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The true story, who cares

Does anyone care about the “true story” anymore. It’s easier to believe the lies spewed daily by our government and our media, isn’t it? Facing reality is hard. Easier to just go shopping, isn’t it?

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007

Laila al-Arian was wearing her headscarf at her desk at Nation Books, one of my New York publishers. No, she told me, it would be difficult to telephone her father. At the medical facility of his North Carolina prison, he can only make a few calls - monitored, of course - and he was growing steadily weaker.

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger strike for 60 days to protest the government outrage committed against him, a burlesque of justice which has, of course, largely failed to rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

All praise, then, to the journalist John Sugg from Tampa, Florida, who has been cataloguing al-Arian’s little Golgotha for months, along with Alexander Cockburn of Counter Punch.

The story so far: Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, was a respected computer professor at the University of South Florida who tried, however vainly, to communicate the real tragedy of Palestinian Arabs to the US government. But according to Sugg, Israel’s lobbyists were enraged by his lessons - al-Arian’s family was driven from Palestine in 1948 - and in 2003, at the instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft, he was arrested and charged with conspiring “to murder and maim” outside the United States and with raising money for Islamic Jihad in “Palestine”. He was held for two and a half years in solitary confinement, hobbling half a mile, his hands and feet shackled, merely to talk to his lawyers.

Al-Arian’s $50m (£25m) Tampa trial lasted six months; the government called 80 witnesses (21 from Israel) and used 400 intercepted phone calls along with evidence of a conversation that a co-defendant had with al-Arian in - wait for it - a dream. The local judge, a certain James Moody, vetoed any remarks about Israeli military occupation or about UN Security Council Resolution 242, on the grounds that they would endanger the impartiality of the jurors.

In December, 2005, al-Arian was acquitted on the most serious charges and on those remaining; the jurors voted 10 to two for acquittal. Because the FBI wanted to make further charges, al-Arian’s lawyers told him to make a plea that would end any further prosecution. Arriving for his sentence, however, al-Arian - who assumed time served would be his punishment, followed by deportation - found Moody talking about “blood” on the defendant’s hands and ensured he would have to spend another 11 months in jail. Then prosecutor Gordon Kromberg insisted that the Palestinian prisoner should testify against an Islamic think tank. Al-Arian believed his plea bargain had been dishonoured and refused to testify. He was held in contempt. And continues to languish in prison.

Not so, of course, most of America’s torturers in Iraq. One of them turns out to rejoice in the name of Ric Fair, a “contract interrogator”, who has bared his soul in the Washington Post - all praise, here, by the way to the Post - about his escapades in the Fallujah interrogation “facility” of the 82nd Airborne Division. Fair has been having nightmares about an Iraqi whom he deprived of sleep during questioning “by forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes”. Now it is Fair who is deprived of sleep. “A man with no face stares at me … pleads for help, but I’m afraid to move. He begins to cry. It s a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realise the screams are mine.”

Thank God, Fair didn’t write a play about his experiences and offer it to Channel 4 whose executives got cold feet about The Mark of Cain, the drama about British army abuse in Basra. They quickly bought into the line that transmission of Tony Marchant’s play might affect the now happy outcome of the far less riveting Iranian prison production of the Famous 15 “Servicepersons” - by angering the Muslim world with tales of how our boys in Basra beat up on the local Iraqis. As the reporter who first revealed the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa in British custody in Basra - I suppose we must always refer to his demise as “death” now that the soldiers present at his savage beating have been acquitted of murder - I can attest that Arab Muslims know all too well how gentle and refined our boys are during interrogation. It is we, the British at home, who are not supposed to believe in torture. The Iraqis know all about it - and who knew all about Mousa’s fate long before I reported it for The Independent on Sunday.

Because it’s really all about shutting the reality of the Middle East off from us. It’s to prevent the British and American people from questioning the immoral and cruel and internationally illegal occupation of Muslim lands. And in the Land of the Free, this systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in the country’s schools. Now the principal of a Connecticut high school has banned a play by pupils, based on the letters and words of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Entitled Voices in Conflict, Natalie Kropf, Seth Koproski, James Presson and their fellow pupils at Wilton High School compiled the reflections of soldiers and others - including a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq - to create their own play. To no avail. The drama might hurt those “who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak”, proclaimed Timothy Canty, Wilton High’s principal. And - my favourite line - Canty believed there was not enough rehearsal time to ensure the play would provide “a legitimate instructional experience for our students”.

And of course, I can quite see Mr Canty’s point. Students who have produced Arthur Miller’s The Crucible were told by Mr Canty - whose own war experiences, if any, have gone unrecorded - that it wasn’t their place to tell audiences what soldiers were thinking. The pupils of Wilton High are now being inundated with offers to perform at other venues. Personally, I think Mr Canty may have a point. He would do much better to encourage his students to perform Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, a drama of massive violence, torture, rape, mutilation and honour killing. It would make Iraq perfectly explicable to the good people of Connecticut. A “legitimate instructional experience” if ever there was one.

Last 2 posts in Free speech

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For the very few of you who might want to know about just one travesty our government is doing in our name, here are more details about someone who did nothing more than exercise his right to free speech. Are they coming for you or me next?

A Judicial Crime in Tampa

Sami al-Arian’s Final Persecution

By JOHN F. SUGG

You have to wonder about a few things in the May 1 sentencing of Sami Al-Arian.

For example, Alberto Gonzalez–the “torture-is-OK” and “no-law-binds-the-president” U.S. attorney general”–flew into the Tampa Bay area five days before the courtroom spectacle in which federal District Judge James Moody threw the book at Al-Arian, albeit a tattered tome that bore no resemblance to truth, justice or the U.S. Constitution.

Or, consider that Tampa’s U.S. Attorney, Paul Perez, showed up–for the first time during the Al-Arian case–at the prosecution table on sentencing day. Courthouse gossips, including some of Perez’s own staff, have told me he had wanted to keep a little distance during the trial in case his subalterns faltered. Falter they did. The prosecution team stumbled through awful lawyering and a series of strategic pratfalls. After a decade of investigations, costing U.S. taxpayers as much as $50 million, the feds didn’t prove a single crime was committed by Al-Arian and three other Palestinians. Meanwhile, real terrorists with blood on the minds, such as Mohammed Atta, went undetected in Florida.

So, why did Perez show up at the drama’s final scene? Why was he so eager to race to a spot in front of the TV cameras and make inflammatory claims about things his minions couldn’t prove to a jury?

It’s almost as if Perez KNEW Moody was going to surprise everyone and ignore the negotiated recommendations from both prosecution and defense attorneys that Al-Arian be given the light side of federal sentencing guidelines of 46 to 57 months in jail. With time served, Al-Arian could have anticipated almost immediate release and deportation. Now, with Moody’s sentencing, he’ll languish through as much as another 18 months in jail.

Those at the sentencing hearing noticed that the prosecutors, when they entered the courtroom, appeared almost jovial. That’s suspicious when you remember how badly they were humiliated when a jury in December failed to return a single guilty verdict against Al-Arian and his three co-defendants. (Other counts resulted in mistrials, but in no instance did more than two of the 12 jurors favor conviction on any charge.)

Why were the feds so upbeat? What had gone on when Gonzalez dropped into town? Considering that this administration admits to no legal restraint, and its deceptions and mendacities are a matter of daily public discussion, I believe the fix was made. Careers could be capped or ended by anyone not playing on the team.

Perez already had been passed over for one federal judgeship–and speculation among his own staff was that it stemmed from his office’s clear complicity in attempting to frame an anti-corruption crusading state judge.

So, my bet is that Gonzalez came to town and lowered the hammer. Give me blood, is what I think he told Perez and Moody. Or else.

The only reasonable explanation is that Al-Arian was set up by the “recommendation” from the U.S. Attorney’s office for a light sentence. Snookered. The feds never intended for Al-Arian to leave jail anytime soon. Judge Moody did as ordered.

The government’s motivation? Revenge. Occam’s Razor–the simplest explanation that fits the facts. The prosecutors have routinely lied and deceived in presenting their case. This final deception was in character. What they couldn’t win in a fair trial, they rejoiced at achieving by deceit.

Beyond that, there’s little doubt of Moody’s deeply ingrained prejudice. The judge would not allow the defense to bring up the slightest mention during the trial of the almost four decades of grinding military occupation of Palestinian lands by the Israelis. Tons of evidence–highly prejudicial and largely irrelevant to the facts of the case–was admitted about Israeli deaths. No evidence was allowed about Palestinian deaths. The jury heard about murdered Israeli children, nothing about the far greater number of murdered Arab kids.

Despite that grossly unjust imbalance dictated by Moody, the jurors saw through the propaganda and said, repeatedly, “not guilty.”

Al-Arian did eventually plead guilty to one count–but that was a greatly eviscerated charge. He faced another trial on the remaining counts if he didn’t reach an agreement. In an interview last year, he asked me to withhold his assessment of Moody. At that time, he said he feared another trial because he was sure that the overtly biased Moody would not allow a verdict other than guilty.

But a plea of guilty is a plea of guilty. The stateless Palestinian refugee conceded:

– He had helped his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, defend himself. Al-Najjar was jailed for almost four years based on “secret evidence.” Al-Najjar has never been convicted of anything, although he was charged as a co-defendant. The government, shortly before the indictment, released and deported Al-Najjar, which raises the question about whether the G-men really thought he was a terrorist.

– He provided assistance on immigration matters to Basheer Nafi, another alleged co-conspirator who was never tried and, therefore, has never been convicted of anything. Nafi also was deported by the federal government, on immigration not terrorism matters.

– He lied to a St. Petersburg Times reporter, Jim Harper. Al-Arian claimed he had no knowledge of Ramadan Shallah’s role in the Islamic Jihad. Shallah left Tampa in early 1995, and there is no record he had any contact with Al-Arian or any of the co-defendants after that. About a half-year later, Shallah resurfaced in Damascus and took over the Islamic Jihad.

What Al-Arian didn’t do is to admit to any violence. And, the government stipulated that nothing he admitted to resulted directly or indirectly in violence.

Moreover, what’s missing from most of the egregiously misleading reports in The Tampa Tribune, and in the statements by Judge Moody at sentencing, is a time element. The record was very clear that Al-Arian had no active role with the Islamic Jihad after the federal government designated it a terrorist organization in the mid-1990s. Al-Arian’s earlier activities–political activism and fund-raising–occurred during the time when it was perfectly legal to support the group.

The rest of the article is here.

[Reply]

1. By bushtool on April 9th, 2007 at 10:47 pm (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).