US activists face new repression as political prisoners fight for justice
Nora Barrows-Friedman and Maureen Clare Murphy,
The Electronic Intifada,
15 November 2010
The US government is attempting to criminalize solidarity work in the
Palestinian community.
(Maureen Clare Murphy)
For decades the United States government has attempted to criminalize
work in the Palestinian community in support of their national
liberation cause.
But in recent years this repression has increased dramatically.
The Electronic Intifada spoke with the daughter of Sami al-Arian and
the daughter of Ghassan Elashi -- both political prisoners in the US
-- about the impact this repression has had on their families' lives.
And in an Electronic Intifada exclusive, Hatem Abudayyeh, an
organizer and community leader whose home in Chicago was raided by
federal agents on 24 September 2010, spoke to the press for the first
time about his family's story.
The Electronic Intifada spoke with al-Arian, Elashi and Abudayyeh as
activists across the United States prepare for emergency
demonstrations as the subpoenas for three anti-war and solidarity
organizers to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago are being
reactivated by the Department of Justice.
The three activists are among the 14 who received subpoenas during
and soon after coordinated FBI raids on homes and offices across the
Midwestern US on 24 September.
The government says that the raids and subpoenas are part of an
investigation into "material support" of foreign terrorist
organizations but it has not arrested or charged anyone.
A grand jury, no longer in use anywhere outside the US, is an
investigative tool that allows the government to compel citizens to
testify even if they are not suspected of any crime.
The 14 targeted activists are involved with various peace with
justice groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago,
Students for a Democratic Society, the Twin Cities Anti-War
Committee, the Colombia Action Network, Fight Back! newspaper, the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the National Committee to
Free Ricardo Palmera.
All the activists had submitted letters to the US attorney -- the
local Department of Justice prosecutor who convenes the grand jury --
stating their intent not to testify; the Department of Justice had
withdrawn the original subpoenas, but the grand jury was still convened.
The three activists receiving reactivated subpoenas are expected to
be offered "immunity" -- meaning that they face the choice of
informing the government about the activities of other organizers or
being jailed for the duration of the grand jury, and possibly facing
further charges for criminal contempt of court.
"What [the US government] is doing is gathering political
intelligence to indict people under this idea of providing material
support for terrorism," attorney Michael Deutsch, part of the legal
defense team for the activists, told The Electronic Intifada.
"The grand jury is not an independent body.
It is controlled by the US Department of Justice and they decide who
is subpoenaed and what the outcome of the grand jury investigation is.
It is a tool of the FBI and the justice department to repress
political activists."
Deutsch wrote for The Electronic Intifada in 2008: "In the last forty
years the government has used the grand jury as a tool of political
inquisition subpoenaing and resubpoenaing activists the government
knows will refuse to cooperate, stripping them of their
constitutional right against self-incrimination and forcing upon them
the choice of informing on their movement or going to jail for contempt."
In an article contributed to the Mondoweiss site, Deutsch explains:
"The search warrants and grand jury subpoenas make it quite clear
that the federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public nonviolent
political organizers ... of providing 'material support,' through
their public advocacy, for the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia" ("US
Justice Department prepares for the ominous expansion of law
prohibiting 'material support' for terrorism," 10 November 2007).
The investigation's legal basis is the bipartisan Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act passed under the Clinton administration
in 1996 and expanded with the bipartisan Patriot Act enacted during
the Bush administration.
In June of this year the implications of the legislation -- already
used after 11 September 2001 to shut down major Muslim charities in
the US -- was broadened even further.
According to Deutsch in Mondoweiss, in the decision Holder v. the
Humanitarian Law Project, the US Supreme Court "decided that
nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy 'coordinated with' or
'under the direction of' a foreign group listed by the Secretary of
State as 'terrorist' was a crime."
The "foreign terrorist organization" designation is unilaterally
declared by the US Secretary of State and virtually impossible to challenge.
The Center for Constitutional Rights describes "the government's
current fervor to use the label of terrorism as a brand for groups
and organizations that are not toeing the line on US foreign policy"
("Factsheet: Material Support").
At the height of the movement to bring an end to white supremacist
rule in South Africa -- the US was among the apartheid regime's
longest-standing supporters -- the Reagan administration declared
Nelson Mandela's party, the African National Congress, a foreign
terrorist organization.
Critics observe that had these laws been enacted then, the entire
anti-apartheid movement in the US, which took direction from the ANC,
would have been criminalized for providing "material support to terrorism."
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights fact sheet, "these
material support provisions violate the First Amendment as they
criminalize activities like distribution of literature, engaging in
political advocacy, participating in peace conferences, training in
human rights advocacy and donating cash and humanitarian assistance,
even when this type of support is intended only to promote lawful and
nonviolent activities."
These laws have had a tremendously chilling impact on civil liberties
and humanitarian and domestic political organizing in the US,
particularly amongst the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities.
Hatem AbudayyehHatem Abudayyeh was asleep on his parents' couch the
morning of 24 September after spending the night with his mother in
the emergency room when his wife frantically called him to report
that federal agents had raided their home.
A Palestinian community leader and solidarity activist, Abudayyeh is
also Executive Director of the Arab American Action Network, which
provides social services to thousands of families in and around
Chicago."I ran into my house, passed all the agents and grabbed my
daughter and went into the bedroom with her and held her and made
sure she was OK," Abudayyeh told The Electronic Intifada.
Abudayyeh, his wife and five-year-old daughter were mainly confined
to their small living room while a multi-agency task force searched
through all their belongings." I wanted to see what they were
searching for and grabbing but they wouldn't allow us to do that,"
Abudayyeh said.
"They basically grabbed everything that said 'Palestine' on it."
During the search that Abudayyeh said went on for more than three
hours, the agents went through his wife and daughter's personal
belongings, the family's library, CD and DVD cases and financial documents.
Amongst the materials confiscated were home movies Abudayyeh's wife
had recorded during a family visit to Palestine this summer.
Abudayyeh eventually learned that the home of his friends Joe
Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner, a Chicago couple who are long-time
union and anti-war activists, was raided as well.
That same morning more than 70 federal agents raided and served
subpoenas to prominent organizers in the Twin Cities and Michigan,
and called and otherwise harassed activists throughout the country.
The office of the Twin Cities-based Anti-War Committee -- which led
demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, one of the
largest anti-war protests in the US in recent years -- was raided as well.
Hatem Abudayyeh (Maureen Clare Murphy)
"The most accurate assessment is that on the political level, the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not going so well for the administration.
There are a lot of developments happening in Colombia and Palestine
that are probably also not considered to be what the administration
wants to see in those countries," Abudayyeh said.
"This attack on the anti-war movement is another example of the
administration, whether Obama's or Bush's, trying to criminalize the
activities of organizers in the US [working to change] foreign policy
in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Colombia.
"Of the 14 activists targeted on 24 September, Abudayyeh is the only
Palestinian or Arab (profiles of those targeted are currently
available on <http://stopfbi.net/>stopfbi.net)."
The administration needs to put a local face on the enemy abroad and
for many years that has been Arab and Muslim faces. It is interesting
that in this case, I'm the only Arab.
But the essential goal is the same -- to criminalize anti-war
activism and criminalize international solidarity activism in defense
of a foreign policy that has gone awry and has caused the deaths of
many thousands of American troops and many hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis and Afghans."
Abudayyeh and others say there hasn't been government repression of a
social movement in the US on this scale since COINTELPRO -- an FBI
program implemented in the 1950s and 1960s to infiltrate and disrupt
domestic political organizations, particularly the Black Panthers and
other oppressed nationality movements."We all know what McCarthyism
did in this country in the '50s," Abudayyeh said.
"It's pretty frightening and disconcerting that in 2010, this can still happen.
"Abudayyeh recognizes that he is hardly the first Palestinian in the
US to be targeted for his political views and organizing.
"People who are activists in the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim
community -- especially since 11 September, but for decades before
than -- have dealt with this government repression," he said.
Abudayyeh referenced the case of seven Palestinian immigrants and a
Kenyan -- dubbed the LA 8 -- who were subjected to 20 years of
prosecution and deportation proceedings for their activities
educating Americans about US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.
The US government arrested the eight in 1987 and accused them of
organizing in support of a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
According to Abudayyeh, persecution of Palestinian activism began
with the wave of Palestinian immigrants to the US after Israel's
military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.
"What they are targeted for is challenging US policy as it relates to
Palestine," Abudayyeh added.
"Israel receives the largest amount of US foreign and military aid
... which they use to occupy and oppress Palestinians in Jerusalem,
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and they use that aid to threaten
their neighbors, like Syria and Lebanon.
Most of the leading activists around the war in Lebanon in 2006 in
the US were Palestinians because we saw that as an extension of the
war on the Palestinian people.
We don't separate the US occupation and invasion of Iraq from US
support of Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people."
However, Abudayyeh said, despite this repression the Palestine
support movement in the US has only grown, and today's generation of
student activists are doing even stronger work than what was
happening during his youth.
"It's incumbent for us in the US and everywhere else to speak out
against these policies ... It is probably the main liberation and
social justice issue in the world today. I may be the individual who
is being targeted today, but this isn't an issue of an individual or
organizations I work for or are affiliated with; it's a historical
repression and attack on the Palestine support movement in the US."
There have been several other high-profile cases against Palestinian,
Arab and Muslim activists since 11 September 2001.
Political prisoners continue to serve draconian sentences as the
Department of Justice under the Obama administration enforces the
policies of the Bush-era PATRIOT Act and the Clinton administration's
material support laws.
Michael Deutsch told The Electronic Intifada that former university
professor and stateless Palestinian Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar remains in
a federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia following his sentence of
135 months for refusing to testify to a grand jury and inform on the
activities of other activists in the US and Palestine.
Deutsch said that Dr. Ashqar's legal defense is filing a habeas
corpus petition challenging his sentence, arguing that his rights
were violated at his trial.
The US government accused Dr. Ashqar and his co-defendant Muhammad
Salah, a Palestinian American, of participation in alleged
racketeering activity in support of Hamas after dropping initial
material support charges.
The government presented as evidence a confession Salah made while he
was tortured for 80 days in an Israeli prison and the prosecution's
main witnesses were Israeli intelligence agents who were allowed to
testify anonymously with severely restricted cross-examination.
Despite vast resources spent by the US government to convict the two,
Salah and Dr. Ashqar were acquitted by a jury of all conspiracy and
terrorism-related charges.
But Salah was convicted of obstruction of justice for filing false
answers to interrogatories in a civil case and was sentenced to 21
months in prison, a sentence he has served out.
"No amount of jailing by the court will compel me to testify against
others struggling for Palestinian freedom," Dr. Ashqar stated in an
affidavit given on 12 July 2003 published on the Free Dr. Ashqar
Committee website ("Case History - 2003 Affadavit of Abdelhaleem Ashqar).
But Ashqar's 11-year sentence for refusing to testify to a grand jury
is unprecedented in US history and contrasts, for example, with the
mere 30-month sentence received by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former
chief of staff to US Vice President Richard Cheney who was convicted
in 2007 for actively lying to a grand jury investigating the
disclosure of classified information about CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Libby served no time, however, as then President George W. Bush
commuted the sentence on the grounds that it had been "excessive."
Sami al-Arian
Meanwhile, Dr. Sami al-Arian, a former professor at the University of
South Florida and a longtime political and civil rights activist, has
been under house arrest for more than two years following nearly a
decade of political prosecution by the federal government...
[ Go to link below to continue reading ]
***
AN ELECTRONIC INTIFADA SPECIAL FEATURE:
US ACTIVISTS FACE NEW REPRESSION AS POLITICAL PRISONERS FIGHT FOR JUSTICE
By Nora Barrows-Friedman and Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic
Intifada, 15 November 2010
For decades the United States government has attempted to
criminalize work in the Palestinian community in support
of their national liberation cause. But in recent years
this repression has increased dramatically. The Electronic
Intifada spoke with the daughter of Sami al-Arian and the
daughter of Ghassan Elashi -- both political prisoners in
the US -- about the impact this repression has had on
their families' lives. And in an Electronic Intifada
exclusive, Hatem Abudayyeh, an organizer and community
leader whose home in Chicago was raided by federal agents
on 24 September 2010, spoke to the press for the first
time about his family's story.
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11626.shtml>http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11626.shtml
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