[Ppnews] Critics See Vendetta in Al-Arian's Legal Limbo

[Political Prisoner News]

RIGHTS-US: Critics See Vendetta in Al-Arian's Legal Limbo
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43047

By Ali Gharib
<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43047>
[]

Sami Al-Arian with son Ali and daughter Lama.

<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43047>Credit:The Al-Arian Family

WASHINGTON, Jul 2 (IPS) - Palestinian activist and former university 
professor Sami Al-Arian was arraigned Monday in U.S. federal court on 
two counts of criminal contempt for his refusal to testify in a grand 
jury investigation of a Northern Virginia Muslim think-tank.

The indictment is the latest episode of a long, Kafka-esque process 
that has violated nearly every tenet of Al-Arian's plea agreement 
following the end of his first trial in 2005, and kept Al-Arian in 
prison for over five years.

"The government has made a complete mockery of the plea agreement," 
Al-Arian's attorney, Jonathon Turley, told IPS. "Dr. Al-Arian has 
received zero benefit from his plea agreement."

Supporters of Al-Arian cited the charges as an attempt by an 
overzealous Justice Department prosecutor to keep Al-Arian behind 
bars indefinitely despite an inability to secure a jury conviction. 
There is no maximum penalty for criminal contempt.

"The whole case against him is a vindictive act by sore losers that 
lost the Florida case badly because there was no evidence," 
Al-Arian's daughter, Laila, told IPS. "So they're manufacturing 
crimes to keep him in prison as long as possible. It's almost as if 
the whole plea agreement was just a way to buy time."

The indictment said that Al-Arian had refused to testify in violation 
of a court order. But Al-Arian's defence holds that his subpoena was 
out of line with his original agreement, which included an express 
promise that Al-Arian did not have to cooperate further with the government.

On Monday, Al-Arian was moved from an Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement (ICE) jail to the Alexandria courthouse where he was 
arraigned. He had been in ICE custody for over three months awaiting 
an expedited deportation as part of the 2005 plea.

In ICE prisons, which have been the target of frequent criticism for 
their harsh conditions, Al-Arian was only allowed one visitor per 
month. When arraigned on Monday, Al-Arian and his defence did not 
enter a plea because they had not had the chance to discuss the 
charges yet, Turley wrote on his blog. The court entered a not guilty plea.

The think-tank, the International Institute for Islamic Thought 
(IIIT), is under investigation for alleged ties to terrorism. 
Al-Arian's defence contends that he gave two affidavits making clear 
that he has no knowledge of crimes committed by IIIT, and he has 
offered to take a polygraph lie-detection test to back them up.

Turley told IPS that this constituted cooperation and that Gordon 
Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who signed the indictments, had 
agreed -- sending Turley an e-mail saying that it looked like the 
proposed resolution would work. The next day, Turley learned of the 
indictments from the media.

Kromberg has been criticised for prosecutorial abuses ranging from 
stoking Islamophobia among jurors to get convictions, to outright 
anti-Muslim comments as recorded in court motions, and -- perhaps 
most shockingly -- punishing defendants that a jury will not convict.

In 1999, at a Cato Institute event on asset forfeiture reform to curb 
abuses, Kromberg spoke out in favour of broad governmental powers to 
seize belongings. In Reason Magazine, Michael Lynch's retelling of 
the Cato event noted that jaws hit the floor when Kromberg, opposed 
by much of the crowd in defending forfeiture, said that prosecutors 
should be able to punish wrongdoing if they are convinced it occurred.

"He knew these people were guilty and was certain they needed to be 
punished," Lynch paraphrased Kromberg's position. "Should we let 
these people get away, he asked, before answering in an illuminating 
way: Not if we can punish them through other means."

While the forfeiture battle was a far cry from prosecuting terrorism 
suspects, Kromberg's assertions about prosecutorial powers is germane 
to Al-Arian's case in that it reveals his thinking about punishing 
those he deems guilty even if a jury refuses to do so.

Critics also accuse Kromberg of having an anti-Muslim bias, springing 
in part, they say, from a strong affinity for Israel.

Kromberg participated in a United Jewish Committee's mission to 
Israel and kept a diary in which he writes of visiting sites of 
previous terrorist attacks and discusses some of the politics of the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the diary, Kromberg refers to the occupied territories of the West 
Bank by the name "Judea and Samaria" -- a term favoured by right-wing 
Israelis who often oppose land concessions and a two-state solution 
-- and referred to "the enthusiasm of the Palestinians to use mass 
murder as a tool against the Israelis for no apparent end other than 
to destroy Israel."

Al-Arian has been significantly engaged in Muslim and Palestinian 
activism since the late 1970s.

In a court motion, one of Al-Arian's legal team quoted Kromberg as 
saying, "If they [Muslims] can kill each other during Ramadan, they 
can appear before the grand jury," in response to request that 
Al-Arian's jail transfer be delayed until after the Muslim holy month 
had ended.

Al-Arian was initially arrested in 2003 and kept in jail for two and 
half years before his first trial on terrorism charges.

The George W. Bush administration was embarrassed when it couldn't 
secure a single conviction in one of its highest-profile terrorism 
cases against the man who then-attorney general John Ashcroft accused 
of being the head of a Palestinian terrorist organisation.

Facing retrial on the deadlocked charges, Al-Arian decided to spare 
his family the agony of another long trial ordeal by pleading to a 
lesser charge of aiding associates of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and 
directly aiding the group before its designation as a terrorist 
organisation by the U.S. in 1997.

But Al-Arian set conditions for his agreement. Witnessing the strains 
that his imprisonment and trial had put on his own family, he refused 
to work with the government on other cases. He also demanded an 
expedited deportation when the sentence for his guilty plea expired.

Melva Underbakke, the head of a Tampa-based rights organisation who 
drove nine hours to attend the arraignment, said, "You got the 
feeling [Al-Arian] has been through this before. The Al-Arian family 
is amazing. They looked strong."

Al-Arian will have a hearing next week to determine if he can be 
released on bond pending trail. The government opposes this, but 
Al-Arian's legal team contends that he is not a flight risk.

"Dr. Al-Arian (1) has lived in this country for over 30 years; (2) 
had lawful alien status; (3) has family with deep ties in the 
country; (4) has citizens willing to serve in a custodial status; (5) 
has no passport; and (6) is willing to be continually monitored under 
home confinement. The opposition of the government is purely 
gratuitous and retaliatory under such conditions," wrote Turley in his blog.

(END/2008)



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