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| Prof Sami Al Arian |
In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was a professor at
the University of South Florida, a legal resident of the U.S. since
1975, and one of the most prominent Palestinian civil rights activists
in the U.S. That year, the course of his life was altered irrevocably
when he was indicted on highly controversial terrorism charges by then Attorney General John Ashcroft. These
charges commenced a decade-long campaign of government persecution in
which Al-Arian was systematically denied his freedom and saw his
personal and professional life effectively destroyed.
Despite the personal harm he suffered and the intense surveillance to which he had been subjected since as early as 1993,
the government ultimately failed to produce any evidence of
Al-Arian’s involvement in terrorist activities, instead relying at trial
overwhelmingly on the pro-Palestinian writing and speaking he had done
over the years.
His ordeal finally ended last night, 12
years after it began, as Al-Arian was deported yesterday at midnight
(EST) from the United States to Turkey. His deportation was part of a
2006 plea bargain to which he acquiesced in order, he told The Intercept last
night while at the airport preparing to leave the U.S., to “conclude
his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering.” Al-Arian added: “I
came to the United States for freedom, but four decades later, I am
leaving to gain my freedom.”
A 2003 Justice Department investigation
led by Ashcroft allegedly implicated Al-Arian and 8 other men
in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group which had been
designated a terrorist organization under the Clinton administration for
carrying out bombings and other attacks in the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian Territories. Ironically, Al-Arian had been a prominent
supporter of Clinton, and even met Clinton in the White House. He once
remarked to The Intercept that the multiple occasions
when he stood in very close proximity to the U.S. President should, by
itself, demonstrate how ludicrous were the “terrorist” allegations. In
2000, he supported the Bush campaign (after Bush denounced racial
profiling).
Al-Arian, while a Professor at the
University of South Florida, was indicted on multiple counts
of providing “material support” to the group and fundraising on their
behalf in the United States. In the press conference announcing the
indictment, Ashcroft claimed that
Al-Arian and his co-defendants “financed, extolled and assisted acts of
terror,” and praised the recently passed Patriot Act as being
instrumental to helping bring about the charges.
The charges were part of a broader
post-9/11 campaign to by the U.S. Government to criminalize aid and
support to Palestinians, as exemplified by the successful prosecution
of five officials of what had been the largest Muslim charity in the
U.S., the Holy Land Foundation. Those charity officials are now serving
decades in prison for sending money to Palestinians which, it was
alleged, made its way to designated terror groups in the Occupied
Territories.
For most of the three years after his
arrest, Al-Arian was kept in solitary confinement awaiting trial. During
this time, he was regularly subjected to strip-searches, denied normal
visitation rights with his family, and allegedly abused by prison staff. Amnesty International denounced the circumstances of his detention as “gratuitously punitive” and in violation of international standards on the treatment of prisoners.
When Al-Arian’s case did finally reach
trial after years of harsh imprisonment, prosecutors failed to convict
Al-Arian on even one charge brought against him. Jurors voted to acquit him on the most serious counts he faced and deadlocked on the remainder of the indictments.
The outcome was hugely embarrassing for
the U.S. Government. Despite having amassed over 20,000 hours of phone
conversations and hundreds of fax messages from over a decade of surveilling Al-Arian,
the DOJ – even with all the advantages they enjoyed in terrorism cases
in 2003 (and continue to enjoy today) – was unable to convince a jury
Al-Arian was the arch-terrorist they had very publicly proclaimed him to
be.
Indeed, instead of producing evidence
that Al-Arian was involved in actual “terrorism,” the government
attempted to use as evidence copies of books and magazines Al-Arian had
owned in a failed effort to convince the jury to convict him of apparent
thought crimes.
This effort failed and a jury ruled to
acquit Al-Arian on 8 out of 17 charges while failing to come to a
verdict on the remainder.
Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain on the
remaining charges by pleading guilty to one count of providing
“contributions, goods or services” to PIJ, a decision he says he
undertook out of a desire to end the government’s ongoing persecution of
him and win his release from prison.
Despite this plea, Al-Arian was not released from prison.
Instead, in 2007, shortly before he
expected to leave jail and begin likely deportation proceedings, the
government brought a new set of charges against him for refusing to
testify in another trial against a Virginia-based Islamic think tank.
Among several reasons he provided for refusing to testify against the
group, he stated his belief that the organization was innocent
of terrorism charges and, according to his lawyer, Jonathan Turley, “he
doesn’t want them to be persecuted the way he was.” His lawyers also
worried that any testimony he gave in that other case would allow the
DOJ to bring wholly new charges against him for perjury.
For his refusal to testify, Al-Arian was
sentenced to an additional 18 months in prison on civil contempt
charges, the maximum allowed by law. Al-Arian served this added time
only to be charged at the end of his sentence once again with additional
criminal contempt charges stemming from the same case.
In Al-Arian’s description, these charges
were in contravention of the plea deal he had previously agreed to with
the government. As he told The Intercept, “They reneged on
their end of the deal when they brought me to Virginia to try to force
me to testify in another, unrelated case. It was a perjury trap. I
refused to testify, so they charged me with criminal contempt.”
During the course of his imprisonment Al-Arian undertook a hunger strike to protest his ongoing persecution, losing 53 pounds in the process
and being reduced to a state in which he was no longer able to walk or
speak in a normal cadence. In court appearances, observers were shocked
by his physical appearance, with representatives from the U.S. Marshals
Service publicly vowing to subject him to force-feeding if his hunger
strike if his condition continued to visibly deteriorate.
After his indictment for criminal
contempt, a federal judge eventually ordered that Al-Arian to spend the
duration of the court proceedings under house arrest. But the judge then
proceeded to hold, rather than rule on, his motion to dismiss the
indictment, freezing the case in place for years as he was consigned to
house arrest. There he languished, confined to his small family
apartment as his court case took years to work its way through the
system.
In 2014, the federal government quietly and unceremoniously dropped all of their charges
against Al-Arian. After 11 years of persecution which left his
once-promising career in academia and public advocacy in shambles,
Al-Arian was “free” to be deported from the country where he had spent
40 years of his life and raised his family. As a stateless Palestinian,
he was forced to find another country where he could go, and ultimately
was able to leave for Turkey, where he was expected to arrive today.
Speaking to The Intercept,
Al-Arian said that he harbored no resentment despite his ordeal and that
he now feels “at peace” with the conclusion of his legal ordeal.
Describing his visceral, firsthand
experience of America’s eroding democratic values Al-Arian said, “I came
to the United States because I valued living as a free person, one who
is able to advocate in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the U.S. has
been turning into a less free society, a police and surveillance state,
especially after 9/11.”
“However, I’m very encouraged by the
millions of Americans who are pushing back against the forces of
intolerance and exclusionary politics. I leave hopeful that the tide is
turning because as history has seen, when the truth is made known to
them, Americans do not support oppression and discrimination.”
Source:
The Intercept
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