Sami Al-Arian Letter

Dear Attorney General Mukasey:

Congratulations on becoming the 81st Attorney General of the United States!

I am writing to you to ask for your help. I believe the wheels of justice have malfunctioned in the case against Sami Al-Arian, and I believe you have the ability and the power to change the situation. Al-Arian was an award-winning and tenured computer science professor at the University of South Florida. Being of Palestinian descent, he was sharply critical of US-Israel policy. A local controversial "investigative" reporter did a newspaper series claiming AL-Arian had terrorist ties. A national broadcaster joined in on the smear. Then after 9/11/01, John Ashcroft's Justice Department piled on and charges were filed.

Sami Al-Arian is not guilty, has not been convicted by a jury, and yet he remains in prison. Al-Arian's investigation was excessive and invasive and yet fruitless. His reputation was smeared. His legal rights have been abridged or ignored. The way he is being treated would be unacceptable for humanitarian reasons and pointless in any case. His treatment in prison has actually been disgraceful.

I believe that you, Attorney General Mukasey, would not condone unjust torturous persecution of an individual for political expediency, or to silence the voices of opposition, specifically, to our US-Israel policy. Finally, I believe that if you take the time to examine the particulars of this sad case, you will have the compassion to help Dr. Al-Arian and his family.

Additionally, I believe that the handling of this case has undermined not only the integrity of our nation, but also the very national security interests which proponents of the case claim to uphold!

THE ARREST MORE THAN FIVE YEARS AGO

As Amy Goodman of Democracy Now reported: "At 5:30 am on a February morning in 2003, officers from the FBI and Joint Terrorism task Force raided the south Florida home of Professor Sami al-Arian. The officers grabbed him and took him from the house as his wife and 3 children watched in horror. At a press conference later that day, Attorney General John Ashcroft accused al-Arian of funding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, calling it 'one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world.' That day, the Justice Department handed down a sweeping 50-count indictment against Al-Arian and seven other men, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, giving material support to an outlawed group, extortion, perjury, and other offenses."

Al-Arian's arrest followed years of suspicion and harassment which evidently began with unsubstantiated allegations by then Tampa Tribune journalist Michael Fechter as outlined in a change of venue motion filed by Al-Arian's attorneys. The government’s case against Al-Arian included 11 years of FBI wiretaps and searches, three years of trial preparation by federal prosecutors, millions of dollars in costs and a six-month trial. The government presented 71 witnesses, including nearly two dozen from Israel whose personal losses were presented to the jury for emotional support. There was, though, no link at all between their losses and Dr. Al-Arian, and the jury understood that. At the end of it all, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 53 criminal counts brought against Al-Arian and three co-defendants.

AN INNOCENT MAN

The jury found that the government, in al-Arian's original trial, did not offer even marginally compelling evidence. The jury voted ten to two for full acquittal, and given more time, the stand-out jurors might have agreed that Al-Arian was innocent on all counts. National Lawyers Guild President Michael Avery said, “This verdict proves that the Justice Department has completely failed in its heavy-handed case against Dr. Al-Arian, a case in which the defense called not one witness. In rejecting the government’s arguments, the jury found Dr. Al-Arian not guilty on the most serious charges, and affirmed his First Amendment right to speak out on behalf of the Palestinian people.” As the Saint Petersburg Times put it in an editorial: "The fact that Al-Arian was acquitted on eight counts and won a mistrial on the other nine charges demonstrates the fairness of the American justice system." The newspaper went on to point out: "Since there are nine counts against Al-Arian where the jury deadlocked, the government has the choice to retry him. But after a trial that took 22 weeks, during which the government called dozens of witnesses, offered nearly 400 transcripts of the defendants' phone conversations and faxes, and details of almost $2-million in money transfers between the United States and countries in the Middle East, yet failed to obtain a single guilty verdict, there is a strong likelihood that another jury would come to similar conclusions." The government, though, had no intention of releasing this man, regardless of his legal guilt or innocence. So, in order to persecute a man acquitted on the most serious charges and not convicted of anything, the trick, legally, would be to try him again but make sure a jury never gets to consider the case.

MISTREATMENT IN PRISON

The prison conditions in which Dr. AL-Arian has been kept have been bad from the beginning. Most recently, the human rights of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, in prison at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Virginia, are being systematically violated. After extensive and repeated hunger strikes, Al-Arian is no threat physically to anyone (nor would he ever have been). Yet he is kept in a special segregated unit and is handcuffed every time he leaves the cell. He is a Muslim who has religious/spiritual needs that involve praying at certain times of the day, and yet he is not allowed to know the time of day. He is only allowed to shower twice a week, which is particularly offensive to a Muslim since I understand that personal cleanliness is important to them during spiritual practice. Bright lights are shined into his cell 24 hours a day which interferes with normal sleep and biorhythm. Sleep deprivation is torture. And he is not allowed regular phone contact with his family.

In the opinion of Amnesty International, "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.

CONTINUED LEGAL ABUSE

The legal status the government maintains for Dr. Al-Arian can only be described as hopeless. If there were hope, he could hope to get out of prison, he could hope to rejoin his family, and maybe he could hope to leave the country. While in prison, he could hope for fair treatment in jail and fair treatment by the courts. Hopeless is the word.

Dr. Al-Arian's daughter, Laila Al-Arian describes the situation thusly: "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. "

Clearly Mr. Kromberg's bias weakens any case he might attempt to make. He should not be involved in this case.

But why would the government want to persecute and prosecute a man who had committed no serious crimes? Why indeed?

MOTIVE #1 FOR CONTINUED PERSECUTION: Intimidation of Isreal's critics

Sami Al-Arian, as a Palestinian who has never been able to live in his Palestinian homeland which his parents were forced to flee in 1948, has been outspoken and angry about Israel and US-Israel policy. As Dr. Al-Arian's daughter, Laila Al-Arian, has written at huffingtonpost.com: " 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....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."

The case against Al-Arian appears to have been first made, not in the courts, but in the local media by a reporter whose ethical practices have come into question. Michael Fechter, then with the Tampa Tribune, has been criticized as being personally and politically too close to his main source, the founder of a website who claims to be a counter terrorism expert. Steve Emerson claims to be a counter-terrorism expert, but he is more accurately described as a controversial antiterrorism crusader. When Fechter ultimately gave 2 weeks notice to the Tribune so that he could work for Emerson's so-called "Investigative Project on Terrorism" website, which is palpably political, anti-Islam, and anti-Arab, the newspaper asked Fechter to leave the same day. Basically, an investigative reporter with more than 10 years covering a controversial case left journalism to work for one of the guys at the center of the story. Tribune executive editor Janet Coats is reported to have said at the time, "Steven Emerson is controversial. Michael Fechter is controversial. That Michael is going to work for Steven is controversial. To put separation between them and the paper, we asked Michael to leave today, rather than wait."

Michael Fechter apparently led Fox's Bill O'Reilly to take the smear campaign national, and the result was a good example of the damage potential of bad journalism.

MOTIVE #2 FOR CONTINUED PERSECUTION: Damage control for Bush policies

The Bush administration, now the most unpopular presidency in the history of popularity surveys, has been under fire for its reaction to pre-September 11 intelligence, for its response to the attacks on that terrible day, for its violation of constitutional and international laws and standards in its handling of prisoners, for its invasion of privacy with wiretaps and so on. All of these issues come together in the case they tried to make against Dr. Al-Arian. The government claimed this was supposed to somehow respond to the terrorists of 9/11. Al-Arian was supposed to be a white collar terrorist, some kind of "king-pin." The widely criticized invasion of privacy which Mr. Bush defends on the basis of Homeland Security was in full swing against Al-Arian, because thousands of phone calls of the Al-Arian family were intercepted and scrutinized. The case against Sami Al-Arian was deemed sufficiently important for Attorney General John Ashcroft to make public statements about it. The jury's failure to convict was a huge embarrassment, to be sure, for the Bush administration which had been so high-profile in its case against Al-Arian. How does the president and company come off looking if, after rampant violation of the privacy of the entire Al-Arian family, there is no evidence contained in all of this egregiously gathered data? Then the man, a good family man mind you, was kept isolated from his kids and wife. He was isolated and restricted in prison. And so on. The treatment of Al-Arian and family by the government was mean and unreasoned, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the professor. But it looks worse for Mr. Bush, who now has the lowest popularity rating in history, if the man is innocent. And he is. The most damaging thing, from the damage control perspective, would be for this man to tell his story freely to people.

One reason this case is of importance to me, personally, is that I am also critical of our US-Israel policy. I think it is driven by special interests, including and in particular the so-called Israel lobby (i.e. AIPAC), and that it is contrary to American interests (peace, prosperity, security, global stability). Osama bin Laden, a criminal who may nonetheless be the world's expert on why we were attacked in 2001, is quoted in the 9/11 Report as saying that our support of Israel's killing of Palestinians does play a role in why we are attacked, along with our killing of Muslims via sanctions in Iraq (another area of American policymaking that has not worked out well). However, I also oppose our Israel policy on the basis of human rights law and in the interest of international law. I also see a civil rights issue here, affecting Palestinian-Americans and Arab-Americans more generally. Mr. Kromberg's comments (above) are exhibit one! Most Palestinians and other Arab-Americans I have met are intelligent, kind and generous people. I have heard sadness and anger, but never a call to arms. They call for peace, human rights and justice. Yet they are belittled on the Comedy Channel and slandered in the news media. However, as Martin Luther King Junior put it, "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."

Beyond that, my personal concern for Dr. Al-Arian stems from having met his son, Abdullah, when he was a student at Duke University where I then worked. I was born at Duke in 1950. Abdullah was born there in 1980, the same year my oldest daughter was born. When I met Abdullah, he impressed me as as a very bright, honest and clear-headed young man. I was horrified and sympathetic about the treatment his father was receiving from the University of South Florida and in the media. Since then, I have met and spoken with him a few times, and more recently I met his mother and other family members who came to Duke and UNC as a new film about the case was being shown. I feel deeply sad, as an American citizen, that my government has played the role it has played in the suffering of this family. I have never met Sami Al-Arian, but I understand that he has worked for human rights all over the world, not just for Palestinians. I am writing to you in an appeal for, and in support of, human rights and justice for Sami Al-Arian.

Mister Attorney General, it is very evident to me that a lot of time and money has gone into the prosecution/persecution of this man. The energy and resources have involved the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Those agencies have important work to do, but political damage control and repression of free speech are not in the job description, nor is persecution.

Again, I believe the actions taken against Dr. Al-Arian in fact violate the interests of justice, the interests of homeland security, and also violate the spirit if not the letter of US and international law. I believe that the actions taken also violate free speech, and that they are aimed, in part, at silencing criticism in this country of US-Israel policy, particularly among Palestinians and other Arabs and among Muslims. I call upon you to make sure that Dr. Sami Al-Arian is released immediately (his unfair sentence ended April 11 so there is not even a quasi-legal justification for his imprisonment), and that he is treated well until that time, and that he is deported, if that is what he and his family and attorney desire, at the earliest convenience in accordance with the plea bargain he agreed to. I wish Al-Arian would stay in the USA, as I believe we could learn from him about our mistakes in foreign policy, and about our mistakes in the courts.

The number for Hampton Roads Regional Jail is 757-488-7500.

Thank you for considering the points I make here.

Respectfully and very sincerely yours,

Mr. Claiborne M. Clark

PS- For more information see: http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm