[Ppnews] Isolated in Federal CMUs, Silenced Voices Need Ours

Wed May 12 11:39:01 EDT 2010

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-stepanian/isolated-in-federal-commu_b_570920.html

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-stepanian>Andy Stepanian, former 
SHAC 7 political prisoner

Social justice activist
Posted: May 10, 2010 07:23 PM

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-stepanian/isolated-in-federal-commu_b_570920.html>Isolated 
in Federal Communication Management Units, Silenced Voices Need Ours

When it was hard for me to find vegan food in prison Abu-Sayyaf used 
to bring food to the bars at the front of my jail cell. He knew I was 
a strict vegan and that I abstained from the consumption of all 
animal products. He used to read all the ingredients on packages and 
even then double check with me if the food was something that would 
fit my diet. I am sure that in the government's eyes they assume that 
Abu-Sayyaf wanted something from me in return, but in reality 
Abu-Sayyaf only wanted to make sure that I was safe, healthy, well 
fed, and taken care of.

Before Abu-Sayyaf was an inmate in a secretive US political prison 
called a "Communications Management Unit" Abu-Sayyaf was a computer 
programmer for a software company in Florida. Abu-Sayyaf was an 
immigrant, he attained rights as a US citizen, he gave back to his 
community, to his co-workers, he generously donated to UNICEF, and he 
gave much of what he had to people outside of this country, 
specifically to children in Bosnia.

Abu-Sayyaf saved the money he made at his company, volunteered for 
charities, and worked with one to help build an orphanage in Bosnia. 
He wanted to bring dignity and hope to the lives of Bosnian youth who 
had lost their parents in the Serb-Croat war of the 1990's. In their 
indictment against Abu-Sayyaf the government alleges that he was 
affiliated with Benevolence International, a charity once championed 
by the Clinton administration for their fight against ethnic 
cleansing, but in the politically liquid times following the attacks 
of September 11th, 2001, found themselves under scrutiny. In March of 
2002 the Sarajevo offices of the charity were raided by Bosnian 
Police and during the raid an unbelievable list of non-profits titled 
"The Golden Chain" was reportedly found jotted on a piece of loose 
leaf paper on the floor of the office. The CIA will later contend 
that the list found cataloged the top contributors to Al Qaeda. The 
Bush administration quickly labeled Benevolence International & the 
bizarre laundry list of other non-combative groups as terrorist 
organizations. Shortly thereafter Abu-Sayyaf would find himself 
indicted on charges of providing monetary aid to a "terrorist organization."

Abu-Sayeff found himself in the center of a press circus, packaged in 
what federal prosecutors nickname a "piggy-back" indictment where he 
stood trial alongside Jose Padilla, a name so spectacularly soiled in 
the public eye that anyone standing alongside of him would have 
little chance of beating trial. Abu-Sayyaf spent 4 years in solitary 
confinement in a Florida prison before he was moved to the secretive 
government facility in Marion, Illinois. He was the first inmate to 
arrive at the facility and when he arrived the prison guards were 
ordered not to talk to him.

He spent another 2 weeks by himself before other inmates were 
transferred there. It was then and there that I met Abu-Sayyaf. I too 
was sequestered to this secret prison, for reasons that to this day 
remain vague and over broad. Abu-Sayyaf and I watched as more men 
would come to the unit almost weekly. We saw a pattern develop. 4 
Muslims and then one non-Muslim, 4 Muslims and one non-Muslim. My 
theory that my placement there was for balance, a sort of safety 
valve on what seemed like an almost unavoidable ethnic-discrimination 
lawsuit, was verified one afternoon when a guard said to me, "kid..., 
keep your head up; you know your just here to balance things out. 
You'll be home soon enough." As the guards got more comfortable with 
their own bizarre restrictions they started to slip up and refer to 
some of us non-Muslims as "balancers." They never directly said it, 
but almost daily they acknowledged the fact that this facility was 
illegally conceived outside of the parameters of the Administrative 
Procedures Act.

A little over a year has passed since I walked out of the secretive 
CMU facility and began my road home to a somewhat normal life. 
Abu-Sayyaf was not as fortunate as I was. He is slated to serve at 
least another 10 years in the CMU and then it is expected that he 
will be deported, ...where to no one really knows...

Abu-Sayyaf was born Palestinian, so in the eyes of the world 
government he is now a stateless citizen. He is not charged with 
substantive violent crimes and yet is unjustly labeled a terrorist by 
the United States, and presumably it's allies. What is even more 
heart-trampling is Abu-Sayyaf's endless love for his children. 
Abu-Sayyaf's name by birth is Adham Amin Hassoun, but he wants to be 
known as Abu-Sayyaf; Abu, in Arabic, means father, Sayyaf is the name 
of Adham's son. He told me that he has been stripped of everything he 
once had, with the exception of the boundless love he has for his 
family and children. He wants to be known only as the father of his 
son, the one thing in this world that makes him most proud.

There are 70 other men in situations like Abu-Sayyaf's split between 
the populace at the Marion CMU facility and a second CMU facility in 
Terre Haute, Indiana. These are 70 stories of doctors allegedly 
breaching economic sanctions to deliver penicillin and insulin to 
children in need, or anti-war tax protestors, not stories of car 
bombers, hijackers, or the incidents that most of us have come to 
identify as terror-related. These are 70 stories that our government 
is ashamed of, and hopes to keep tucked away within these 
restrictive, secretive, purely political prisons, out of the reach of 
the media, out of the reach of visitors, away from the touch of their 
families and children, hampered by vetted mail, a lack of telephone 
communication, and -- worst of all -- severed from constitutionally 
protected rights of due process.

These 70 men have been stripped of their voices, and because of that 
they need ours. I implore everyone who reads this to participate in 
the first public comment period Congress is offering since these 
units were first illegally established in 2006. The Federal Bureau of 
Prisons and it's director Harley Lappin need to see that you, the 
public, care about the basic human rights of these men in the CMUs, 
and want to see them matriculated into general population prisons 
where they can at the very least exercise the same rights to due 
process, privileged communications with their legal counsel, and once 
again be able to visit with and touch their family members and loved 
ones (like other prisoners in general population are allowed.) Please 
submit comments online, write the address below and please send a 
copy of your letter to the Center For Constitutional Rights. The 
Center For Constitutional Rights will outline your concerns in an 
argument orated to Congress. This public comment period will only be 
open until June 7th, and CCR is asking that you submit your letters 
by June 2nd, 2010 so that they can be included in their argument.

Please don't ever doubt the effectiveness of your letters when it 
comes to advocating for these men. Contribute a comment to preserve 
our fragile democracy. Do it because it is fundamentally right. Do it 
because to heal the wounds of wars it takes selfless acts of love. 
Your letters can bring a little love back to these men. Your letters 
can allow Adham to hold Sayyaf once again. You can submit your 
comments 
<http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480ad11c7>online 
or through the mail. Please send concise comments.

If you submit comments via regular mail, please send them to the 
following address and include the following docket number in your 
correspondence:

BOP DOCKET #1148-P COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT UNITS

Rules Unit, Office of General Counsel Bureau of Prisons 320 First 
Street, NW. Washington, DC 20534

Please consider submitting your comments by June 2, 2010* and sending 
The Center for Constitutional Rights a copy of your comments as we're 
hoping to collect these pieces to illustrate the depth of collective 
public outcry over the creation of the CMUs.

*The official deadline for comments is June 7, 2010. **Please send 
copies via email to: nzamani at ccrjustice.org or via regular mail to: 
Nahal Zamani, Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway, 7th 
floor, New York, NY 10012. To download a sample letter click here.
*******************************************************

Andy Stepanian is a social justice activist and publicist from Long 
Island, NY. In his early teenage years Andy found a home on the front 
lines of civil disobedience & non-violent direct action struggles for 
earth, animal, and human liberation. Amidst organizing protests, 
anti-war rallies, and anti-globalization summits Andy and his friends 
helped lay the framework for the swelling and vibrant Long Island 
all-ages music scene. In 2004 Andy and 6 other activists were 
indicted on charges of conspiring to financially disrupt a New Jersey 
contract animal testing facility. The trial of Andy Stepanian, Lauren 
Gazzola, Kevin Kjonas, Jacob Conroy, Darius Fullmer, and John McGee 
would later be named the landmark "<http://shac7.com/case.htm>SHAC 7" 
trial. The <http://shac7.com/case.htm>SHAC 7 were found guilty in 
what federal prosecutors called,"a litmus test of protected speech on 
the internet." Free speech lawyers associations, the National Lawyers 
Guild, and the Center For Constitutional Rights, began a campaign to 
repeal the controversial law used against Andy and his co-defendants.

<http://shac7.com/case.htm>The SHAC 7 we each sentenced to between 
1-6 years in federal prison and were treated by the prosecution as 
"terrorists." Andy served 3 years in federal prison, his last 6 
months of incarceration were spent in a high security secretive 
program called The Communications Management Unit. The unit was over 
70% muslim, and it's designees were all political cases. Andy would 
later realize that he was the only inmate released from the secretive 
program, that some federal officials have named "Little Gitmo."

The story of Andy & the <http://shac7.com/case.htm>SHAC 7 has become 
the focus of <http://vimeo.com/10027333>a feature-length documentary 
by Finngate Pictures expected out in 2011, similarly, a screenplay 
about Andy & the <http://shac7.com/case.htm>SHAC 7 has also been 
acquired by Hollywood giant Lions Gate Pictures.

Today Andy works as a publicist for <http://papress.com/>Princeton 
Architectural Press, and in his free time he & his friends run 
<http://sparrowmedia.net/>The Sparrow Project, an outfit that 
provides PR services to social justice, environmental and political 
activists, musicians, and artists who want to braid relevant social 
messages with their creative process. He has toured colleges giving 
lectures on grassroots activism, and has made appearances on the CBS 
nightly news, 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/25/exclusive_animal_rights_activist_jailed_at>Democracy 
Now, Hannity's America, and has been the subject of interviews in The 
LA Times and Reuters. Most recently <http://sparrowmedia.net/>The 
Sparrow Project has partnered artists with charitable causes to 
develop <http://www.merchdirect.com/sparrowmediaproject>silk screened 
shirts to directly benefit the cause to which they are dedicated.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-stepanian#>Show full bio

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