My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat

By Laila Al-Arian, Huffington Post. Posted April 26, 2007.

"If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. I am not going to put off Dr. Al- Arian's grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America."
-- Federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg

"The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive." -- Amnesty International

My father, a Palestinian professor named Sami Al-Arian, was arrested over four years ago on trumped-up terrorism charges and submitted to a prosecution over the course of six months that bordered on the farcical. Though he was ultimately acquitted by a jury of the most serious charges against him, the Bush administration has prolonged his imprisonment indefinitely. My father now languishes in a Virginia jail, another victim of the demagogic politics of the so-called war on terror.

Many have wondered why my father would be targeted so vigorously, especially after the government lost a case that cost $50 million. But as with its firing of the eight federal prosecutors who "chafed" against its radical agenda, the administration of President George W. Bush has injected its politics into the system, prolonging my father's imprisonment to punish him for the humiliation his acquittal caused them.

Last month, my father completed a 60-day hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment that left him in such a weakened state he was confined to a wheelchair. Soon after receiving medical treatment, he was transferred to a Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg, Virginia. Upon my father's arrival, a prison guard remarked while strip-searching him: "Where are you from? Afghanistan?" Though my father refused to answer the demeaning question, the guard repeated it several times. He went on:

"It doesn't matter where you're from. If I had my way, you wouldn't be in prison. I'd put a bullet in your head and get it done with. You're nothing but a piece of s***."

This is not the first time this guard harassed my father. In January, he told him: "You're a terrorist. I can tell by your name."

This time there was a witness to the abuse, though he wasn't exactly a friendly one. Upon hearing his underling's outburst, the lieutenant in charge took my father aside and shackled his arms and legs. The shackles were so tight my father lost sensation in his extremities for the duration of the four-hour trip to his final destination, a detention center in Alexandria. On the way, the lieutenant joined in the abuse, unleashing a stream of obscenities at my father and repeatedly telling him to "Shut the f*** up." When they arrived, the lieutenant violently shoved my father against a wall.

The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the government's treatment of my father. "The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing," Amnesty wrote in a February letter to the Attorney General, "appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive."

My father immigrated to the United States in 1975 and eventually earned tenure as a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida. As the son of Palestinians forcibly removed from their land after the creation of Israel in 1948, he considered it his obligation to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people from his position of influence in the United States. He held conferences and published literature to tell the story of Palestinians living under occupation.

His activism earned the ire of some of the most reactionary figures of the right, from self-declared "terror experts" like Steven Emerson to Bill O'Reilly, whose expertise on Middle Eastern affairs apparently does not extend to the falafel.

(See here, here and here to learn about Emerson's long history of hysterical, discredited claims.)

As the shrill cries for my father's prosecution intensified after 9/11, the Bush administration arrested him. According to an anonymous FBI source, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally ordered the indictment against my father, a mandate that puzzled the many career professionals assigned to the case. The political nature of the charges was apparent from the beginning. A jury empaneled by the federal government would reach the same conclusion three years later, concluding that the Bush administration's case was not much of a case at all.

But first my father would suffer under extremely restrictive, inhumane conditions clearly meant to psychologically break him before trial, including being placed in solitary confinement for 27 months. At one point, he was denied phone calls for six months, and while convicted felons were allowed to hug their families, my father, a pre-trial detainee, had to visit us behind glass. Even then, he was strip-searched before and after our visits. The cards were stacked against us.

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To learn more about Sami Al-Arian or to join the campaign for his freedom, visit freesamialarian.com.

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