Video
USA vs Al-Arian
By Candace
Apr 9, 2008, 20:39

USA vs Al-Arian

By Candace  

April 9, 2008

I saw this film a week ago. It was shown by the person locally who does screenings of films. I have reported on some of the others I have seen. Whenever he has a “hot” film, he doesn’t announce it’s title, simply saying it’s a super secret film, and these are the best ones to go to. And after I saw it, I knew why he did it this way. It was made by a Norwegian company. Apparently would be my guess, no American one would touch the case.

The poor guy had a terrible day with gremlins and the like, so you know “they” didn’t want to him to show it. He said a had a day with the hounds of hell when he opened the show. His computer had just gone out before he left to show the film and I don’t know if it was OK. He had a missing coupling and we were delayed watching it while he went and got another one. Then his DVD player would not show the film.

So he went and got another DVD player belonging to the owner of the place we watch these films. At that time I started realizing we had “gremlins” around and since I am always attended by “guardian angels” when I am out, I called them forth and said, please make sure this other DVD player will run! These are not normal DVD players, these are DVD projectors to use with screens, not TV’s. And so the rest of the evening went without problems.

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This film is about a man named Sami Al-Arian who was arrested in 2003 and tried as a terrorist by the US. It follows his family through the ordeal. I took extensive notes, but the film is complex, and it is better to just use the website information.

http://www.usavsalarian.com/   is the website associated with the film. I took the material below from the site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPdpxxBR2jk  This is a Y tube video about the case. I have not watched it.

http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm   is Sami’s personal site. Sami is undergoing a hunger strike at this time over his non release. This site covers recent events. The DVD is now available this week on You Tube. Please visit this site for the latest of the criminal operations against this man, and the actions of the corrupt judges.

History of the Case

In the early morning hours of February 20th, 2003, armed FBI agents stormed a private apartment in Tampa, Florida. Family members stunned by fear watched the father, Sami Al-Arian - a university professor and civil rights activist, being handcuffed and taken away. A dozen FBI agents searched the family’s apartment for 12 hours. Boxes of private papers, diaries, letters, books, photo albums, CD’s and VHS cassettes were confiscated.

That night, US Attorney General John Ashcroft held a national press conference where he claimed to have caught the leader of a global terror cell.

Sami Amin Al-Arian was born in Kuwait in 1958 as son of Palestinian refugees. He has spent all of his adult life in the USA, where he is married with 5 children. Since 1986 he has worked as a professor in computer engineering at the University of South-Florida (USF). and has played a prominent role as a leader in the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities in the Tampa Bay, Florida area and nationally.

Sami Al-Arian has been a persistent defender of civil and constitutional rights, and a tremendously active lecturer on the subjects of the Palestinian cause, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the relationship between Islam and the West. He was a founder and leader of community institutions that provided support to the strengthening of the Muslim community in Florida, as well as the national and international trend of Islamic work for justice in Palestine.

After his arrest, the Government charged Sami Al-Arian and three others with funding and supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group the USA in 1995 declared to be a terrorist group. Al-Arian has consistently denied the charges. For over two years, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, with limited access to his lawyers, awaiting a trial.

Amnesty International condemned the conditions under which Al-Arian was kept, including the 23-hour lockdown, strip searches, use of chains and shackles, severely limited recreation, lack of access to any religious service and denial of a watch or clock in a windowless cell where the artificial light is never turned off.

Ever since he came to the United States from Egypt in 1975, Sami Al-Arian has been an outspoken activist. Already as a student he was giving lectures on the Palestinian cause, organizing conferences and initiating organizations. In 1981, he helped establish the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim grassroots organization in country. In the late 1980’s he co-founded the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), a group involved in raising awareness of the plight of Palestinians.

. In 2001, two weeks after the September 11th attacks, Al-Arian was invited to talk about the situation for Muslims in America on O'Reilly Factor on Fox TV. In the show, the notorious right-wing host Bill O’Reilly accused him of supporting terrorism and questioned his connections to the former USF professor Ramadan Shallah who had worked with Al-Arian at WISE.

Shallah had left the States a decade earlier and later became the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The response to the O'Reilly show on the part of the University of South Florida administration was swift and in line with the repressive post-September 11 environment that saw thousands of Arab, Muslim and South Asian men rounded up, detained for little or no reason, and deported; USF President Judy Genschaft placed Al-Arian on paid leave, claiming it was for the sake of his own security. The story spread across the nation as one of several stories of academic freedom in peril, because no one had announced any solid, specific evidence of any crimes Al-Arian might have committed, it was all based on O'Reilly's accusations.

In December 2001, the board of trustees at USF voted to fire Al-Arian from his position as a tenured professor. President Genschaft reported that: “When we examine the case of Dr. Al-Arian, it is clear that academic freedom is not an issue.” She concluded with: “... the issue before us is how much disruption the University must endure because of the manner in which a professor exercises his right to express political and social views that are outside the scope of his employment.”

The negative media attention around Sami Al-Arian reached another peak during fall 2004 when former USF president Betty Castor became the Democratic candidate for the senatorial race.

In a series of TV ads her Republican opponent, Mel Martinez, criticized her for not having fired the “terrorist” Al-Arian while she was the President at USF. Instead of pointing out that there was no evidence against Al-Arian, Castor answered by making her own TV campaign, showing the “terrorist” Al-Arian meeting with president George W. Bush.

After these political ads were screened on television in Florida all through the fall, it became almost an “established truth” that Al-Arian had close terrorist-ties.

When the date for the trial finally was set, Al-Arian’s defense team asked the court for a change of venue. They feared that ten years of biased, inflammatory media coverage would have prejudiced potential jurors in Tampa. Judge James S. Moody denied the request and the case ”USA vs. Sami Al-Arian, et al” started in Tampa on June 6, 2005. Al-Arian was tried along with Ghassan Ballut, Hatim Fariz and Sameeh Hammoudeh.

The six-month trial featured more than 80 witnesses and 400 transcripts of intercepted phone conversations and faxes. In its 10-year investigation of Al-Arian and his three co-defendants, the FBI intercepted 472,239 telephone calls on 18 tapped lines but none involved any discussion of an attack against the United States or show advanced knowledge of any attacks in the Middle East.

At the end of the prosecution's case, Al-Arian's attorneys rested their case without calling any witnesses. On December 6, 2005 after 13 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted him on 8 of 17 counts, while remaining deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the other nine. Of fifty-two charges against the four men, not one resulted in a conviction; Ballut and Hammoudeh were acquitted on all charges.

Despite the resounding defeat for the government, it expressed a determination to re-prosecute Al-Arian. In this environment, with the stress and financial burden of years of persecution and months of trial wearing on his family, Sami Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain in which he would plead guilty to one count of conspiring to provide non-violent services to for the benefit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terror organization.

What he plead guilty to included hiring an attorney for his brother-in-law, Al-Najjar, and filling out immigration forms for a visiting Palestinian scholar. He also agreed to be deported from the USA. Despite his over thirty years in the U.S., and the U.S. citizenship of his entire family, he was willing to accept this in order to finally win some peace for his family.

The deal came after 11 years of FBI investigations, wiretaps and searches, three years of trial preparation by federal prosecutors and a six-month trial, during which time Al-Arian has spent more than three years in jail, most of it in solitary confinement.

The government acknowledged that Al-Arian's activities were non-violent and that there were no victims to the charge in the plea agreement.

However, despite the request made by the prosecution that Al-Arian should receive a minimum sentence - primarily to time served -Judge James Moody, who had shown bias during the proceedings of the case, gave him to the maximum sentence of 57 months in prison while lecturing Al-Arian about his "guilt" on claims that were, in fact, completely rejected by the jury in the case.

According to the sentencing, Al-Arian would be released on April 13, 2007.

Since the sentencing, Al-Arian has been moved around to 11 different prisons in 6 different states, making in tremendously difficult for the family to visit him. Al-Arian was recently subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury in Alexandria and denied to do so. His attorneys argue that the grand jury subpoena violates Al-Arian's plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors. Judge James S. Moody rejected this and Al-Arian received an additional 18 months in prison in contempt of court. Al-Arian (who is diabetic) began a hunger strike on January 22, 2007, to protest continued government harassment. He ended his hunger strike after 62 days. His future remains uncertain.

The Movie

USA vs Al-Arian – on freedom of speech and political persecution

”USA vs AL-ARIAN” is an intimate family portrait that documents the American-Muslim family Al-Arian's desperate attempt to fight terrorism charges leveled by the US Government.

In February 2003, university professor and pro-Palestinian civil rights activist Sami Al-Arian was arrested in Tampa, Florida, charged with providing material support to a terror organization. For two-and-a-half years he was held in solitary confinement, denied basic privileges and given limited access to his attorneys. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he was targeted in an attempt to silence his political views.

The film follows Sami Al-Arian’s wife Nahla and their five children throughout his 6 month-long trial. It is an intimate family portrait that documents the strain brought on by the trial, a battle waged both in court and in the media. In the film a tight-knit family unravels before our very eyes as trial preparations, strategy and spin consume their lives. This is a nightmare come to life, as a man is prosecuted for his beliefs rather than his actions.

The film raises questions on whether it is possible for a man like Sami Al-Arian to receive a fair trial in the United States given the current hostile environment against Muslims and the strong US support of Israel. It presents democracy in a new light in a post-9/11 culture of fear, where "security measures" trump free speech and punishment is meted out in the name of protection. It is an example of how the American government’s hunt for terrorists is a struggle that can be seen from multiple angles.

Engaged lobbyist

Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been a tireless voice for freedom and justice at home and around the world. He helped empower the Muslim community and was dedicated to raising awareness in the US about the plight of the Palestinians. He organized voter registration drives, supported candidates for public office, and lobbied numerous policymakers. Dr. Al-Arian attended briefings at the White House and Justice Department, advised several members of Congress, and met both Presidents Clinton and Bush.

The evidence presented against Dr. Al-Arian consisted mostly of wiretapped phone calls, his political speeches and his writings. During the trial, the US government brought witnesses to terror attacks in Israel, but did not provide any evidence directly tying Dr. Al-Arian to terrorism or to any criminal activity. There was no evidence that any violent act took place, or that any violent act was ever planned to take place in the United States. The jury did not convict him on any of the counts against him.

Candace Commentary of the Movie:  It was really obvious the government prosecutors had egg all over their faces. There is live footage of Bush, Ashcroft and others in this film. This is a fine film, very sad one, of the journey of the family in this. All real footage shot throughout the long trial and afterwards. I feel this is an innocent man who was framed for telling the truth about Palestine. The movie includes film clips the jury was shown of attacks against the Israel by “terrorists” supposedly from Palestine. The jury was never shown anything about what Israel has done to Palestine. Non the footage had a thing to do with this man and his activities, it was all about manipulation.

At his sentencing of the vague charges he pleaded to (after the original trial) , to stop the horror on his family, the judge said malicious shit, and called him extremely manipulative, but what that showed, was just how manipulative the US government is in court. He understood he would be released at that final hearing over the ONE charge  that 10 out of 12 jurors found him not guilty for. He had agreed to deporation, and the family was ready for this, and instead he was given a surprise prison sentence, outside his plea agreement, as I understood anyway. He remains in jail.

I very much liked the film, and its focus on the family and of live shots of not only the trial process, but also those that collected in support to him and family during the trial.

This family had all their phone calls recorded for 10 years before the arrest. They got boxes and boxes of them back. Every sort of call was on these CD’s full of calls, including ordering pizza and the like. Every girly phone call women tend to do, all of it. ON CD’s. The kids phones calls. Everything tapped.

It would seem that a major purpose of 911 besides to steal oil etc, was to get the American people to accept enslavement and to create great fear by arrests such as this case, to convince folks they best not offer up any resistance. I think that has worked well, since the 911 movement and the get out of Iraq movements are doing so extremely poorly. 911 was quite an event in all of its ramifications, wasn’t it?  Still many believe te stupid lie, and the rest that do question are so full of fear at what they might see if they looked. Only a few are really out there and they haven’t yet found their power.

And they have reason to fear finding that power, because all groups are infiltrated, ALL of Them. You don't know who to trust. That’s another story to tell. There are lots of professors and the like that have suffered false arrests and related harassment. I have seen films and works about others.