his wife, Nahla.

Al-Arian went on the strike Jan. 22 to protest being held in jail
beyond his sentence because he refused to testify before a Virginia
grand jury.

In May he pleaded guilty, as part of a plea agreement, to helping
associates of a terrorist group with nonviolent activities. The plea
agreement came after a jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight terrorism-
related charges and deadlocked on nine lesser counts.

While no explicit language was written into the plea agreement about
Al-Arian’s exemption from testimony before a grand jury in Virginia,
federal prosecutors in Tampa agreed with defense attorneys that Al-
Arian would not have to testify in Virginia. That verbal agreement
was recorded in court transcripts. Seven months later, he was
transferred to a Virginia jail and ordered to testify.

Al-Arian, who is 6 feet tall, weighed 202 pounds when the hunger
strike began.

END.