By Chris Hedges, 2/12/07, originally published on TruthDig.org
Professor Sami Al-Arian, whose persecution and show trial are parts of
a long string of egregious acts of injustice perpetrated by the Bush
administration, has been on a hunger strike since Jan. 22 to protest
the prolongation of his imprisonment.
Al-Arian’s travels through the halls of American justice, and now the
subterranean corridors of the nation’s Stygian prison system, reads
like a bad rip-off of Kafka. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of the 17
counts against him by a Florida jury, which deadlocked on the rest. He
agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges four months
later in exchange for being released and deported. The judge gave
Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under a plea deal-57 months at
his sentencing. He was set to be released this April, something that
now appears unlikely.
The trial was a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration’s drive to
turn the American judicial system into kangaroo courts. Over the
six-month trial a parade of 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel,
attempted to brand the Florida professor as a terrorist. The government
submitted thousands of documents, phone interceptions and physical
surveillance culled from 12 years of investigations. The trial cost
taxpayers an estimated $80 million. The 94 charges against Al-Arian and
his co-defendants resulted in no convictions. But because Al-Arian has
twice refused to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in a case
involving a Muslim think tank, he has now been charged with contempt of
court. The date of his release could be extended by as much as 18
months.
Al-Arian, who is a diabetic, began a hunger strike in response.
“I believe that freedom and human dignity are more precious than
life itself,” he said in a telephone interview from Northern Neck
Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. “In, essence I am taking a principled
stand that I am willing to endure whatever it takes to win my freedom.
“I am still OK,” he said. “I have lost 26 pounds by today. It’s
definitely not easy, but I am determined to continue. It’s not a
decision you make haphazardly or something that you take lightly. In
the end, you have to make difficult decisions because of the larger
cause. I drink four large cups of water a day, about 12 ounces each.”
Dr. Al-Arian said he will remain on a hunger strike until the
government ends its campaign against him and allows him to return to
his wife and children.
The case and continued harassment sets a dangerous precedent for
American Muslims, who since 9/11 have been monitored, detained and
deported in large numbers. But it bodes ill for the rest of us as
well. The new legislation suspending habeas corpus and creating the
possibility of legally stripping U.S. citizens of their right to a fair
and timely trial is a taste of what awaits us all should we enter a
period of instability or national crisis. In many ways the assault
against Al-Arian is an assault against the judicial system that lies
like a barrier between us and despotism.
“Much of the government’s evidence against me were speeches I gave,
lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I
owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I
conducted, news I heard and websites no one accessed…In one instance,
the evidence consisted of a conversation that one of my co-defendants
had with me in his dream,” he said. “It was reminiscent of the thought
crime of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” The scary part was not that
these were offered into evidence, but that a federal judge admitted
them. That’s why I am so proud of the jury, who acted as the free
people that they were and saw through Big Brother’s tactics.
“I”ve been to nine prisons in nine months,” he explained. “I spent
the first 23 months in Coleman Federal Penitentiary, where the
conditions were Guantanamo-plus, that is they were like those of the
detainees in Guantanamo Bay “plus” one phone call a month and visits
with my family behind glass. I was in a nine-foot-by-eight-foot cell,
where I was held under 23-hour lockdown. During the first few months,
they wouldn’t even allow me to exercise unless I was strip-searched,
which I refused to submit to, so I was inside 24 hours. During the
first month, I was allowed only one 15-minute phone call, and for six
months after that I was not allowed to make any calls.
“I was shackled and handcuffed every single time I left my cell for any
reason,” he said. “When I needed to take my legal papers for meetings
with my attorney, the guards would not carry them for me, even though
they did for other prisoners. Though I was shackled, they forced me to
carry them on my back, as I was bent over. I had to walk like that for
half a mile. I should also mention the use of fire alarms in trying to
disrupt life. In the Special Housing Unit [SHU], a punitive section of
the prison where I was the only pretrial detainee, alarms and emergency
sirens would go off 15 to 20 times every single day, at 12 a.m., 2
p.m., any time of the day. It was a deafening noise that would continue
for five to 10 minutes. It was clearly deliberate. In the SHU,
commissary was almost nonexistent. All they offered was potato chips,
whereas in the general compound everything was available. The SHU was
designed for disciplinary purposes, not for housing a pretrial
detainee.
“Not only did they place me in the SHU, but they imposed additional
restrictions on me,” he went on. “For instance, everybody else was
granted contact visits, while I had to see my family behind glass. They
also insisted on strip-searching me before and after these
behind-the-glass visits. In May 2003, my wife drove two hours to see
me, but they denied her the visit when I would not submit to a strip
search.”
Al-Arian is a Palestinian. The injustice meted out to him in America
is writ large in the Middle East. He has no passport, no home, no
country. He must live on the charity of others, stateless, as most
Palestinians are, and without the rights of the citizens around him. He
once thought America would be his home. He was, before this charade,
in the process of gaining citizenship. All this is over. In George
Bush’s America there is no place for activists or dissidents. And when
they finish with those on the margins of our society they will turn, if
we let them, on the rest of us.