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AMP Report – June 26, 2008
Dr. Sami al-Arian indicted on contempt charges
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Palestinian activist and a former professor of South Florida University, Dr. Sami al-Arian, has been indicted on June 25, 2008, in Alexandria, Virginia on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.
The indictment alleges that al-Arian knowingly disobeyed a judge's order to testify before the grand jury. Al-Arian has said that terms of his plea agreement of May 2006 exempt him from testifying, but two judges have rejected his plea.
Dr. al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody because he has refused to testify before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses. Only three weeks before his scheduled release date of April 7, 2008 he was informed on March 19 that he would be called to testify before a third grand jury in Virginia.
"After failing to convict Dr. al-Arian before a Florida jury, the government has continued to use any and all means to prolong his confinement," said al-Arian's attorney, Jonathan Turley.
He said this is only the latest case where the government has manufactured a charge against someone who was acquitted before a jury. The government has used similar tactics to confine others acquitted of terrorism-related charges. For example, former Howard University professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar was sentenced to 11 years in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Chicago after he was acquitted on charges of aiding the Palestinian terrorist network Hamas.
Turley said al-Arian has given two sworn statements to the government and volunteered to take a polygraph test to demonstrate he's told everything he knows about the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Va., which funded his Palestinian think tank in Tampa. "This confirms that the government always intended to indict Dr. al-Arian regardless of his cooperation," Turley said.
Calling the indictment as an outrageous abuse of the grand jury system, he said that the indictment of Dr. Sami al-Arian is a continuation of a long campaign of abuse that has drawn international criticism.
When Dr. Sami al-Arian was arrested in 2003, the then Attorney General John Ashcroft declared a major victory in the “war against terrorism.” At the time of al-Arian's 120-page indictment, John Ashcroft, said Al-Arian has been actively funding terrorist attacks in Israel. Ashcroft described al-Arian as the US leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
A federal jury, on December 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Sami al-Arian, of conspiring to aid a Palestinian group in killing Israelis through suicide bombings. Al-Arian was found not guilty on eight of 17 counts, including conspiracy to maim or murder. Jurors deadlocked on the rest of the charges, including ones that he aided terrorists.
The Tampa jury deliberated 13 days before rejecting arguments laid out over five months by prosecutors that al-Arian and three co-defendants conspired with leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- which the United States has designated a terrorist group -- providing it money, strategy and advice. The accusations were based on 20,000 hours of phone conversations and hundreds of faxes secretly monitored beginning in 1993.
The failure to convict Al-Arian was a stinging rebuke for the federal government. His case was once hailed by authorities as a triumph of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act, which allowed secret wiretaps and other information gathered by intelligence agents to be used in criminal prosecutions. The final outcome of the this three-year long trial was summed up by the Washington Post: “Stung by the defeat in the high- profile case, prosecutors pondered whether to retry him on the remaining charges, including three conspiracy counts, or deport him.”
In April 2006, on the advice of his attorneys, Dr Al-Arian agreed to a plea agreement to finally put an end to this ordeal, especially to end the suffering of his family. Central to the plea negotiations was Dr Al-Arian's insistence that he would not be subject to any further prosecution or called to cooperate with the government on any matter. In May 2006, Judge Moody ignored the government's recommendation that he be given the lowest possible sentence, and sentenced Dr Al-Arian to the maximum.
A few months before his scheduled release, Gordon Kromberg, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, subpoenaed al-Arian to testify before a grand jury or face civil contempt charges.
Court transcripts from the original case show that al-Arian's lawyers made his refusal to testify in any further cases a condition of his plea. The agreement was apparently not put in writing and Judge Moody ruled that the exemption "was not memorialized in writing'' and was not binding.'
Kromberg has subpoenaed al-Arian three times to testify before a Virginia grand jury, which has been convened to look at the activities of an Islamic think tank in Virginia. Twice, al-Arian was charged with civil contempt for refusing to testify, which extended his time in prison a year beyond his sentence.
In December, 2007, a federal judge in Virginia lifted al-Arian’s contempt charge and he was scheduled to be released in early April, 2008. But on March 3, Kromberg issued a third subpoena which, if al-Arian refuses to testify, could keep him in prison for another 18 months.
Under federal law, Al-Arian could not be jailed for more than 18 months for civil contempt. However, the law sets no particular prison sentence for criminal contempt. In theory, if convicted, Al-Arian could be jailed for life or receive the death penalty.
Al-Arian had already been jailed for a year on civil contempt charges. Legal experts said it is rare for the government to then add criminal counts. Lawrence Barcella, a former federal prosecutor who is now a Washington lawyer, said civil contempt is generally used to compel people to testify in investigations, and criminal contempt is designed to punish them if they have refused. He said it is "not unheard of but very unique" to seek criminal charges when a defendant has already served time for civil contempt.
Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the indictment a "ludicrous decision" that is "growing evidence that the kangaroo prosecution of Professor al-Arian in fact extends beyond the pursuit of justice and into the realm of vindictive political persecution."
In the words of Professor Peter Erlinder, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, the treatment accorded to the acquitted but still detained academic Palestinian activist from Tampa is abuse of power amounting to torture taking place in the United States itself under the aegis of the Bush Administration and its "war on terror".
The statement of Al-Arian's attorney, Jonathan Turley, on indictment:
This evening the Justice Department issued indictments for Dr. Sami Al-Arian.
Just yesterday in my testimony before the Judiciary Committee, I discussed Dr. Al-Arian’s case and the pattern of how the Justice Department has abused the grand jury system. As is eager to prove the pattern, the Justice Department indicted him despite his giving a full account of his knowledge of IIIT and his lack of any knowledge of any crime committed by IIIT or its officers. Our statement on the indictment is below.
The indictment of Dr. Sami Al-Arian is a continuation of a long campaign of abuse that has drawn international criticism. After failing to convict Dr. Al-Arian before a Florida jury, the government has continued to use any and all means to prolong his confinement in direct contradiction of a plea agreement reached after his trial. They have indicted him despite the fact that the prosecutors admitted that he is a minor witness in the IIIT investigation and he has already given two detailed statements under oath to the government and offered to take a polygraph examination to prove that he has given true information about his knowledge of IIIT.
Dr. Al-Arian has addressed every document cited by the government as the reason for his being called before the grand jury. He has shown that he has no incriminating information to offer against either IIIT or its officers. This indictment proves that the government was never interested in any information that Dr. Al-Arian has on the IIIT matter. This was a classic perjury trap used repeatedly by the government to punish those individuals who could not be convicted before an American jury.
The government spent an enormous amount of time and money prosecuting Dr. Al-Arian and defendants Ghassan Ballut, Hatim Fariz and Sameeh Hammoudeh in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. After a six-month trial and over 80 witnesses, a jury acquitted Dr. Al-Arian of eight of 17 counts. There were only two jurors who voted against acquitting him of all of the remaining counts. Ballut and Hammoudeh were acquitted on all charges. No one was convicted of a single count and Dr. Al-Arian later agreed to plead guilty to a single count in exchange for being allowed to leave the country – an agreement that the Justice Department has broken as it continues to hold Dr. Al-Arian.
This is only the latest case where the government has manufactured a charge against someone who was acquitted before a jury. We have seen the same tactics used in the cases of Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, and Sabri Benkahla. On behalf of myself and my co-counsel, Will Olson and P.J. Meitl (of the Bryan Cave law firm), I can promise that we will vigorously defend Dr. Al-Arian from this outrageous abuse of the grand jury system. We remain committed both Dr. Al-Arian and his family. We look forward to bring the full of this matter before the Court and the public.
Jonathan Turley
Lead Counsel to Dr. Al-Arian
June 25, 2008
THE TWO COUNTS OF INDICTMENT
COUNT ONE
THE GRAND JURY CHARGES THAT:
On or about October 16, 2007, in the City of Alexandria, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN. did unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully disobey and resist the lawful order of a court of the United States, in that, having been called to testify as a witness before Grand Jury 07-1, and having been ordered to testify by a United States District Judge under the condition that nothing that the defendant said in the course of such testimony could be used against him except in a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or obstruction of justice, or for criminal conduct begun and undertaken after the giving of such testimony or provision of such other information is completed, or for otherwise disobeying the Court's order, the defendant refused to testify, and unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully disobeyed that order. (In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 401(3).)
COUNT TWO
THE GRAND JURY FURTHER CHARGES THAT:
On or about March 20, 2008, in the City of Alexandria, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, SAMIAMIN AL-ARIAN, did unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully disobey and resist the lawful order of a court of the United States, in that, having been called to testify as a witness before Grand Jury 08-1, and having been ordered to testify by a United States District Judge under the condition that nothing that the defendant said in the course of such testimony could be used against him except in a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or obstruction of justice, or for criminal conduct begun and undertaken after the giving of such testimony or provision of such other information is completed, or for otherwise disobeying the Court's order, the defendant refused to testify, and unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully disobeyed that order. (In violation of Title IS, United States Code, Section 401(3).)
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