After vigorous defense campaign
Palestinian defeats police frame-up
By Steven Gillis
Boston
Supporters of Palestinian activist Amer Jubran are
celebrating. An attempted frame-up of Jubran by Brookline,
Mass., police and the Boston Israeli consulate has collapsed in
the face of a determined, vocal defense of Palestinian free
speech rights.
On June 10, months before the new repressive initiatives of
the Bush administration, Jubran was arrested, shackled hand to
foot, held for 36 hours incommunicado, interrogated and falsely
charged with felony assault and battery with a dangerous
weapon--his shod foot. He faced 10 years in Massachusetts'
maximum-security prison and deportation to Israel, which
practices assassination and torture of activist
Palestinians.
Jubran's real crime was that he dared to lead a spirited but
peaceful protest June 10 at a street festival celebrating the
founding of the Israeli state. To police authorities--who spent
two hours filming the 100 or so Palestinians and their
supporters--the chants of "Long live the Intifada" and "Shame,
shame, USA, funding Israel this way" were an intolerable threat
to the Israeli Festival Committee's attempt to present a
monolithic, pro-Israel view. Utilizing known pro-Zionist
provocateurs to finger Jubran, police moved in under orders to
break up the Palestinians' picket.
Even as the police wagon was pulling away, the Palestine
Right of Return Coalition (Al-Awda) of Massachusetts, organizer
of the protest, was joined by the International Action Center,
the Portuguese American Relief for Palestine, SUSTAIN, and the
Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights in launching the
Committee to Defend Amer Jubran and Palestinian Free Speech
Rights.
The committee started an international email and fax
campaign to flood the office of the Norfolk County District
Attorney with demands to drop the racist frame-up charges.
Messages came in from Australia, Austria, Canada, Egypt,
France, Greece, India, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland,
Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and 33 U.S.
states.
The Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union and the American
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee worked to expose this overt
attack on Palestinian free speech rights, which was a precursor
to the thousands of detentions, interrogations and false
arrests of Arab and Muslim immigrants under the jurisdiction of
the "USA Patriot Act" passed after Sept. 11.
Well-known figures--Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner,
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, author Howard Zinn
and Greek Maj. Gen. Kostas Konstantinidis--called on the DA to
dismiss the charges. Arthur Buonamia, district chairperson of
the Democratic Party election committee in Miami, wrote:
"Having witnessed firsthand a fascist rent-a-mob deny us the
right to count the votes in Miami on Nov. 22, 2000, I have
since become concerned with the denial of basic democratic
rights throughout this country. Amer Jubran has the right to
peacefully demonstrate and I will defend that right."
Campaign in the streets
For months, the Amer Jubran Defense Committee met weekly,
producing a mass campaign in the streets from Brookline and
Boston to Washington, D.C. After a Brookline cop threatened a
shackled Jubran with "I'll teach you a lesson," supporters
picketed in front of the courthouse for each of nine court
appearances, chanting "Free, free Palestine!" Supporters
distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets, ran a defense
committee web page (www.iacboston.org/amerjubran), and forced
the issue into the local media spotlight.
Amer Jubran's outspoken leadership of Al-Awda, especially in
the burgeoning anti-war movement following Sept. 11, became an
inspiration to young student activists. While facing felony
charges, Jubran addressed 20,000 anti-war marchers in
Washington, D.C.'s Freedom Plaza on Sept. 29, and led 500
demonstrators in Boston on Oct. 27 in a militant three-mile
"March against the Warmakers" targeting the Boston FBI office,
the Israeli consulate, and the Northeastern University ROTC. He
has spoken at dozens of campus and community rallies in recent
months about how to strengthen the Palestinian solidarity
struggle for freedom and self-determination.
Meanwhile, the government's case against him was falling
apart. Through the pro-bono efforts of attorney Barry Wilson
and the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, many elements of
the government's conspiracy against Jubran were fatally
exposed. The Brookline police were shown to be in the pay of
the Israeli Festival Committee on the day of Jubran's arrest,
receiving more than $10,000. Evidence also showed that local
Brookline cops had been in illegal and unconstitutional
consultation with representatives of the Israeli government in
Boston about how to handle the Palestinian protest.
The district attorney withheld eyewitness exculpatory
evidence from Jubran's defense team. Clumsy editing of police
video evidence left a Watergate-style gap in the tape. And
after undercover police agents illegally filmed Jubran and his
witnesses in open court on July 16, Boston Phoenix
investigative journalists helped spotlight the real motives
behind Jubran's arrest: a taped dispatch from police
headquarters had ordered cops on the scene to break up the
peaceful Palestinian protest that day.
Amid the complete collapse of this conspiracy to silence
Palestinian voices, Brookline authorities on Nov. 21 offered
Jubran a complete dismissal of the charges against him, with no
admission by Jubran whatsoever.
Afterwards, Jubran told supporters filling the courthouse
steps that, "My case is only one among thousands of
Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and African immigrants
who are being wrongly arrested, detained and interrogated in
what the U.S. government now calls its 'war on terrorism.' We
must use all our energy and experience gained from this case to
stop this extreme racial profiling and violations of civil and
human rights, made possible by the U.S.'s continued support of
the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and the
indiscriminate bombing of the people of Afghanistan."
He urged those present to spread the word about an upcoming
Dec. 1 rally and march in Boston to defend civil rights and
civil liberties. The Boston chapter of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop
War & End Racism) is calling on people to rally at 1:00
p.m. in Copley Square to demand freedom for the 1,200 federal
detainees locked up for months by the U.S. Office of Homeland
Security. The rally will also highlight the defense of two
Somali brothers arrested in Boston for sending money to
relatives back home, and support the Hartford 18 peace
activists brutalized and arrested by Connecticut police in
October.
Protesters will march to Boston Police Headquarters, where
they will demand that police obey local laws prohibiting racial
profiling and refuse to cooperate with the Bush
administration's new roundup and interrogation of 5,000 young
Arab immigrants. For further information, see
www.iacboston.org/ANSWER on the Web.
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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