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of Justice prosecutor who convenes the grand jury -- stating their intent not to testify; the Department of Justice had withdrawn the original subpoenas, but the grand jury was still convened.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 ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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