The
Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
02/08/08 "Counterpunch"
-- - Efforts
to free Sami al-Arian have now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
On July 30 an appeal was lodged with the Court by his attorneys,
led by Professor Jonathan Turley.
There are few prospects in the justice system so grimly awful as
when the feds decide never to let go. Rebuffed in their
persecutions of some target by juries, or by contrary judges,
they shift ground, betray solemn agreements, dream up new
stratagems to exhaust their victims, drive them into bankruptcy,
despair and even suicide. They have all the money and all the
time in the world.
Several months ago I wrote here about the appalling vendetta
conducted by the US Justice Department against Sami al-Arian, a
professor from Florida who had the book thrown at him in 2003 by
Attorney General Ashcroft. As I described it back then, Dr
al-Arian was charged in a bloated terrorism and conspiracy case
and spent two and a half years in prison, in solitary
confinement awaiting trial.
In December 2005, a Tampa jury hung 10 to 2 in favor of
acquittal on nine charges. In a plea deal, the government
dropped eight of them and demanded Al-Arian plead guilty to a
watered-down version of one charge. Normally a hung jury with so
large a number of the jurors voting for innocence would mean the
prosecutors would not demand a retrial. But given the Justice
Department’s vindictiveness in this case and that it might
insist on just such hugely expensive and protracted
proceedings, Al-Arian’s lawyers urged him to accept the offer.
Under the plea agreement—which the government betrayed --Dr.
Al-Arian pled guilty to one charge of providing nonviolent
services to people associated with a designated terrorist
organization.
A central aspect of the plea agreement was an understanding that
al-Arian would not be subject to further prosecution or called
to cooperate with the government on any matter. Al-Arian and his
lawyers have insistently maintained that the plea deal with
Florida prosecutors protected him from cooperating in any
additional cases. The government recommended the shortest
possible sentence, no more than time served.
But then, almost certainly after a visit to the local federal
prosecutors in Tampa by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the
feds double-crossed him on the plea agreement and he was thrown
back into prison. The biased judge handed down the maximum
sentence, which meant a further eleven months of incarceration
before release and deportation slated for April 2007. Now Dr
al-Arian passed into the malign orbit of prosecutors in
Virginia, notably assistant federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg.
The DOJ’s plan now was to set up al-Arian in a perjury trap,
compelling him to testify before a grand jury investigating an
Islamic think tank called in a case that is unrelated to his.
The Institute has been the target of a six-year witch-hunt by
Kromberg.
On November 16, 2006, dragged up to Virginia, al-Arian was
brought before the grand jury and placed in civil contempt for
refusing to testify because the actual intend of the subpoena
has been the attempt to trap him. When the grand jury’s term
expired, Kromberg promptly empanelled a new one. Al-Arian
continued to decline to testify, and was once more held in
contempt.
Shunted between prisons in Atlanta, Petersburg and Alexandria,
Dr al-Arian endured hunger strikes and maltreatment from guards.
Even with the additional time served, Dr. Al-Arian’s sentence
ended on April 7 of this year. He was then taken into the
custody of immigration authorities who were making preparations
for his deportation. On June 26 the Department of Justice
elected to plunge al-Arian and his family into fresh torments,
thus prolonging the slow moving auto da fe of the past
five years. A new federal indictment charged Dr. Al-Arian with
two counts of criminal contempt, relating to the efforts by
Virginia prosecutors to bring him before a grand jury
investigating other Muslim organizations. Al Arian now faces
additional prison time if convicted.
“This indictment proves that the government was never interested
in any information that Dr. Al-Arian has on the IIIT [i.e., the
International Institute of Islamic Thought] matter,” said his
attorney, Professor Jonathan Turley, who has represented
al-Arian since May 2007. “They have indicted him despite the
fact that the prosecutors admitted that he is a minor witness in
the IIIT investigation and he has already given two detailed
statements under oath to the government and offered to take a
polygraph examination to prove that he has given true
information about his knowledge of IIIT. Dr. Al-Arian has
addressed every document cited by the government as the reason
for his being called before the grand jury. He has shown that he
has no incriminating information to offer against either IIIT or
its officers.”
On June 30, 2008, Al-Arian was arraigned before US District
Judge Leonie Brinkema for the Eastern District of Columbia, but
Al-Arian did not enter a plea as Turley stated they were not
prepared to do so. The Court, then, entered a not guilty plea on
Dr al-Arian’s behalf and scheduled a trial to begin on August
13. According to a statement issued by Turley, the government is
further seeking to indict Dr. Al-Arian for the period under
which he was under civil contempt confinement. Thus, after
holding him for a year, the government now seeks to punish him
for the same period of the confinement.
Turley writes on his website that “the petition for a writ of
certiorari appeals the decision of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The lower court refused to
consider evidence that the prosecutors violated Dr. Al-Arian’s
2006 plea agreement in ordering him to testify before a Virginia
grand jury. Dr. Al-Arian has asked for an evidentiary hearing to
establish that he was expressly promised by the Justice
Department that he would not have to cooperate in any way after
his plea agreement. Indeed, he accepted a longer sentence to
secure that concession. The final standard cooperation language
was indeed removed from the agreement, but the court refused to
consider evidence outside of the agreement showing that the
removal of the language was due to an express promise by the
government. Other circuits allow for such evidence to be
considered — producing a split in the circuits. The Eleventh
Circuit decision effectively allows the Justice Department to
get away with a classic “bait and switch” tactic where the
government assures a defendant that a condition is accepted and
then, after he pleads guilty, refuses to comply with the
condition because it was not expressly added to the plea
agreement.”
Why the continued efforts to destroy Dr al-Arian? He’s just one
more object lesson to the world of what can happen to a Muslim,
a Palestinian, who tried with some success to combat ignorance
and prejudice in the Middle Eastern debate and who established
his innocence to a jury on the grave charges the US government
spent millions to sustain in that Florida court. His assailants
in the Justice Department have probably anticipated with relish
that al-Arian would succumb to malnutrition and illness in one
of the holes into which he has been flung. They were mistaken.
Sustained by his family, capable attorneys and vast sympathy
across the world, Dr al-Arian has stayed in the ring with his
fearsome and vindictive persecutors. Every word of support and
encouragement (to
tampabayjustice@yahoo.com) is important.
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