The Ordeal of Dr. Sami Al-Arian

Suffering—and Strength—Extends to Family as Well

By Laila Al-Arian


	Ali and Lama, who now are entering high school and middle school, are growing up without their father (Photo courtesy Al-Arian family).

ON FEB. 7, my father, Sami Al-Arian, gave his first broadcast interview since his imprisonment four years ago, on the nationally syndicated Pacifica radio and television program, “Democracy Now.” After his segment, host Amy Goodman asked me about my family’s take on his unjust detention and how we have coped in general with this whole ordeal. “How has this affected your decisions in your life?” she asked me.

I didn’t know where to begin explaining how this experience has changed us: my father’s arrest as a political prisoner, the horrendous conditions under which he has subsequently suffered, the trial, the verdict, the plea agreement, the grand jury.

When you go through a traumatic experience it can be difficult to find the words to explain how it has affected you and what you have learned from it—especially when you are still mired in the trauma. But I did manage to answer the question: “I think it has just been a very, very difficult time for us,” I said. “But I think at the same time it has made us more empathetic. We’re constantly watching what’s going on to victims all over the world, victims of oppression. And it’s made us strong advocates for justice.”

This is a lesson I have taken from my mother, Nahla, who, in the midst of my father’s—and our—suffering always cautioned us not to lose perspective, to remember, for example, the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, who are languishing in Israeli jails.

When my father was arrested at dawn in February 2003, I was away at college in Washington, DC, but my three younger siblings were home. The youngest two, Ali and Lama, were 12 and 9, respectively. They remember waking up to FBI agents carrying guns and flashlights; one of them was holding my father up against the wall right outside Ali’s bedroom.

Though they have not talked about that morning much, I know it shook them. “It was like the aftermath of a big earthquake in our lives. That’s how our house was,” my mother said of life after my father’s arrest. For my mother and us older siblings, our new life entailed preparing for trial, traveling to give speeches about my father’s case, raising money for his legal defense fund, making endless appeals for support, losing fair-weather friends and embracing genuine ones. For Ali and Lama, it meant trying to focus on school despite my father’s imprisonment. Lama, who attended public school for the first time in her life that fall, endured taunts from classmates. She eventually went abroad for a year to live with our extended family—and to find some peace.

Another consequence of this experience is that it opened our eyes to the injustices of the American prison system. “They don’t look at prisoners and their families as human beings,” my mother said. What’s worse, my father—who, along with his co-defendant, was the only pre-trial detainee in Coleman Federal Penitentiary, about 75 miles north of our home in Tampa—was placed in far more restrictive conditions than convicted felons. While all the other prisoners were granted contact visits with their families, we had to visit my father separated by a glass partition. Even then, he was strip-searched before and after our visits.

Everything about my father’s treatment in that prison—from those strip searches, to denying him phone calls and placing him in isolation—was meant to break him down before trial. When on one occasion he refused to submit to a strip search, the guards refused to grant a visit to my mother, who had driven two hours to see him. On countless occasions we saw other visitors yelled at, humiliated and turned away for wearing the wrong clothes or for some other minuscule infraction after driving 10 hours or more to see their loved ones. My mother has said that if she stays in America, she plans to become an advocate for the rights of prisoners and their families.

My father was held under these restrictive, punitive and psychologically torturous conditions for two years before his trial. When his trial finally began, we were tested anew. Though the government was allowed to bring in witnesses from Israel to inflame the jury—thankfully this cheap tactic backfired—our lawyers were forbidden from saying anything about the occupation or the suffering of the Palestinian people. As a result, it was a trial that completely lacked context.

We also sat and listened as the government read hours and hours of taped phone calls of private, innocuous conversations—a disturbing reminder that, for over a decade, we were stripped of our privacy. “What’s left of a human being when his privacy is invaded by others?” my mother wondered.

Ultimately, the government’s charges consisted of First Amendment-protected activities. Our lawyers presented no witnesses, since our defense was the Constitution.

As the day of the verdict drew nearer, our stress levels skyrocketed. We had many bad days and a few good ones. We all had frequent dreams. One night my mom dreamt that she was in the courtroom and the judge announced a “Not Guilty” verdict, and she thanked God. A few weeks later, her vision came true, and we thought my father finally would be released.

But that was not to be. After my father signed a plea agreement—the jury was undecided on a few minor counts—to end our nightmare once and for all, the judge in the case, who is bigoted toward Muslims and Palestinians, disregarded the jury’s verdict and gave my father the maximum sentence. “We thought after the trial, we would have a break from suffering, from crying, from sleepless nights. But we found out that the struggle has started all over again,” my mother said.

Now a prosecutor in Virginia, who has also expressed racist feelings toward Arabs and Muslims, is threatening to prolong my father’s imprisonment (see p. 30). As we appeal for people of conscience across the country and around the world to speak out and protest my father’s treatment, we remember others who are being oppressed. When I recently asked my mother who gives her inspiration, she replied: “The Palestinian people. I see them as amazing people handling what no human being can handle, the injustice of the longest occupation in modern history. I feel like my suffering is nothing compared to theirs. The most important thing in our story is that we will never be silenced. We will never stay quiet when we see injustice happening.”

Laila Al-Arian, a former intern with and staff member of the Washington Report, is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.

SIDEBAR

Dr. Sami Al-Arian’s Four-Years Prison Odyssey

Feb. 20, 2003: Orient Road Jail, Tampa, FL
March 27, 2003: U.S. Penitentiary, Coleman, FL
Feb. 9, 2005: Orient Road Jail, Tampa, FL
May 4, 2005: Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee, FL
June 8, 2006: U.S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, GA
June 22, 2006: Medium Security Federal Correctional Complex, Coleman, FL
Sept. 20, 2006: U.S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, GA
Sept. 21, 2006: Federal Transfer Center, Oklahoma City, OK
Sept. 25, 2006: Northern Neck Regional Jail, Warsaw, VA
Jan. 3, 2007: U.S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, GA
Jan. 17, 2007: Federal Correctional Institution, Petersburg, VA
Jan. 18, 2007: Alexandria Regional Jail, Alexandria, VA
Jan. 19, 2007: Northern Neck Regional Jail, Warsaw, VA
Feb. 14, 2007: Federal medical prison, Butner, NC

SIDEBAR 2

Sami Al-Arian and the American Justice System

By John Esposito and John Voll

Sami Al-Arian and the American justice system are casualties of the erosion of civil liberties post-9/11. Sami is a proud and committed American and Palestinian professor and activist whom we have known for more than 15 years. We came to know of Al-Arian’s academic status and role at the University of South Florida, the high regard in which he was held as a professor, in conversations with the then-provost and others. Over the years we encountered him on occasion in Washington, DC at conferences sponsored by the Islamic think tank World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), which brought together prominent scholars and experts from academia, government, and the media.

Many believed that Sami Al-Arian and his co-defendants could never get a fair jury trial—that a jury would not be able to act impartially given all the pre-trial publicity—in Tampa. But despite more than 10 years of investigation and thousands of documents and pieces of evidence, the prosecution failed to prove its case. The verdict by a jury of Sami Al-Arian’s peers sent a clear message domestically and internationally that our system of justice could and did work. It was a message that quite literally went not only around the nation but also around the world.

Despite the verdict, however, Al-Arian was not released on parole before the final sentencing, and the price for his freedom was a plea agreement drawn up by the government and the defense to expeditiously deport Al-Arian.

While this in itself would constitute a punishment, it at least would bring the Al-Arian family’s terrible ordeal to an end and enable them to get on with their lives. Instead the judge’s decision to in effect throw out the verdict and ignore the Justice Department and defense recommendation made a mockery of our judicial system. The current attempt to put Al-Arian on the stand in an unrelated case and his imprisonment for declining to testify is unfair and vindictive. It is time for a modicum of justice to be served and for Sami Al-Arian to be allowed to leave the country with his family who have also suffered so much. His release will reflect the judgment of a jury of his peers and assure that justice has been served.

John L. Esposito is a professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University and founding director of its Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. John O. Voll is a professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center.