Harsh sentence keeps Palestinian in jail

The case of Professor Sami al-Arian is but the latest example of how the United States government can use its vast repressive powers to grab a victory that it couldn’t win before a jury.

In December of 2005, the government lost most of its case against al-Arian, whom it had accused of being the “linchpin” of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in North America. He was acquitted on eight of the most serious charges; the jury deadlocked 10-2 over acquitting him on the nine remaining. Three of his co-defendants were totally acquitted.

Al-Arian had been a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida. He also was one of the founders of the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, formed to promote dialog between the “Muslim and Western worlds.” He is a Palestinian, born in Kuwait and raised in Egypt, who came to the United States in 1975, got an education, married and had five children, all born in the U.S.

Al-Arian was held in solitary confinement after being arrested in February 2003, depriving him of contact with his children. After his trial, facing the possibility of a retrial and knowing he was going to be deported anyway, he agreed to a plea bargain. He pleaded guilty to helping a PIJ associate and his brother-in-law with immigration issues and accepted deportation. That would let him be reunited with his family. In return, the other charges were to be dismissed and he would receive a light sentence.

He knew that one of his co-defendants, Sameeh Hammoudeh, was still being held in solitary confinement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even though he had been acquitted of all the charges against him. ICE claimed that Israel wouldn’t accept Hammoudeh’s return to the West Bank, although Israeli spokesmen for three ministries told the St. Petersburg Times in late February that they knew of no problems with his return.

When al-Arian went to federal court in Tampa, Fla., on May 1 for his sentencing, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. gave him the maximum penalty of 57 months, meaning that, even with time served, he still has to serve another 18 months in jail. Moody accepted all the prosecution’s accusations, even those rejected by the jury.

Al-Arian’s lawyer had told the court that his client had played a significant but purely political role in PIJ—but only before it had been declared a “terrorist” organization by the U.S. government in 1995. The government had begun its investigation of al-Arian and his co-defendants in 1993, amassing 400,000 wiretapped conversations—about 8,000 a week.

Even with all this effort and after spending millions of dollars, the government still wasn’t able to convince a jury in Tampa that al-Arian was a terrorist. But it kept him locked up, out of contact with his family, using threats of further and continued prosecution to force him to concede. It then used his concession to brand him as a “liar and hypocrite,” got the judge to break the government’s agreement and punished him to the limit.

The government still has the tools it needs to get the courts to mete out cruel and vindictive punishment, especially to Palestinians who challenge it.

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