Another Sept. 11 Casualty

via CommonDreams:



Published on Monday, September 8, 2008 by The Boulder Daily Camera
Another Sept. 11 Casualty
by Ida Audeh


The Bush administration continues to use a criminal act committed seven years ago to justify sweeping restrictions on our civil liberties and the incarceration of more than 5,000 residents of Arab descent on phony charges or on no charges at all. One of these men is Sami al-Arian.

The February 2003 arrest of Al-Arian, a Palestinian Muslim and former University of South Florida computer science professor who has been a legal resident of the United States for 30 years, was announced by former Attorney General John Ashcroft on the evening news.

Viewers were told that al-Arian, an outspoken critic of Israeli policy against Palestinians, was a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that the arrest was a great coup in the "war against terrorism."

After spending more than two years in solitary confinement, al-Arian (joined by 3 co-defendants) had a six-month trial, which began in June 2005. The government called 70 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, and submitted records of 400 intercepted phone calls culled during the 10 years in which al-Arian had been under government surveillance. The jury acquitted al-Arian of most of the serious charges against him, while two of his three co-defendants were completely acquitted. (When asked what the prosecution lacked to build a more convincing case, one juror responded: Evidence.) The trial cost taxpayers $50 million.

Nevertheless, Judge James Moody rejected the government's request for the minimal sentence on the lesser charges and instead ordered the maximum, making inflammatory remarks from the bench in which he painted al-Arian as a villain. In October 2006, al-Arian was subpoenaed by Gordon Kromberg, assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, to testify before a grand jury in another case, in violation of the terms of the plea bargain al-Arian's lawyers had made and in a transparent attempt at entrapment. Kromberg has made bigoted remarks about Muslims and railed against what he mysteriously referred to as "the Islamization of America." Al-Arian refused to testify and went on a hunger strike. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-3

and gentle man, and what has been done to him is outrageous and vicious and cruel. Add him to the list of victims of the war on terror, along with people like Arar Maher, Khaled El-Masri, Mohamed Bashmilah, Murat Kurnaz, David Hicks, and too many others that whose names we don't know.

This is disgusting.