Al-Arian Speaks Out, Continues Hunger Strike

The case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been covered more than once on this blog, and unfortunately I must continue to write about the case while this innocent man is still languishing in prison. This time, however, I will not write much about the case, but let Al-Arian speak for himself. Last Wednesday, Amy Goodman hosted him on Democracy Now, making it the first time Al-Arian appears in a broadcast interview in four years.

Goodman interviews Al-Arian, his attorney, and his daughter, all of whom shed light on the current conditions Sami is facing, the way the government has been denying him his rights, and the future of the case. You can read the transcript, or listen to the podcast on iTunes (Feb.7th episode). It's really worth it to hear the details of this case directly from Al-Arian, the hunger strike he has started, and the impact it has had on his family.

As for the hunger strike Al-Arian started on January 22, community members and his supporters are now also participating in a rolling hunger strike to bring attention to the injustice taking place in his case. The Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation is calling on everyone who supports human rights, freedom of expression, and due process, to support Sami by participating in the rolling hunger strike and to take action by writing to the judge presiding over the case, attorney general Gonzalez, Senator Leahy, and their own congress members asking them to end the suffering Al-Arian is facing. Fellow bloggers at KABOBfest had their own "KABOBfast" in support of Al-Arian last week.

More:

• TruthDig Article on Sami Al-Arian, Feb. 11th.
• Free Sami Al-Arian Website
• Democracy Now! Exclusive Interview with Al-Arian

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -MLK, Jr.

Senator Rips Gonzalez on Extraordinary Rendition

What you will see in the video below is the best example for why we need to have a Democratic majority in Congress when we have a Republican in the White House. This is the way our system of checks and balances should ideally work. Knowledgeable representatives questioning those in power and defending the rights of the citizens they represent.

I've previously blogged about the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar who was arrested while traveling through the US, unjustifiably suspected of terrorist involvement, and subsequently flown to Syria, his country of birth. There, Syrian officials tortured him for months on end without any proof that he had been even remotely involved in "terrorist activity." The US sent him to Syria knowing fully well that he would be tortured there. They did so under an American policy known as extraordinary rendition, where suspected terrorists are sent to countries to be questioned using illegal torture methods, some of which are Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and some Eastern European countries. You can read more about the this reprehensible policy in my previous posts. Maher was finally flown back to Canada, where the government opened an investigation into the rendition. The results of the investigation showed that Maher Arar was completely innocent of the claims the US had made, that he should not have been sent to Syria, and that the Canadian intelligence officials had wrongly indicated he may have been involved in terrorist activity. The Canadian government apologized to Arar, and today announced that he would receive $10.5 million for his ordeal. The Canadian government also asked the US to start its own investigation into why he was sent to Syria.

"I wish I could buy my life back," he [Arar] lamented Friday after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the money and formally apologized for his hellish ordeal in a Syrian prison. "That's my biggest wish." Arar said no amount of cash can compensate for the 10 months he suffered in a tiny concrete cell, the agonizing torture sessions he endured, or the years he struggled under the damning label of suspected terrorist.

During a Senate Judiciary Hearing this week on Justice Department Oversight, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy grilled Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on the reasons why the US sent Arar to Syria instead of Canada, indicating that the US knew that he would be tortured there. Gonzalez fumbled a lame answer telling the senator that he would provide him with more information on the case in a week, privately. Senator Leahy did the right thing to question the Attorney General on this policy which he said has put our relations with close allies at risk.

Thank you, Senator, for speaking truth to power, for being the voice of many Americans who are against this dispicable policy, who are against torture in all forms, who are against the Bush administration's policies that place our lives at risk, and that taint the America that we all would hope is a beacon of freedom and justice instead of a safe haven for repression. You have given us hope that such injustices cannot go on forever without someone speaking out against them.

Below is the full video of the exchange between the senator and the attorney general. There is a shorter CNN clip here. Also, the strong statement Senator Leahy made before the questioning can be found here.


You can write a note thanking the Senator for his strong words and defense of our civil rights by clicking here or sending an email to senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov.

[Technorati tags: Leahy, Gonzalez, Maher Arar, extraordinary rendition]

A Journalist in Guantanamo: The Story of Sami al-Haj

Nicholas Kristof's writes an excellent op-ed in the New York Times today shedding light on the story of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj who has been imprisoned by the US for the past five years. The article speaks for itself, and you can read the full text below as it is only available on the web for NYT Select members.

More details about Sami's ordeal can be found in this report by the Committee to Protect Journalists as well as Reporters Without Borders. I first learned about Sami's case through Al-Jazeera which occasionally shows a short piece quoting letters from Sami in prison and images of his son which are truly heartbreaking.

Freedom of the press, huh? Just goes to prove that the US and UK are guilty of intentionally targeting Al-Jazeera headquarters in Iraq and killing their reporter Tariq Ayub.
---

Sami's Shame, and Ours

by Nicholas D. Kristof

October 17, 2006

There is no public evidence that Sami al-Hajj committed any crime other than journalism for a television network the Bush administration doesn't like.

But the U.S. has been holding Mr. Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, for nearly five years without trial, mostly at Guantanamo Bay. With the jailing of Mr. Hajj and of four journalists in Iraq, the U.S. ranked No. 6 in the world in the number of journalists it imprisoned last year, just behind Uzbekistan and tied with Burma, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

This week, President Bush is expected to sign the Military Commissions Act concerning prisoners at Guantanamo, and he has hailed the law as ''a strong signal to the terrorists.'' But the closer you look at Guantanamo the more you feel that it will be remembered mostly as a national disgrace.

Mr. Hajj is the only journalist known to be there, and, of course, it's possible that he is guilty of terrorist-related crimes. If so, he should be tried, convicted and sentenced.

But so far, the evidence turned up by his lawyers and by the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which published an excellent report on Mr. Hajj's case this month -- suggests that the U.S. military may be keeping him in hopes of forcing him to become a spy.

Mr. Hajj, 37, who attended university and speaks English, joined Al Jazeera as a cameraman in April 2000 and covered the war in Afghanistan. He was detained on Dec. 15, 2001, and taken to the American military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.

''They were the longest days of my life,'' Mr. Hajj's lawyers quoted him as saying. He told them he was repeatedly beaten, kicked, starved, left out in the freezing cold and subjected to anal cavity searches in public ''just to humiliate me.''

In June 2002, Mr. Hajj was flown to Guantanamo, where he says the beatings initially were brutal but have since subsided somewhat.

At first, interrogators said Mr. Hajj had shot video of Osama bin Laden during an Al Jazeera interview, but it turned out that they may have mixed him up with another cameraman of a similar name. When that assertion fell apart, the authorities offered accusations that he had ferried a large sum of money to a suspicious Islamic charity, that he had supported Chechen rebels, and that he had once given a car ride and other assistance to an official of Al Qaeda.

One indication that even our government may not take those accusations so seriously is that the interrogations barely touched on them, Mr. Hajj's lawyers say.

''About 95 percent of the interrogations he went through were about Al Jazeera,'' said one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson of London. ''Sami would say, 'What about me? Will you ask about me?' ''

He added, ''It really does seem that the focus of the inquiry is about his employer, Al Jazeera, and not about him or any actions he may have taken.''

Mr. Katznelson also says that interrogators told Mr. Hajj they would free him immediately if he would agree to go back to Al Jazeera and spy on it. He once asked what would happen if he backed out of the deal after he was free.

''You would not do that,'' Mr. Hajj quoted his interrogator as saying, ''because it would endanger your child.''

The Defense Department declined to comment on Mr. Hajj's case, saying that in general, it does not comment on specific detainees at Guantanamo.

While Mr. Hajj is unknown in the U.S., his case has received wide attention in the Arab world. The Bush administration is thus doing long-term damage to American interests.

Mr. Hajj's lawyers say he has two torn ligaments in his knee from abuse in his first weeks in custody, making it exceptionally painful for him to use the squat toilet in his cell. The lawyers say he has been offered treatment for his knee and a sitting toilet that would be less painful to use -- but only if he spills dirt on Al Jazeera. And he says he has none to spill.

And while Defense Department documents indicate that he has been a model inmate at Guantanamo, he protests that he has been called racial epithets (he is black) and that he has seen guards desecrate the Koran.

When Sudan detained an American journalist, Paul Salopek, in August in Darfur, journalists and human rights groups reacted with outrage until he was freed a month later. We should be just as offended when it is our own government that is sinking to Sudanese standards of justice.

This doesn't look like a war on terrorism, but a war on our own values.

[technorati tags: Aljazeera, media, war on terror, Guantanamo, torture, Bush]

More News on Attempts to Kill Habeas Corpus

Here are some more articles and commentary on the military commissions bill being debated in the Senate right now. If you haven't called your Senator today to ask them to defend the writ of habeas corpus, please do so ASAP because the vote will likely take place today. See my earlier post for more details.

Molly Ivins: Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

Boston Globe: Legal Residents' Rights Curbed in Detainee Bill

LA Times: Don't Suspend Habeas Corpus

WP: Rights Groups Decry US Senate Bill on Detainees

MSNBC: Specter to Press for Detainees' Habeas Corpus Rights

Znet: Indefinite Detention and Torture: A Political and Moral Mistake

[technorati tags: writ, habeas, corpus, Bush, civil rights, senate]

Save the Writ of Habeas Corpus!

Recent news about the compromise on the military commissions bill that was debated in Congress has focused on article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and relevant US military stipulations regarding torture of detainees. A very critical section of the bill that has not been discussed by the media is the abolishment of the writ of habeas corpus for anyone in the US who is not an American citizen. The passage of this section of the bill would be a disaster for civil and human rights advocates across the US. Abolishing the writ of habeas corpus is slap in the face of the founding fathers of this country. While the bill has passed in the House, it is still up for debate in the Senate, and we still have a chance to try to stop it from passing!

What is the writ of habeas corpus?

A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

This is what the Supreme Court has said about the write of habeas corpus:

the Supreme Court has "recognized the fact that`the writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.' Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). " Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected." Harris, 394 U.S. at 291.

This is what Congress wants to do with the writ; from the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Congress is on the verge of passing a military commissions bill that would authorize the indefinite detention, without access to the courts, of immigrants detained inside or outside of the United States—even if they are not charged with any crime. What began as legislation to regulate the trials of men at Guantánamo has grown so sweeping that it would encompass any non-U.S. citizen picked up anywhere in the world, even permanent legal residents detained inside the United States. This is being voted on in the House of Representatives today and will likely be voted on in the Senate on Thursday. Senators Specter and Levin will be introducing a bipartisan amendment to remove a provision that denies these immigrants access to courts. It is essential that you call your Senators and Representatives and urge them to vote for the Specter Amendment to remove the jurisdiction-stripping provision from the military commissions bill. (more)

Please act now to ensure that out Constitution continues to protect all who reside in this country. Call your members of Congress immediately, especially those listed with contact information below.

Kent Conrad (ND) (202) 224-2043
Joe Lieberman (CT) (202) 224-4041
Ben Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551
James Jeffords (VT) (202) 224-5141
Lincoln Chafee (RI) (202) 224-2921
Richard Lugar (IN) (202) 224-4814
Craig Thomas (WY) (202) 224-6441
Chuck Hagel (NE) (202) 224-4224
Lisa Murkowski (AK) (202) 224-6665
John Sununu (NH) (202) 224-2841
Peter Dominici (NM) (202) 224-6621
Gordon Smith (OR) (202) 224-3753
Arlen Specter (PA) (202) 224-4254
Daniel Inouye (HI) (202) 224-3934
Mary Landrieu (LA) (202) 224-5824
Ron Wyden (OR) (202) 224-5244
Olympia Snowe (ME) (202) 224-5344
Susan Collins (ME) (202) 224-2523
Carl Levin (MI) (202) 224-6221
Hillary Clinton (NY) (202) 224-4451
Richard Durbin (IL) (202) 224-2152
Harry Reid (NV) (202) 224-3542
John Kerry (MA) (202) 224-2742
Lindsey Graham (SC) (202) 224-5972
John Warner (VA) (202) 224-2023
John McCain (AZ) (202) 224-2235

We cannot continue to sit back and watch idly as the Bush administration and their cohorts in Congress tear apart our constitutional rights. If we don't defend our own rights, noone else will!

It only takes a few minutes to write an email or make a phone call to your Senators, but it will take years if not decades to bring back our rights if they are taken away.

[Feel free to repost this on your blog or send it as an email to friends and family. Let's get the word out!]

*Update*: There are some reports that the Senate will be voting on this early this morning, so please call early and call a lot!

[technorati tags: writ, habeas, corpus, Bush, civil rights, senate]

Stirrings on Guantanamo Bay & Extraordinary Renditions

I wanted to share a few articles that I came across recently which should put the recent debates on Guantanamo Bay prisoners and secret prisons into perspective for all of us. Let us not forget that we are speaking of individuals who have not been convicted and most have no evidence against other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as Abu Bakker Qassem writes in a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday.

I have been greatly saddened to hear that the Congress of the United States, a country I deeply admire, is considering new laws that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detentions in federal court.

I learned my respect for American institutions the hard way. When I was growing up as a Uighur in China, there were no independent courts to review the imprisonment and oppression of people who, like me, peacefully opposed the Communists. But I learned my hardest lesson from the United States: I spent four long years behind the razor wire of its prison in Cuba.

I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.

Also is the news recently is a similar type of secret imprisonment, extraordinary rendition, which I blogged about before regarding the case of Canadian Maher Arar. Extraordinary rendition occurs when "terror suspects are transferred from U.S. control into the control of foreign governments, so that interrogation methods that are not permitted under U.S. law may be applied to the suspects."

Outlawed is a new documentary film that addresses the issue of rendition by telling "the stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have survived extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S. government working with various other governments worldwide." Democracy Now's Amy Goodman highlighted this documentary film on her show last week which is produced by the international human rights organization Witness. [You can read the transcript or download the episode here.] This is an excerpt from the interview:

BINYAM MOHAMED: [read by his brother] “I refused to talk in Karachi until they gave me a lawyer. I said it was my right to have a lawyer. The FBI said, ‘The law has changed, there are no lawyers. You can cooperate with us the easy way or the hard way.’ On the first day of the interrogation ‘Chuck’ said, ‘If you don’t talk to me you are going to Jordan. We can’t do what we want here. The Arabs will deal with you.’”

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: The United States has not transported anyone and will not transport anyone to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.

BINYAM MOHAMED: [read by his brother] “They would say, ‘There is this guy who would say you are a big man in Al Qaeda.’ I would say, ‘It is a lie.’ They would torture me. I would say, ‘OK it is true,’ they would say, ‘OK tell us more.’ I would say, ‘I don’t know more,’ they would torture me again. The guards would say, ‘America’s really pissed off at what happened, and they have said to the world, “either you are with us or against us.” We Moroccans say, “We are with you,” so we will do whatever they want.’”

You can watch the full length film which is available on Google Video. I recommend that everyone watch this brief film to get a realistic perspective on the issue. Imagine being abducted while on vacation, taken half way across the world, tortured, and forced to confess to a crime that you have nothing do with. Your family has no idea where you are. They move out of your home and back to their country. The full story with all of the gruesome details are in the film.

Fortunately, some of our senators have come to realize the dangers and risks involved in this type of criminal and inhumane activity and have recently protested the passage of legislation endorsed by President Bush with regards to the rights of detainees. Many Americans are speaking out in support of these senators as they still have a conscience and still believe in the rule of law [see these letters to the editor].

Most of these congressmen will be up for re-election in a few weeks, and this issue should be a top priority for every American that cares about the freedoms which this country was founded upon and cares about the reputation of the US in the international community. We cannot continue to promote democracy and freedom in parts of the world while secretly jailing innocent and not-yet-proven-guilty suspects and allowing the governments of third world countries to torture them indefinitely on our behalf.

[technorati tags: Guantanamo Bay, Bush, terrorism, war, torture, torture, human+rights, Outlawed, Witness]

Thoughts and Images from the DC Anti-Torture Protest

I managed to make it this morning to the 24-hour vigil organized by the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition that I wrote about yesterday. The turnout was not huge, but that was mainly due to the heavy rain fall and thunderstorms that have been hitting the DC area. The offices of TASSC were flooded last night so that affected the whole day's program. In front of the White House, attendees passed out informational flyers, held up banners and signs, chanted anti-torture slogans, and half a dozen people got arrested after a civil disobedience session.

I met an old Peruvian man who was wearing a picture of his son who was tortured to death in 1993 by the Fujimori government. He was an innocent university student who was arrested, tortured, and then burned to death by the authorities. I met an American nun who was tortured by the government in Guatemala during a period of civil unrest until she escaped. These and other governments in Latin and South America were supported by the US; some of the torturers were even trained by Americans.

I met a young Jordanian-American woman whose brother was tortured in Saudi Arabia at the behest of the US government. Ahmed Abu-Ali is an American citizen who languished in a Saudi jail for 20 months without being charged, was tortured by the "Mabahith" (secret police), and then finally sent back to the US where the government sought to get revenge from him and his family by making frivolous charges against him. He was convicted by a jury based on confessions he made while being tortured. Yes, you heard me right, they took the statements he made while his body was whipped and his nails were pulled off, and used that as evidence against him. (Please recall my earlier post about Maher Arar who was rendered by the US to Syria where he said, "I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured. I would say anything to avoid torture.")

The effects of torture on an individual cannot be erased. I could tell while speaking to these survivors that this was not something easy to do, to reopen the wounds and recall the painful memories. But they were brave enough to do it because they realize that innocent people like themselves are facing the same type of oppression, and as survivors of torture, they want to put an end to it. From Guantanamo to Syria to Guatemala to China, prisoners around the world in more than 150 countries are being tortured as we speak.

The burden is on us to make a difference, to change the policies, to lobby for change, to ask for justice.


Here are some pictures of the event (click to enlarge):

"zero tolerance for torture"

"All religions honor human dignity. Torture seeks to destroy it."

Police truck driving off with the 6 arrested protestors as the crowd waves

the elderly Peruvian man in the orange shirt with his dead son's picture on his chest

the crowd in front of the White House

A man dressed as a Guantanamo Bay inmate with a sack on his head, like the victims of Abu Ghraib. His poster reads "No exemptions for Bush. Ban all torture now."

This wasn't part of the event. The white tent is the home of an old woman who sleeps there in protest, I guess. Her signs, addressed to the White House, read: "Live by the bomb, die by the bomb" and "Ban all nuclear weapons or have a nice doomsday".
[previous posts on torture: Extraordinary Rendition; Torture in Israel]

[technorati tags: torture, activism, DC,international law, human rights, campaigns, torture awareness month]

Anti-Torture Events in DC and NY Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Monday June 26th, is the UN International Day in Support of Victims and Survivors of Torture. June is Torture Awareness Month, and I have written a couple of posts about this topic as a member of the Bloggers Against Torture campaign. Whether you are a blogger or not, there is a lot each of us can do to make a positive impact and put pressure on our governments to stop using this inhumane policy against prisoners.

For those of you in the Washington D.C. metro area, an organization called the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition is holding a 24-hour vigil to commemorate the victims of torture and raise awareness about this important cause. The events will take place in Lafayette Park across the White House from 7am on Monday to 7am on Tuesday (see directions below) . There is a full day program with various activities and events taking place, including:

- There will be a Mock Prison Cell on site during the 24-Hour Vigil to symbolize the ongoing practice of torture today. Each hour a different volunteer will sit in the cell and represent a specific individual—someone who is disappeared or detained, who has been tortured, or is at risk of being tortured today.

- Friends of TASSC will demonstrate their solidarity with survivors by a non-violent protest against torture during the Vigil in which they will risk arrest.

- Be a “ Walking Billboard .” And see the sites of Washington ! Spend a few hours walking through downtown Washington with a sign raising awareness about torture. Walking is good for you and human rights, too! (Full schedule in pdf)

Other events in DC and New York (source):
June 26
Washington, DC 9:00 to 5:00pm Lobby Day Against Extraordinary Rendition follows teach-in and lobby training June 25. Capitol Hill. Contact Mary Jo at Amnesty International to coordinate lobby visits.

Washington, DC 5:00 to 6:30pm Vigil at the Vice President's House, Sponsored by the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture. Email WRRCAT.

New York City 10:30am to 1:00pm Solemn procession and demonstration to shut down Guantanamo. Witness Against Torture Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th St. and 1st Ave.

New York City 6:30 to 8:30pm Movie screening: "Gitmo: The New Rules of War" Followed by a panel with Mark Kennis, Amnesty International, and Ramzi Kassem, counsel for Guantanamo detainees. $10 admission to benefit torture victims. Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive New York, Room 10T. For more information call 212-87-6854.

June 27
Washington, DC 12:00 to 1:30pm (EDT) Capitol Hill Panel Discussion on Guantanamo: "Should the U.S. Shut Down Gitmo?" Speakers include former Guantanamo Bay Muslim Chaplain James Yee. Room 2226, Rayburn House Office Building. Council on American-Islamic Relations.

If you live in the area, please make an effort to stop by even if only for a few minutes. We cannot sit back and watch scandals like Abu Ghraib take place and taint the image of our country. We should not allow our government to send suspects to foreign governments to be tortured and stripped of every basic human right they possess.

Lafayette Park is located directly north of the White House on H Street between 15th and 17th Streets, NW. The easiest way to get there is using Metro; Farragut West on the Blue and Orange lines is the closest station to the site of the events. Here is a map of the area; the red star is the Farragut West station.

No Torture. Not Now. Not Ever.

[technorati tags: torture, international law, human rights, campaigns, torture awareness month]