When an American or European is captured and held as a hostage in the Middle East, the press and public are horrified. Rightfully so. Every civilized person should repudiate events such as the kidnapping and slaying of Quaker peace activist Tom Fox earlier this month in Iraq.
But if we're looking for a hostage story, we don't need to journey to the other side of the world. Bradenton will do.
There, in a jail cell, sits Sameeh Hammoudeh, best known as Sami Al-Arian's co-defendant in the trial that ended in December. The outcome — not a single guilty verdict for any of the four defendants — exposed the bankruptcy of evidence, the outright lies and the political agenda of federal prosecutors.
Al-Arian should be released. He withstood more than a decade of assault by Israeli disinformation agents and our own federal government. His case is as yet unresolved — the jury couldn't reach a unanimous decision on nine counts, although no more than two of the 12 jurors favored any guilty verdicts whatsoever. That came after a half-year trial in which the government tried to con the jurors, claiming a mountain of specious conjecture constituted "proof." It didn't, and the jury saw beyond the feds' pathetic smoke and mirrors.
Federal agents wipe their feet on the Constitution by keeping Al-Arian in jail. The no-justice justification is a possible new trial that the evidence-anemic prosecutors hope to stack even more unfairly than their first misbegotten effort.
Al-Arian was clearly an activist, however, and his effectiveness at reaching out to American political leaders and the public is why the Israelis wanted him silenced. "It (the Israeli Lobby) does not want an open debate on issues involving Israel, because an open debate might cause Americans to question the level of support that they currently provide," states a report published this month by Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
But Hammoudeh wasn't an activist. He is guilty of merely being a Palestinian. There is absolutely no reason to hold Hammoudeh — unless you want to confront the reality of what's going on. He's a hostage, and an innocent one.
A foreign nation, Israel, has commandeered our judicial system, and with our federal prosecutors as willing accomplices, is using our courts for political reprisals.
"It's all about the (Al-Arian) retrial," Hammoudeh told me from his Bradenton cell. "In negotiations with Sami, they say they have a witness. They originally wanted me to testify falsely against Sami. … I wouldn't talk."
It gets worse. The feds threatened Hammoudeh's wife, Nadia. Then the lawmen (not!) frogged up tax charges, and muscled guilty pleas from the Hammoudehs by threatening to take the couple's children.
"They said, 'We'll shatter your life,'" Hammoudeh says. "They told me they'd destroy my academic life, my social life, my family life."
The feds have employed mental torture. Twice, the government has said Hammoudeh would be released. His family waited in Jordan for a week on one of those occasions, only to find out our government had reneged on its promise, a crushing event.
Part of what the authorities are afraid of with Hammoudeh is what he could tell the world as a free man. He has compiled, and given to me, a lengthy list of government lies — all examples of prosecutorial misconduct. As was pointed out in Meg Laughlin's March 19 report for the St. Petersburg Times, the indictment paraphrases in sinister tones wiretapped conversations in which Hammoudeh discusses transfers of minor sums of money to relatives. In reality, it's clear from actual translations that there was no criminal activity being discussed. The government — as it has from the beginning of the Al-Arian case — fabricated, distorted and manipulated evidence.
Other examples would be almost humorous — if a man wasn't rotting in jail. The government, Hammoudeh says, claimed "any usage of the term 'family' at any time and by any person means 'the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.'" Thus, when Hammoudeh made "family" calls to his father, 78, and his mother, 77, the feds' Keystone Kops claimed the calls related to terrorism.
If people started wondering about the conduct of prosecutors in the "terrorism" case, they might start seriously questioning what has been going on at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa. Keep in mind, there is strong evidence that federal prosecutors tried to frame state Circuit Court Judge Greg Holder after he complained to Washington that the U.S. Attorney's Office was scuttling public corruption probes.
Hammoudeh has a habeas corpus hearing this week, and if there is a shred of decency left in what is laughingly called the Justice Department, the Palestinian will be freed and allowed to leave the country.
The Harvard paper on America's relationship with Israel can be found at: http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
Another excellent commentary was made by former President Jimmy Carter this month; it can be found at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0309-32.htm
Senior Editor John Sugg can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com. His blog is at www.johnsugg.com.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2006.