Political prisoner Sami Al-Arian freed

I have mentioned Sami Al-Arian here before, and he was finally released on bail Tuesday evening.  He was a professor, I believe at a Florida college, and was apparently targeted because of his support for Palestinian freedom.  The release below comes from freedetainees.org, which tracks the fate of US detainees and has a section on Al-Arian. 

 

Washington, D. C. 9/2/2008 - Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the most prominent political prisoner in America, has been release on bail.

 

Welcoming the news of his release Dr. Agha Saeed, Chairman American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT) said, " This is an important step toward restoration of due process and equal justice for all".

 

A brief history of the case is given below:

 

- Dr. Al-Arian, a nationally recognized activist for American civil rights and Palestine, was arrested on February 20, 2003 on bloated charges of terrorism; his arrest and subsequent trial was the first major test case of the PATRIOT Act.

- Alexander Cockburn has noted, this trial "featured eighty government witnesses (including twenty-one from Israel) and 400 intercepted phone calls (the result of a decade of surveillance and half a million recorded calls). One bit of evidence consisted of a conversation a co-defendant had with Al-Arian in his dream."

- In December 2005, after 10 years of federal investigation and a six-month trial, which cost the taxpayers 50 million dollars, a Florida jury refused to return a single guilty verdict against Dr. Al-Arian.

- In a special two-page article about Dr. Al-Arian, TIME magazine reported that years of FBI investigation offered "no real links between al-Arian and terrorist acts. Nonetheless, says a former FBI supervisor involved in the case, in late 2002 word came down from Ashcroft to build an al-Arian indictment. "We were in shock, but those were our marching orders," says the supervisor, who felt that the Justice Department was rushing to indict before it had really appraised the evidence. ('When terror charges just won't stick", TIME, December 19, 2005, pp. 46-47)

 

- On May 1, 2006, the Justice Department agreed that Dr. al Arian should be released within 30 days, and further agreed to assist in his voluntary departure from the country without other conditions, in exchange for a guilty plea to one non-violent offense.

- Nevertheless, in a clear violation of these terms, Dr. Al-Arian has been called to testify before an unrelated trial three times.

- On June 26th, 2008, Dr. Al-Arian was formally charged with criminal contempt of court for his refusal to testify. A federal judge has unexpectedly postponed the contempt trial until the Supreme Court addresses Dr. Al-Arian's appeal.