March 23, 2006
Creative Loafing Johnsugg.com
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If America still has liberty, free Sameeh Hammoudeh

When an American or European is captured and held as a hostage in
the Middle East, the press and public are horrified. Rightfully so.
Every civilized person should repudiate events such as the
kidnapping and slaying of Quaker peace activist Tom Fox earlier this
month in Iraq.

But if we’re looking for a hostage story, we don’t need to journey
to the other side of the world. Bradenton, Fla., will do.

There, in a jail cell, sits Sameeh Hammoudeh, best known as Sami Al-
Arian’s co-defendant in the government’s much-touted
Tampa “terrorism” trial that ended in December. The outcome — not a
single guilty verdict for any of the four defendants — exposed the
incredible bankruptcy of evidence, the outright lies and the
political agenda of federal prosecutors.

Al-Arian should be released. He withstood more than a decade of
assault by Israeli disinformation agents, mostly working through the
prostituted Tampa Tribune, and our own federal government. His case
is as yet unresolved — the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision
on nine counts, although no more than two of the 12 jurors favored
any guilty verdicts whatsoever. That came after a half-year trial in
which the government tried to con the jurors, claiming a mountain of
specious conjecture constituted “proof.” It didn’t, and the jury saw
beyond the feds’ pathetic smoke and mirrors.

Federal agents wipe their feet on the Constitution by keeping Al-
Arian in jail. The no-justice justification is a possible new trial
that the evidence-anemic prosecutors hope to stack even more
unfairly than their first misbegotten effort.

Al-Arian was clearly an activist, however, and his effectiveness at
reaching out to American political leaders and the public is why the
Israelis wanted him silenced. “It (the Israeli Lobby) does not want
an open debate on issues involving Israel, because an open debate
might cause Americans to question the level of support that they
currently provide,” states a report published this month by
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Part of squelching
debate is Israel’s use of professional smear merchants such as Steve
Emerson, who orchestrated both the Tribune’s jihad against Al-Arian
and the federal prosecutors’ case.

But Hammoudeh wasn’t an activist. He is guilty of merely being a
Palestinian. There is absolutely no reason to hold Hammoudeh —
unless you want to confront the reality of what’s going on. He’s a
hostage, and an innocent one.

A foreign nation, Israel, has commandeered our judicial system, and
with our federal prosecutors as willing accomplices, is using our
courts for political reprisals.

“It’s all about the (Al-Arian) retrial,” Hammoudeh told me from his
Bradenton cell. “In negotiations with Sami, they say they have a
witness. They originally wanted me to testify falsely against Sami.
� I wouldn’t talk.”

It gets worse. The feds threatened Hammoudeh’s wife, Nadia. Then the
lawmen (not!) frogged up tax charges, and muscled guilty pleas from
the Hammoudehs by threatening to take the couple’s children.

“They said, ‘We’ll shatter your life,” Hammoudeh says. “They told me
they’d destroy my academic life, my social life, my family life.”

The feds have employed mental torture. Twice, the government has
said Hammoudeh would be released. His family waited in Jordan for a
week on one of those occasions, only to find out our government had
reneged on its promise, a crushing event.

Part of what the authorities are afraid of with Hammoudeh is what he
could tell the world as a free man. He has compiled, and given to
me, a lengthy list of government lies.

These aren’t argumentative — they are clear examples of
prosecutorial misconduct. In many of them, the indictment
paraphrases in sinister tones wiretapped conversations in which
Hammoudeh discusses transfers of minor sums of money to relatives.
In reality, it’s clear from actual translations that there was no
criminal activity being discussed. The government — as it has from
the beginning of the Al-Arian case — fabricated, distorted and
manipulated evidence.

Other examples are almost humorous — if a man wasn’t rotting in
jail. The government, Hammoudeh says, claimed “any usage of the
term ‘family’ at any time and by any person means ‘the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad.'” Thus, when Hammoudeh made “family” calls to his
father, 78, and his mother, 77, the feds’ Keystone Kops claimed the
calls related to terrorism.

If people started wondering about the conduct of prosecutors in
the “terrorism” case, they might start seriously questioning what
has been going on at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa. Keep in
mind, there is strong evidence that federal prosecutors tried to
frame state Circuit Court Judge Greg Holder after he complained to
Washington that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was scuttling public
corruption probes.

That the office has been woefully incompetent in prosecuting such
cases is a matter of record. I’d suggest a good place to start
asking why so many clearly corrupt officials avoid justice in Tampa
is a bar, called Four Green Fields. Attorneys for scurvy officials
and their criminal friends pump money into the bar, which is owned
by the federal prosecutor who oversees corruption cases — and who
led the Al-Arian investigation for years.

Hammoudeh has a habeas corpus hearing this week, and if there is a
shred of decency left in what is laughably called the Justice
Department, the Palestinian will be freed and allowed to leave the
country.

The Harvard paper on America’s relationship with Israel can be found
here:
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
Another excellent commentary was made by former President
Jimmy Carter this month; it can be found here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0309-32.htm