Human rights and legal precedent are at stake this week in Tampa.
Monday marks the beginning of the end of the Dr. Sami Al-Arian trial, described by human rights activists as a travesty. That's when closing arguments will begin in the trial of Dr. Al-Arian, former University of South Florida professor, and three co-defendants, accused of conspiring to raise money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Defense attorneys say the funds went for charity in the occupied territories.
Meet me on the other side.
The issues involved in the Al-Arian case are complex and multi-layered; they trace back well into the early 1990s. Woven into the story are the relationship between Al-Arian and USF (where Betty Castor was University President when this began unraveling), the pivotal roles played by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (who'da thought?) and FOX News (no surprise here) and the post-9/11 melt-down of human rights. Suffice it to say that the doctor's public stance and voice as a Palestinian activist have been controversial. But that isn't really what this diary is about...It's about rights under the law -- his, yours, mine - and how they are so easily trampled. Today it's Dr. Al-Arian; tomorrow it could be your neighbor or brother-in-law. Next week it could be you.
This story is also about the faith community doing the right thing; joining hands and standing up for core, inalienable rights. And doing that week after week, month after month.
I'm going to try to bring you to the present with salient facts. Please go easy on me if I leave out an important bit or represent a fact without the proper balance. This is being pulled together from a variety of sources, many with their own agendas.
Much of the text in this diary is excerpted from several websites, Free Sami Al-Arian (Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace),Academic Freedom, Due Process and Sami Al-Arian at USF (deeply detailed history provided by United Faculty of Florida), Tampa Bay Friends of Human Rights (contains court-observed trial updates and commentary) and Jesus, Prince of Peace Institute (founded by Warren Clark, pastor of the First United Church of Tampa (UCC) and John Arnaldi, member of the Tampa Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends ). Please visit these websites for in-depth insight into this controversy. The United Faculty of Florida site, in particular, is well-attributed and provides excellent historic and political context.
Some History (well, lots of history, but stick with me)
Sami Al-Arian, PhD, P.E., was born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait. He was a Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of South Florida, Tampa from 1985 until 2003 and has lived in the United States for 31 years.
Al-Arian's political activism began in the early 1980s but the current controversy began with an organization he co-founded in 1988, the Islamic Committee for Palestine. ICP published a magazine and ran annual conferences from 1988 to 1992. It was at the first conference that Al-Arian and colleagues started developing the idea for the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). According to Academic Freedom, Due Process and Sami Al-Arian at USF,
ISE was originally envisioned as a think tank in the D.C.-area, with a budget of perhaps half a million dollars a year, much of that from Middle Eastern sources. But the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the consequent Arab antagonism towards Palestinians forced Al-Arian and co-founders to downscale the institute to an office just off of USF. Running at $100,000 to $150,000 annually, it had a director, one or two staff, and published a journal while organizing (and raising funds for) conferences.
At about the same time, the University of South Florida was planning a Center for Middle Eastern Studies, as part of a larger plan to put USF on the map. In 1991 USF and WISE connected and in 1992 they established a formal relationship. From 1990 until 1995 WISE published a journal and ran some conferences, some jointly with USF.
Then it all blew up
An investigative journalist, Steven Emerson, began looking into American Palestinian terrorist groups in the early 90s. Emerson convinced the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to produce a documentary and in 1994 Jihad in America was aired nationally. The documentary identified Al-Arian's organization, ICP as the primary support group for "Islamic Jihad" in the United States. (A fascinating sidebar is Emerson's subsequent fall from grace after being a much sought-after "expert" in this area. As a public commentator, he connected the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to Middle Eastern terrorists, but lost all credibility when Timothy McVeigh was arrested.)
I'll cut to the chase here. That's when a whole lot of shit hit Al-Arian, and his personal life and career began to disintegrate. A year after the documentary aired, the FBI announced an investigation into Al-Arian and his activities. They searched Al-Arian's and the ICP/WISE office and removed 50 cartons of material. USF President Betty Castor requested an independent investigative report, which was conducted by William Reece Smith, a noted Tampa attorney. In the final report "Smith said he found `no evidence,' beyond Al-Arian's Palestinian nationalist views, to link him to terrorism." (St Petersburg Times, June 30 1996, "Why USF's Crisis Got Out of Hand")
In the meantime, the FBI continued to hold onto the seized materials, kept their investigation open and Al-Arian went on a leave of absence.
A not-unrelated development involved Al-Arian's brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar, also a USF instructor, who was arrested on May 19, 1997. The following account of harrassment by the US government is chilling. It is excerpted from Academic Freedom, Due Process and Sami Al-Arian at USF
On June 6, 1997, Al-Najjar's case was heard before U.S. Immigration Judge Kevin McHugh, who had told defense counsel that he had been presented with secret evidence that Al-Najjar was a security risk. Al-Najjar's lawyers were not permitted to examine the evidence, nor hear what sort of "risk" their client was supposed to pose. They called former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who warned, "I would be very much concerned about the reliability ... There is information that can readily be determined to be someone's prejudice, someone's lies ..." Nevertheless, McHugh ordered Al-Najjar held without bond. (Both the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune published accounts of this hearing on June 7, but the most accessible posting of either is on Lexis-Nexis.)
Thus began three years and seven months of a situation described on the March 22, 1998 by Miami Herald Martin Merzer in his story The Secret War as "Charges: unknown. Accusers: anonymous. Evidence: secret. Sentence: indeterminate." According to Merzer, "the judge said it [the secret evidence] consisted of one or two pieces of paper and he needed help comprehending it." (This was only one of several cases in which secret evidence was used to justify indefinite detention of non-citizens.) In order to get out of detention, Al-Najjar's family tried to find a nation that would accept him, without success. The Times and the Tribune began running editorials condemning the indefinite detention of prospective deportees (as did many other newspapers). For over three years, Al-Najjar was the subject of a proxy battle over his brother-in-law. In July, 2000, Amnesty International said that Al-Najjar was a prisoner of conscience, and in its Report 2001, AI would cite the case as a matter of concern. On May 31, 2000, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled that Al-Najjar's rights were violated by being detained without given the right to defend himself against whatever case the secret evidence suggested. She wrote, "Association is not a reasonable foundation for the immigration judge's decision to deny bond and continue to detain (him) as a threat to national security." The case was sent back to Immigration Judge McHugh.
On Oct. 27, 2000, McHugh concluded that "The court has not been presented with any [non-secret] evidence linking (Al-Najjar) to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," and gave the INS two weeks to decide choose whether to share the secret evidence with the defense ... or drop the case. The St. Petersburg Times reported that an INS witness had admitted "that Al-Najjar had not engaged in a single act of violence, nor were any funds traced to a terrorist group." The INS got more than two weeks, but in the first week of December, McHugh decided to let Al-Najjar out on bail. And despite a last-minute intervention by U.S. Attorney-General Janet Reno, Al-Najjar was ultimately freed on Dec. 15.
Then 9/11 changed everything
On September 27, 2001, Al-Arian made the fateful mistake of appearing on the Bill O'Reilly show, ostensibly to discuss Muslim support for post-9/11America. Naively, he expected O'Reilly to honor pre-interview promises. Al-Arian explained in a chapter of the book, IT'S A FREE COUNTRY: Personal Freedom in America After September 11:
[The producer] asked me if I would be a guest on the show and primarily explain the relationship between a think tank I co-founded called World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), established in 1990 and closed in 1995, and the University of South Florida (USF); what the purpose of WISE was; and the controversy that surrounded it six years ago. After much discussion it was agreed that because of the limited time, the show would only address WISE's relationship with USF. I also told her that although I was on the faculty of USF, I wanted to be introduced as chairman of the coalition that was established to defend civil rights and political freedom. Unfortunately, this was never mentioned, because clearly the intent was to put pressure on the university.
Instead O'Reilly did what he does best: bullied and hurled accusations. The story took off locally and nationally: USF provided haven Palestinian terrorists, and Al-Arian was the poster child. Thus began a lengthy and highly charged dispute within the University. On December 21, 2001 USF President Judy Genschaft notified him of the University's intent to terminate and, somewhat incidentally, the following February interim U.S. Attorney MacCauley announced that after about six years, the FBI continued to investigate Al-Arian,
with nothing to report.
For about two more years the FBI kept apparently kept the case open and Al-Arian's standing at USF became a political football. Then on Feb. 20, 2003, Al-Arian was indicted by a federal grand jury for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act . Sixteen months later, on June 1, 2005 the trial began.
Since the indictment
Dr. Al-Arian has been jailed without bond and held in solitary confinement for months at a time with limited opportunities to meet with his attorney. Requests for change of venue due to bias in the media and community were denied. Although he did not waive his right to a speedy trial, he spent almost two and one half years in prison before the trial began on June 6, 2005.
The remainder of this diary was provided to me by Melva Underbakke, a tireless supporter of Dr. Al-Arian's rights under the law, along with other members of the Tampa faith community.
Dr. Sami Al-Arian and co-defendant Sammeeh Hammoudeh were arrested in the predawn hours on February 20, 2003. One month later (March 27), they men were moved from the local jail in Tampa, Florida to a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, 75 miles away.
Dr. Al-Arian was housed in the Special Housing Unit (SHU), a maximum-security area for convicted criminals who have caused trouble in the prison, where he shared a 6x9 cell with Sammeeh Hammoudeh. He was held in this cell for 23 hours (or more) of each day, and was strip-searched any time he left or entered the cell.
Any contact with the outside world was severely limited, including access to lawyers, telephones and even pencils. (He was allowed to make only one 15-minuted call per month.) All his mail, including legal mail from his lawyers and the judge, was opened before he received it.
Although convicted criminals are allowed contact visits with family members and visits by friends, Dr. Al-Arian was only allowed non-contact visits with immediate family members. No one else was allowed to visit at all, other than Dr. al-Arian's lawyer.
When Dr. Al-Arian was taken to meet with his lawyer, he was shackled and handcuffed behind his back. He was bent over and forced to carry his legal papers on his back, like a beast of burden. This continued for over a year and a half.
On February 8, 2005, Dr. Al-Arian was moved back to the Orient Road Jail in Tampa to prepare for the trial. During the last two months he spent in Coleman, the entire prison was in lock-down. This meant that during that time, he never left his cell and was allowed no visitors at all, with the exception of one visit from his lawyer.
Currently, Dr. Al-Arian is being held in the County Jail in Tampa while the trial is going on, and he is still being held in solitary confinement. The government has finished presenting its case. Dr. Al-Arian's attorneys have rested without calling any witnesses, saying that unless the US Constitution is repealed, the government has not shown that he is connected to any crimes.
There have been a number of concerns about the conduct of this trial - which are specified in the following statement. The statement was read on Oct. 25, 2005, by Pastor Warren Clark, First United Church (UCC) of Tampa, at the press conference held by the Tampa Bay Friends of Human Rights in front of the Federal Courthouse in Tampa, FL.
At the beginning of this trial, the Tampa Bay Friends of Human Rights stood here and said, "Everyone deserves a fair trail." Now a pattern of decisions raises questions about this trial's fairness. This is a landmark case, and precedents can be set that will be used in future trials.
Today we highlight three concerns:
1 Change of venue. There had been a decade long pattern of highly charged newspaper stories about one of the defendants in this trial. Surveys conducted before the trial indicated it would be very difficult to select a jury where all the members would be free of pre-judgments. Surveys of other cities in the South East indicated much lower levels of pre-trial judgment by potential jurors. In the future, this trial may be used as precedent for lowered standards on legitimate motions for change of venue.
2 Continuance of a juror who was seeking to influence other jurors to pre-judge this trial. It took a lot of courage for two jurors to speak up and ask the Judge Moody to remind jurors that they are not to discuss the trial among themselves. They said that one juror was doing this repeatedly, seeking to influence other jurors. This is precisely why there was a motion for change of venue. Yet even after this was brought out into the open, this juror continues to sit on this trial. This is happening when there are a number of alternate jurors.
3 Guilt by web site association. The McCarthy Era was dangerous to our basic freedoms because of guilt by association. Now in the age of the internet, this is being taken to a new level. Here's what's at stake: If you click on a web site, anything on that web site that could be damaging to you in a trial can be used against you. Not only that, information on any other linked web site can also be used against you, even if you never went to those sites. But there is more: If you are a co-defendant, as in this current trial, and one of the other defendants clicked on a web site, then that information can also be used against you! If this becomes admissible in American courts the potential for high-tech McCarthyism is real. We will enter an age of inquisition by web site association.
WE held up a goal at the beginning of this trial - that all of us would be able to say, no matter the outcome, that this was indeed a fair trial. These three concerns signal a pattern of decisions that put that goal at risk. The last thing this community needs is to be divided about the justice of the outcome of this trial.
As religious leaders we stand before this federal courthouse lifting up a vision for a better country based on the rule of laws fairly enacted. It is precisely in controversial cases like this that our system is tested. The rule of law is central to the religions that sprang from God's covenant with Abraham and Moses. The prophet Amos spoke God's word to us for all time: "Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream." (Amos 5:24) We are here because we want that mighty river of justice and fairness in our American tradition to remain strong.
What can be done?
- Tampa Bay Friends of Human Rights will hold a press conference on Tuesday November 8 at 11:45 in front of the Federal Courthouse in Tampa (801 N Florida Ave). If you are in or near Tampa come to the Courthouse on Tuesday and stand with them.
- Write letters to the local Tampa Bay newspapers, The St Petersburg Times or the Tampa Tribune.
- Contact your elected representatives.
- Recommend this diary so it reaches as many eyes as possible