[Ppnews] Al-Arian Enters 19th Day of Hunger Strike

[Political Prisoner News]

<http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21//>March 21, 2008

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Al-Arian Enters 19th Day of Hunger Strike in Protest of “Government Harassment”

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/al_arian_enters_19th_day_of

Jailed Palestinian Professor Sami Al-Arian has 
entered the nineteenth day of a hunger strike to 
protest what he calls continued government 
harassment. He was brought before a third grand 
jury Thursday, but did not testify. We speak with 
Al-Arian’s eldest daughter, Laila, and his local 
counsel in Virginia, Will Olson. [includes rush transcript]


Guests:

Laila Al-Arian, Sami Al-Arian’s eldest daughter. 
She is a freelance journalist living in New York.

Will Olson, Local Virginia counsel for Sami Al-Arian

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jailed Palestinian Professor Sami 
Al-Arian has entered the nineteenth day of a 
hunger strike to protest what he calls continued 
government harassment. He was brought before a 
third grand jury Thursday, but did not testify.

Al-Arian has been in prison for five years on 
charges that he was a leader of the Palestinian 
Islamic Jihad. Two years ago, a Florida jury 
failed to return a single guilty verdict on any 
of the seventeen charges brought against him. 
Despite the jury’s findings, Al-Arian remained 
behind bars. Last year, Al-Arian was imprisoned 
for an additional eighteen months for refusing to 
testify before a Virginia grand jury.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now here in the 
firehouse studio by Laila Al-Arian, the eldest 
daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a freelance journalist 
here in New York. Joining us on the phone from 
Washington, Will Olson, the local Virginia counsel for Sami Al-Arian.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Can you 
describe, Laila, what has happened now? He was 
not convicted on any of the seventeen charges. 
They deadlocked on, what was it, nine of them, 
and they acquitted him on seven counts?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Eight counts.

AMY GOODMAN: Eight counts. So then what happened? He did do a plea bargain?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Yes, a few months later, he 
plea-bargained with the government, because even 
though the government had the option of dropping 
all the charges against him and releasing them, 
they threatened to retry him, and he did sign a 
plea agreement, pleading guilty to one count of providing services. And­

JUAN GONZALEZ: Of providing services?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Services to a designated 
terrorist organization. And basically, if you 
actually look at what he pled to, though, it was 
helping immigrants come to this country, helping 
his brother-in-law, my uncle, who was imprisoned 
under the use of secret evidence in the 1990s. So 
if you look at the statement of facts of what he 
pled to, it was actually pretty innocuous activities.

However, after that, a prosecutor in Virginia by 
the name of Gordon Kromberg started to subpoena 
my father to testify in a completely unrelated 
case before a grand jury. My father, when he was 
signing the plea agreement, said that cooperation 
was not a clause, that it was out of the question 
for him to be forced to cooperate and comply with 
the government. So my father so far has been 
brought before a grand jury three times. He was 
held in civil contempt for not testifying for eighteen months.

And right now, the government has brought him 
before a third grand jury yesterday, and we are 
faced with two horrible options: either he would 
testify and be charged with perjury or 
obstruction of justice­and this isn’t a question 
of “if,” it’s a question of “when.” If­you know, 
his attorney told him, in no uncertain terms, 
that he would be charged with perjury and that 
this is a perjury trap. Basically, the standards 
for being charged with perjury are pretty low. 
You can­even if you’re truthful, you can be 
charged with perjury. And these are Ken Starr 
tactics. These are tactics that the government has used before, unfortunately.

And the prosecutor who’s after him has made 
on-the-record anti-Muslim statements; he said he 
doesn’t want to assist in the, quote, 
“Islamization of America and of the American justice system.”

AMY GOODMAN: Who is this?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: His name is Gordon Kromberg. He’s 
in the Eastern District of Virginia. And the 
other option is for him not to testify, which is 
what he’s been doing and which is why he’s on a 
hunger strike right now, because he will not 
testify. This is a violation of his plea 
agreement, in which he’ll be charged with 
criminal contempt and facing a minimum of five 
more years in prison. This is outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s on a hunger strike?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: He is on a hunger strike. This is 
his nineteenth day of a hunger strike. Yesterday 
was the first day he drank water in that amount of time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And these other grand juries, the 
targets or the subjects of their investigation, does anyone know? Or­

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, it’s an Islamic think tank 
in Virginia. But what we believe is it has 
nothing to do with this organization. This is 
just a way­they couldn’t convict my father in 
court. This is a way for them to convict him in 
other means. And it needs to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Will Olson, you’re a lawyer in 
Virginia. If he believed, when he was signing 
this plea agreement, that it meant he did not 
have to testify before any future grand jury, how 
is it that he’s now been called before a third grand jury?

WILL OLSON: Well, the government’s position on 
the plea agreement is that the 
non-cooperation­there was not a written 
non-cooperation clause included in the written 
plea agreement. Dr. Al-Arian’s position is, 
during the course of his plea negotiations with 
the Middle District­the US attorney’s office for 
the Middle District of Florida, that it was an 
understanding of the parties that­throughout the 
negotiation, a basic understanding of their 
agreement was that Dr. Al-Arian would not 
cooperate with the government and that that was 
underlying in the entire negotiation.

When that plea agreement was formalized in 
writing, there was not a clause that required Dr. 
Al-Arian to testify, and it’s standard in the 
Middle District of Florida to have a clause that 
says that if you agree­that if you are pleading 
to something, that you have to cooperate with the 
government. That standard cooperation clause was 
omitted. Unfortunately, there was not language 
included in the agreement that states that Dr. 
Al-Arian is not obligated to corporate with the government.

When Dr. Al-Arian was called before the grand 
jury in Virginia, his legal team moved to enforce 
the plea agreement in Florida to block his 
appearance before the grand jury. The trial court 
in Florida, back in November of 2006, denied that 
motion, that the trial court took the position 
that because it was not in writing in the plea 
agreement, there was not a clause for the plea 
agreement that he didn’t have to cooperate. That 
decision was appealed to the 11th Circuit in 
Florida. That was denied. But we are again 
appealing to the 11th Circuit, as a whole. The 
way the procedure works is, once you’ve appealed 
to a panel of an appellate court, a circuit 
court, and if you disagree with that opinion, you 
can ask for the entire 11th Circuit to review the 
decision, and that’s what we’ve done.

AMY GOODMAN: Laila, we just have ten seconds. But 
your father’s health right now? He’s a diabetic. 
It’s his second fast. He dropped something like fifty pounds on his first.

LAILA AL-ARIAN: His last, right.

AMY GOODMAN: You just visited him in jail. He’s 
in a medical clinic in the jail.

LAILA AL-ARIAN: He’s lost thirty pounds. He’s 
very weak. He has been having chest pains. And 
we’re just asking everyone to keep up with this 
case, write letters to the Judiciary Committee in 
the House and Senate. And for more information, 
they can go to <http://www.freesamialarian.com>freesamialarian.com.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being 
with us, Will Olson in Virginia and Laila 
Al-Arian, the eldest daughter of former 
University of Southern Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian.




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