"Tôi Đến Mỹ Tìm Tự Do, 40 năm Sau Tôi Phải Bỏ Nước Mỹ Để Có Tự Do"
Đó là câu nói phản ảnh một sự thật mỉa mai tưởng là nghịch lý của nước Mỹ "tự do dân quyền pháp trị", của nền công lý Mỹ (sic)
nói riêng, và nó phản ảnh bản chất quyền lực bạo ngược và băng hoại của định chế nhà nước chính trị nói chung.Sự thật hiển nhiên này không phải ai cũng có thể thấy được hay nhìn nhận nó. Căn bệnh ám tín tự kỷ (cognitive dissonance), một căn bệnh hoại tâm khi đã huân tập một tín lý, tất cả bằng chứng cụ thể đều bị biến dạng hoặc không hiện hữu trong não trạng của tín đồ.
Nạn Nhân: Sami Amin Al-Arian (Arabic: سامي أمين العريان) sinh ngày 14-01-1958, là một người Mỹ gốc Palestine, di dân đến Mỹ năm 1975 trong niềm tin một xã hội nhà nước tận thiện với nền dân chủ gián tiếp tự do công lý. Ông làm việc và ăn học tại Mỹ với bằng tiến sĩ khoa học điện toán. Trở thành giáo sư thực thụ của đại học Nam Florida. Ông, một tín đồ thuần thành tôn giáo (Hồi) thần quyền và thế quyền (nhà nước) trong niềm tin bảo thủ, đã từng được mời vào dinh Nhà Trắng thời Clinton. Al Arian, giống như bao nhiêu não trạng ngụy ngục, từng hăm hở dấn thân ủng hộ và đi vận động cho W. Bush làm tổng thống với niềm tin Bush sẽ "toàn cầu hóa dân chủ bằng bom đạn". (Tôi còn nhớ có một gã tiến sĩ gốc Việt ở Hà Lan đã gửi thư cám ơn Bush tiến chiếm Iraq!) 
Nhưng tai họa đã phủ đến Al Arian và gia đình ông, chỉ vì những trả lời bày tỏ quan điểm chính trị "dân chủ, công lý" bênh vực quê hương Palestine cũng như thảm cảnh của người dân Palestine trong những lần xuất hiện trên truyền hình, trong những bài viết, trong những buổi thuyết giảng v.v Al Arian bị qui tội "ủng hộ khủng bố, chống Mỹ", và bị truy tố. Ông đã lọt vào tầm đạn của quyền lực Do Thái, một quyền lực "ẩn tàng" sau lưng nhà nước Mỹ.Tháng 2- năm 2003, Al Arian bị truy tố với 17 tội danh! Nhưng Đại Bồi Thẩm Đoàn sau nhiều lần xét xử đã phải loại bỏ 8 tội danh, và 9 tội danh còn lại vẫn không đủ chứng cớ buộc tội. Nhưng liên tục hơn 10 năm trời bị giam bắt và tra khảo với những "hư chứng" buộc tội của bộ Công Lý Mỹ khiến bản thân và gia đình của ông điêu đứng- và nhà nước Mỹ tốn hàng chục triệu Mỹ kim cho tiến trình truy tố dai dẳng này, nhưng không kết quả. Cuối cùng ông Al Arian, vì gia đình, buộc phải thỏa hiệp một trao đổi (making deals) với nhà nước Mỹ: Al Arian tự nguyện "đồng ý bị trục xuất" khỏi nước Mỹ (2007).
Dù vậy, dưới áp lực của phe nhóm Do Thái, khi ngày trục xuất gần kề, nhà nước Mỹ lại bày một vụ án khác để tìm cách kết án bỏ tù Al Arian. Ông từ chối ra tòa, vì như vậy là vi phạm "giao ước thỏa hiệp" đã ký kết với bộ công lý liên bang Mỹ. Al Arian tiếp tục bị Nhà nước Mỹ câu lưu điều tra và lục soát một cách vô vọng để hành nhiễu kết án ông.
Sau 12 năm bị sách nhiễu bắt giam qua nhiều trại tù, bộ "Công Lý Mỹ" dù thu thập nghe lén toàn bộ những thông tin cá nhân, các cuộc điện đàm, thư tín, bài viết, sách vở- cũng như những thông tin được tình báo Do Thái cung cấp nhằm kết tội Al Arian v.v Nhưng vẫn không có một "chứng cớ cụ thể " nào khả dĩ buộc tội Al Arian được trước tòa và bồi thẩm đoàn.
Cuối cùng nhà nước Mỹ phải thực hiện "giao kết trao đổi" với Al Arian năm 2007- và trục xuất ông ta đến Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, nơi Al Arian chọn và được chấp nhận, vào tối ngày 11-02-2015.
Ông Al Arian rời nước Mỹ sau 40 năm tìm "tự do dân quyền" để lại 5 người con và cháu đang "tiếp tục tìm tự do dân quyền" tại Mỹ, một loại dân quyền tự do mà Edward Snowden đã buộc phải bỏ đi.
Có rất nhiều bài học trong sự kiện của Al Arian. Ba bài học tương phản nổi bật chúng ta cần ghi nhận:
Thứ nhất là bản chất gian manh, tiểu xảo, bạo ngược của Nhà nước, quyền lực chính trị; thứ hai là quyền lực ẩn tàng sau lưng định chế- định chế chỉ là công cụ của quyền lực; và thứ ba là nhất điểm lương tâm can đảm của Con Người, trong trường hợp này là của một số thành viên trong Đại Bồi Thẩm Đoàn và các tổ chức hội đoàn, nhà báo độc lập. Những thành viên ĐBTĐ này đã chịu rất nhiều áp lực của nhà nước Mỹ và Do Thái trong suốt hơn 10 năm đàn hặc, nhưng cương quyết giữ vững nguyên lý của bằng chứng công khai (Burden of proof): chỉ kết luận khi đủ bằng chứng trước mặt. Thiểu số này đã khiến các thành viên Đại Bồi Thẩm Đoàn khác không thể y lệnh của nhà nước Mỹ áp đặt để có phán quyết tuyệt đối (absolute majority) nhằm kết tội theo dự định. Và các nhà báo độc lập đã liên tục lên tiếng bênh vực Al Arian bằng những phân tích và công bố với công chúng những phi lý bạo ngược của nhà nước Mỹ khiến vụ "vu khống xử án" này không thể ém nhẹm êm xuôi được.
"Lòng cảm tạ sâu xa của chúng tôi đến những bạn bè và những người ủng hộ khắp nước Mỹ, từ các giáo sư đại học cho đến những nhà vận động quần chúng, những cá nhân và các hội đoàn, đã đứng cùng chúng tôi trong cuộc đấu tranh cho Công Lý" (Our deep thanks go to the friends and supporters across the U.S., from university professors to grassroots activists, individuals and organizations, who have stood alongside us in the struggle for justice".)
13-02-2015
NKPTC
Bổ Túc Cập Nhật:
Nhà nước Mỹ đã chính thức HỦY BỎ TẤT CẢ TỘI DANH truy tố Sami Al Arian trước khi Ông bị trục xuất rời khỏi nước Mỹ.
Exclusive Interview: Sami Al-Arian, Professor Who Defeated
Feb 5, 2015 - In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was a professor at the University of South Florida, ... leave the U.S., to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family's suffering. .... and unceremoniously dropped all of their charges against Al-Arian.===
THAM KHẢO NGUỒN DẪN
Diễn Tiến Sự Kiện và Thời Điểm Sự Vụ Sami Al-Arian
Events in the case of Sami Al-Arian
January 1986: The University of South Florida hires Sami Al-Arian as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
October 1988: Al-Arian starts the Islamic Committee for Palestine, ICP, to support Palestinian causes.
1990: He founds the World and Islamic Studies Enterprise, WISE, as an Islamic think tank.
1991: The FBI asks Al-Arian to become an informant. He declines but invites an FBI agent to an ICP conference.
November 1994: A PBS documentary, Jihad in America, alleges that Al-Arian heads the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group's domestic support network, using the two think tanks he started as fronts.
February 1995: The FBI contacts USF police for information on Al-Arian.
October 1995: Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, former USF instructor and WISE administrator, is chosen leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Damascus, Syria.
November 1995: FBI agents search Al-Arian's home and offices.
1996: Unsealed affidavits say authorities have probable cause to believe WISE and ICP are fronts for international terrorists.
May 1996: USF places Al-Arian on paid leave during a federal investigation.
August 1998: Al-Arian returns to teaching.
September 2001: USF's new president, Judy Genshaft, puts Al-Arian on paid leave and says she intends to fire him.
August 2002: Al-Arian's brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar is deported to Lebanon after being held nearly five years on mostly secret evidence that was said to link him to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He later moves to Egypt. ( http://tbtim.es/dte )
Feb. 20, 2003: Al-Arian is indicted and arrested by the federal government on charges that he raised money for terrorist groups. ( http://tbtim.es/dtc )
Feb. 26, 2003: Genshaft fires Al-Arian.
June 2005: Trial begins in Tampa. ( http://tbtim.es/dt2 )
December 2005: Jury acquits Al-Arian on eight counts and deadlocks on nine. ( http://tbtim.es/dt3 )
May 2006: Al-Arian accepts plea deal, ( http://tbtim.es/dt4 ) saying he aided associates of a terrorist group with immigration matters. The judge sentences him to 57 months, most of which he has already served.
October 2006: Al-Arian is subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Virginia but refuses, saying it is a violation of what was negotiated for his plea agreement.
April 2008: He completes his sentence and a year added on because he refused to testify, and goes into an immigration detention facility to await deportation, likely to Egypt.
June 2008: He is charged with criminal contempt for refusing to testify. He could face up to 24 years if convicted.
September 2008: He is released on bail and placed under house arrest in Virginia. ( http://tbtim.es/dt5 )
March 2009: U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema questions the government's tactics and wondered whether Virginia prosecutors were violating the spirit, if not the letter, of Al-Arian's plea deal in Tampa. ( http://tbtim.es/dt7 )
June 27, 2014: Federal prosecutors file motion to drop criminal contempt charges (and ALL charges-nkptc) against Al-Arian, clearing the way for his deportation. ( http://tbtim.es/dt6 )
Feb. 4, 2015: Al-Arian leaves the United States for Turkey.
Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian: Deported, Free at Last
In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was a professor at the University of South Florida, a legal resident of the U.S. since 1975, and one of the most prominent Palestinian civil rights activists in the U.S. That year, the course of his life was altered irrevocably when he was indicted on highly controversial terrorism charges by then Attorney General John Ashcroft. These charges commenced a decade-long campaign of government persecution in which Al-Arian was systematically denied his freedom and saw his personal and professional life effectively destroyed.
Despite the personal harm he suffered and the intense surveillance to which he had been subjected since as early as 1993, the government ultimately failed to produce any evidence of Al-Arian’s involvement in terrorist activities, instead relying at trial overwhelmingly on the pro-Palestinian writing and speaking he had done over the years.
His ordeal finally ended last night, 12 years after it began, as Al-Arian was deported yesterday at midnight (EST) from the United States to Turkey. His deportation was part of a 2006 plea bargain to which he acquiesced in order, he told The Intercept last night while at the airport preparing to leave the U.S., to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering.” Al-Arian added: “I came to the United States for freedom, but four decades later, I am leaving to gain my freedom.”
A 2003 Justice Department investigation led by Ashcroft allegedly implicated Al-Arian and 8 other men in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group which had been designated a terrorist organization under the Clinton administration for carrying out bombings and other attacks in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. Ironically, Al-Arian had been a prominent supporter of Clinton, and even met Clinton in the White House. He once remarked to The Intercept that the multiple occasions when he stood in very close proximity to the U.S. President should, by itself, demonstrate how ludicrous were the “terrorist” allegations. In 2000, he supported the Bush campaign (after Bush denounced racial profiling).
Al-Arian, while a Professor at the University of South Florida, was indicted on multiple counts of providing “material support” to the group and fundraising on their behalf in the United States. In the press conference announcing the indictment, Ashcroft claimed that Al-Arian and his co-defendants “financed, extolled and assisted acts of terror,” and praised the recently passed Patriot Act as being instrumental to helping bring about the charges.
The charges were part of a broader post-9/11 campaign to by the U.S. Government to criminalize aid and support to Palestinians, as exemplified by the successful prosecution of five officials of what had been the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., the Holy Land Foundation. Those charity officials are now serving decades in prison for sending money to Palestinians which, it was alleged, made its way to designated terror groups in the Occupied Territories.
For most of the three years after his arrest, Al-Arian was kept in solitary confinement awaiting trial. During this time, he was regularly subjected to strip-searches, denied normal visitation rights with his family, and allegedly abused by prison staff. Amnesty International denounced the circumstances of his detention as “gratuitously punitive” and in violation of international standards on the treatment of prisoners.
When Al-Arian’s case did finally reach trial after years of harsh imprisonment, prosecutors failed to convict Al-Arian on even one charge brought against him. Jurors voted to acquit him on the most serious counts he faced and deadlocked on the remainder of the indictments.
The outcome was hugely embarrassing for the U.S. Government. Despite having amassed over 20,000 hours of phone conversations and hundreds of fax messages from over a decade of surveilling Al-Arian, the DOJ – even with all the advantages they enjoyed in terrorism cases in 2003 (and continue to enjoy today) – was unable to convince a jury Al-Arian was the arch-terrorist they had very publicly proclaimed him to be.
Indeed, instead of producing evidence that Al-Arian was involved in actual “terrorism,” the government attempted to use as evidence copies of books and magazines Al-Arian had owned in a failed effort to convince the jury to convict him of apparent thought crimes.
This effort failed and a jury ruled to acquit Al-Arian on 8 out of 17 charges while failing to come to a verdict on the remainder.
Al-Arian agreed to a plea bargain on the remaining charges by pleading guilty to one count of providing “contributions, goods or services” to PIJ, a decision he says he undertook out of a desire to end the government’s ongoing persecution of him and win his release from prison.
Despite this plea, Al-Arian was not released from prison.
Instead, in 2007, shortly before he expected to leave jail and begin likely deportation proceedings, the government brought a new set of charges against him for refusing to testify in another trial against a Virginia-based Islamic think tank. Among several reasons he provided for refusing to testify against the group, he stated his belief that the organization was innocent of terrorism charges and, according to his lawyer, Jonathan Turley, “he doesn’t want them to be persecuted the way he was.” His lawyers also worried that any testimony he gave in that other case would allow the DOJ to bring wholly new charges against him for perjury.
For his refusal to testify, Al-Arian was sentenced to an additional 18 months in prison on civil contempt charges, the maximum allowed by law. Al-Arian served this added time only to be charged at the end of his sentence once again with additional criminal contempt charges stemming from the same case.
In Al-Arian’s description, these charges were in contravention of the plea deal he had previously agreed to with the government. As he told The Intercept, “They reneged on their end of the deal when they brought me to Virginia to try to force me to testify in another, unrelated case. It was a perjury trap. I refused to testify, so they charged me with criminal contempt.”
During the course of his imprisonment Al-Arian undertook a hunger strike to protest his ongoing persecution, losing 53 pounds in the process and being reduced to a state in which he was no longer able to walk or speak in a normal cadence. In court appearances, observers were shocked by his physical appearance, with representatives from the U.S. Marshals Service publicly vowing to subject him to force-feeding if his hunger strike if his condition continued to visibly deteriorate.
After his indictment for criminal contempt, a federal judge eventually ordered that Al-Arian to spend the duration of the court proceedings under house arrest. But the judge then proceeded to hold, rather than rule on, his motion to dismiss the indictment, freezing the case in place for years as he was consigned to house arrest. There he languished, confined to his small family apartment as his court case took years to work its way through the system.
In 2014, the federal government quietly and unceremoniously dropped all of their charges against Al-Arian. After 11 years of persecution which left his once-promising career in academia and public advocacy in shambles, Al-Arian was “free” to be deported from the country where he had spent 40 years of his life and raised his family. As a stateless Palestinian, he was forced to find another country where he could go, and ultimately was able to leave for Turkey, where he was expected to arrive today.
Speaking to The Intercept, Al-Arian said that he harbored no resentment despite his ordeal and that he now feels “at peace” with the conclusion of his legal ordeal.
Describing his visceral, firsthand experience of America’s eroding democratic values Al-Arian said, “I came to the United States because I valued living as a free person, one who is able to advocate in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been turning into a less free society, a police and surveillance state, especially after 9/11.”
“However, I’m very encouraged by the millions of Americans who are pushing back against the forces of intolerance and exclusionary politics. I leave hopeful that the tide is turning because as history has seen, when the truth is made known to them, Americans do not support oppression and discrimination.”
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(updated below)
South Florida University Professor Sami Al-Arian was one of thousands of US political prisoners. Outrageously treated.
Hounded for years for his faith, ethnicity, political activism and support for Palestinian rights. On February 20, 2003, he was arrested and imprisoned.
Falsely accused of backing organizations fronting for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A 1997 wrongfully designated State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization at the behest of Israel.
Despite his academic excellence, numerous awards, impeccable credentials and tenured status, South Florida University president Judy Genshaft fired him. Succumbing to Israeli Lobby pressure.
His trial was a travesty of justice. Lasting six months. Costing about $50 million. Involving dozens of prosecution witnesses.
Including Israeli intelligence agents and victims of Palestinian violence unrelated to his case.
Despite enormous resources and efforts to convict, Al-Arian was exonerated of eight terrorism charges. Jurors deadlocked largely in his favor on nine others.
All charges were fabricated. Prosecutors intended to retry him. Instead, plea bargain terms were struck.
Stipulating Al-Arian neither engaged in or had knowledge of any violent acts. Wouldn’t have to cooperate further with prosecutors.
Would be released on time served. Then voluntarily deported to his country of choice.
In the meantime, he remained in custody pending sentencing and deportation. Expected an end to his ordeal. Pressure on the presiding judge changed things.
Al-Arian was wrongfully sentenced to 57 months imprisonment. Got credit for time served. Was held for another 11 months.
Then extended an additional 18 months. Finally freed. Remained under house arrest after enduring a horrendous ordeal in over a dozen federal prisons.
Including harsh solitary confinement. Multiple hunger strikes for justice. One lasting 60 days endangering his life.
Jonathan Turley was his most recent lead criminal defense attorney until all charges against him were dropped.
He said his case “raised troubling due process, academic freedom and free speech issues.” His career ruined for supporting what he believed right. He committed no crimes.
Turley said he left behind five children and grandchildren. Throughout his ordeal, his family was “a rock of support.”
He endured “incredibly trying years. Turley met with him before his deportation. It’s unclear if he’ll resume teaching in Turkey, he said.
He’ll likely continue writing and lecturing. “Despite being subjected to extremely cruel treatment and conditions, he is not bitter and remains committed to the principles of freedom that first drew him to the United States,” said Turley.
“Indeed, his family is an American success story with five children who have secured advanced degrees from leading universities and will remain in the United States in teaching, journalism and other fields.”
His case remains “a chilling chapter in” US history. A “shocking abuse” of power.
“(A) flagrant violation of (plea bargain terms) reached with the Justice Department.”
Classic police state injustice. Al-Arian outrageously mistreated for 12 nightmarish years.
Before leaving for Turkey, he issued the following statement. Dated February 4, 2015, saying:
Thousands like him remain incarcerated for being Muslims in the wrong countries at the wrong time. Victims of America’s vicious worldwide war OF terror.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
==
The latest ISIS atrocity – releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive – prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable – and deliberately achieved – in all sorts of other ways:
“Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan”, NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School, 2012:
One could plausibly maintain that there is a different moral calculus involved in (a) burning a helpless captive to death as opposed to (b) recklessly or even deliberately burning civilians to death in areas that one is bombing with weapons purposely designed to incinerate human beings, often with the maximum possible pain. That’s the moral principle that makes torture specially heinous: sadistically inflicting pain and suffering on a helpless detainee is a unique form of barbarity.
But there is nonetheless something quite obfuscating about this beloved ritual of denouncing the unique barbarism of ISIS. It is true that ISIS seems to have embraced a goal – a strategy – of being incomparably savage, inhumane and morally repugnant. That the group is indescribably nihilistic and morally grotesque is beyond debate.
That’s exactly what makes the intensity of these repeated denunciation rituals somewhat confounding. Everyone decent, by definition, fully understands that ISIS is repellent and savage. While it’s understandable that being forced to watch the savagery on video prompts strong emotions (although, again, hiding savagery does not in fact make it less savage), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the ritualistic expressed revulsion has a definitive utility.
The constant orgy of condemnation aimed at this group seems to have little purpose other than tribal self-affirmation: no matter how many awful acts our government engages in, at least we don’t do something like that, at least we’re not as bad as them. In some instances, that may be true, but even when it is, the differences are usually much more a matter of degree than category (much the way that angry denunciations over the Taliban for suicide-bombing a funeral of one of its victims hides the fact that the U.S. engages in its own “double tap” practice of bombing rescuers and funeral mourners for its drone victims). To the extent that these denunciation rituals make us forget or further obscure our own governments’ brutality – and that seems to be the overriding effect if not the purpose of these rituals – they are worse than worthless; they are actively harmful.
Photo: Horst Faas/AP
UPDATE: One tweeter, responding to this article, made a point harshly though succinctly:
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(updated below)
Will the Persecution of Political Prisoner Sami Al-Arian Finally Come to an End?
March 30, 2009
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to issue a ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia at the end of April in a case that will send a signal to the Muslim world and beyond whether the American judicial system has regained its independence after eight years of flagrant manipulation and intimidation by the Bush administration. Brinkema will decide whether the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, held for over six years in prison and under house arrest in Virginia since Sept 2, is guilty or innocent of two counts of criminal contempt.
Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A documentary film was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the former university professor have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.
Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian -- which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera -- are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.
A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian -- including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad” -- the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.
The trial result was a public relations disaster for the Bush White House and especially then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had personally announced the indictment and reportedly spent more than $50 million on the case. The government prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor accepted a plea bargain that would spare him a second trial, agreeing that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a very minor charge given the high profile of the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of 46 months. But U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who made a series of comments during the trial that seemed to condemn all Muslims, sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum 57 months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention, for example, that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge told the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”
I spent an afternoon with Dr. Al-Arian in his small apartment in Arlington, Va., on Friday. His lawyers have asked that he make no public statements about his case. But we talked widely about the Middle East, the new Israeli government, the siege of Gaza, our families and the changes he hopes will come with an Obama administration. He sat on a couch wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, thankful to be with his wife and children after being shuttled between jails across the South and kept for 45 months in solitary confinement during his five-and-a-half-year ordeal. But he remains perplexed, as are many, by the gross miscarriage of justice and the ferocity of the government’s campaign to smear him with terrorism charges.
The government originally sought a standard cooperation provision as part of the final plea agreement. Al-Arian objected. He refused to plead guilty if he had to cooperate with the Justice Department. The Justice Department -- including lawyers from the counterterrorism section of Main Justice -- then negotiated to take out the cooperation provision in return for a longer sentence on the one count. That was the deal. He was to have been held in jail until April 2007 and then deported. But that never happened.
Right-wing ideologues, led by Assistant United States Attorney Gordon Kromberg, had no intention of letting him leave the country. Kromberg, a staunch supporter of Israel, arranged to keep Dr. Al-Arian behind bars even after he had finished serving his sentence. He blocked the deportation and subpoenaed Al-Arian to appear in Virginia to testify in an unrelated investigation of a Muslim think tank. This subpoena was a clear violation of the original plea bargain, and Al-Arian, heeding the advice of his lawyers, refused to give in to Kromberg’s demands. This led Kromberg to set in motion the newest charges of criminal contempt. Criminal contempt, bolstered by something called terrorism enhancement under Patriot Act II, is the only charge in U.S. statutes that does not carry a maximum penalty. The enhanced criminal contempt charge increases Al-Arian’s sentence from the usual 14 to 21 months for criminal contempt to a staggering 17 to 24 years for obstructing a state terrorism investigation. A handful of members of the House, including Jim Moran and Dennis Kucinich, have denounced Kromberg’s newest attempt to orchestrate a judicial lynching.
Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has also repeatedly made derogatory and insulting comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian’s lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia, for example, because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, they were told “if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.” Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: “I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”
Judge Brinkema, in one of the rare examples of judicial courage during this saga, defied the government to allow Al-Arian out on bail.
The case against Al-Arian, in the eyes of the grand inquisitors like Kromberg, is a battle against a culture and a religion that they openly denigrate and despise. This racism, the driving engine behind the campaign against Al-Arian, mocks the integrity of the American judicial system. Let us hope that in a few weeks we will witness a new era. Justice delayed is better than justice denied. We owe Dr. Al-Arian, and ourselves, a return to the rule of law.
Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A documentary film was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the former university professor have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.
Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian -- which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera -- are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.
A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian -- including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad” -- the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.
The trial result was a public relations disaster for the Bush White House and especially then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had personally announced the indictment and reportedly spent more than $50 million on the case. The government prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor accepted a plea bargain that would spare him a second trial, agreeing that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a very minor charge given the high profile of the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of 46 months. But U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who made a series of comments during the trial that seemed to condemn all Muslims, sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum 57 months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention, for example, that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge told the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”
I spent an afternoon with Dr. Al-Arian in his small apartment in Arlington, Va., on Friday. His lawyers have asked that he make no public statements about his case. But we talked widely about the Middle East, the new Israeli government, the siege of Gaza, our families and the changes he hopes will come with an Obama administration. He sat on a couch wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, thankful to be with his wife and children after being shuttled between jails across the South and kept for 45 months in solitary confinement during his five-and-a-half-year ordeal. But he remains perplexed, as are many, by the gross miscarriage of justice and the ferocity of the government’s campaign to smear him with terrorism charges.
The government originally sought a standard cooperation provision as part of the final plea agreement. Al-Arian objected. He refused to plead guilty if he had to cooperate with the Justice Department. The Justice Department -- including lawyers from the counterterrorism section of Main Justice -- then negotiated to take out the cooperation provision in return for a longer sentence on the one count. That was the deal. He was to have been held in jail until April 2007 and then deported. But that never happened.
Right-wing ideologues, led by Assistant United States Attorney Gordon Kromberg, had no intention of letting him leave the country. Kromberg, a staunch supporter of Israel, arranged to keep Dr. Al-Arian behind bars even after he had finished serving his sentence. He blocked the deportation and subpoenaed Al-Arian to appear in Virginia to testify in an unrelated investigation of a Muslim think tank. This subpoena was a clear violation of the original plea bargain, and Al-Arian, heeding the advice of his lawyers, refused to give in to Kromberg’s demands. This led Kromberg to set in motion the newest charges of criminal contempt. Criminal contempt, bolstered by something called terrorism enhancement under Patriot Act II, is the only charge in U.S. statutes that does not carry a maximum penalty. The enhanced criminal contempt charge increases Al-Arian’s sentence from the usual 14 to 21 months for criminal contempt to a staggering 17 to 24 years for obstructing a state terrorism investigation. A handful of members of the House, including Jim Moran and Dennis Kucinich, have denounced Kromberg’s newest attempt to orchestrate a judicial lynching.
Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has also repeatedly made derogatory and insulting comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian’s lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia, for example, because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, they were told “if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.” Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: “I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”
Judge Brinkema, in one of the rare examples of judicial courage during this saga, defied the government to allow Al-Arian out on bail.
The case against Al-Arian, in the eyes of the grand inquisitors like Kromberg, is a battle against a culture and a religion that they openly denigrate and despise. This racism, the driving engine behind the campaign against Al-Arian, mocks the integrity of the American judicial system. Let us hope that in a few weeks we will witness a new era. Justice delayed is better than justice denied. We owe Dr. Al-Arian, and ourselves, a return to the rule of law.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians.
Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian: Deported, Free at Last
South Florida University Professor Sami Al-Arian was one of thousands of US political prisoners. Outrageously treated.
Hounded for years for his faith, ethnicity, political activism and support for Palestinian rights. On February 20, 2003, he was arrested and imprisoned.
Falsely accused of backing organizations fronting for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A 1997 wrongfully designated State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization at the behest of Israel.
Despite his academic excellence, numerous awards, impeccable credentials and tenured status, South Florida University president Judy Genshaft fired him. Succumbing to Israeli Lobby pressure.
His trial was a travesty of justice. Lasting six months. Costing about $50 million. Involving dozens of prosecution witnesses.
Including Israeli intelligence agents and victims of Palestinian violence unrelated to his case.
Despite enormous resources and efforts to convict, Al-Arian was exonerated of eight terrorism charges. Jurors deadlocked largely in his favor on nine others.
All charges were fabricated. Prosecutors intended to retry him. Instead, plea bargain terms were struck.
Stipulating Al-Arian neither engaged in or had knowledge of any violent acts. Wouldn’t have to cooperate further with prosecutors.
Would be released on time served. Then voluntarily deported to his country of choice.
In the meantime, he remained in custody pending sentencing and deportation. Expected an end to his ordeal. Pressure on the presiding judge changed things.
Al-Arian was wrongfully sentenced to 57 months imprisonment. Got credit for time served. Was held for another 11 months.
Then extended an additional 18 months. Finally freed. Remained under house arrest after enduring a horrendous ordeal in over a dozen federal prisons.
Including harsh solitary confinement. Multiple hunger strikes for justice. One lasting 60 days endangering his life.
The late Howard Zinn called his treatment “an outrageous violation of human rights, both from a constitutional point of view and as a simple test of justice.”Months after full exoneration on all charges, Al-Arian was deported to Turkey on February 5. His 12-year-long ordeal finally ended.
His appeals attorney, former National Lawyers Guild President Peter Erlinder, said his prosecution “was a blatant attempt to silence political speech and dissent in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy.”
“The nature of the political persecution of this case has been demonstrated throughout all its aspects, not only during the trial and the never-ending right-wing media onslaught, but also after the stunning defeat of the government in 2005, and its ill-advised abuse of the grand jury system thereafter.”
Jonathan Turley was his most recent lead criminal defense attorney until all charges against him were dropped.
He said his case “raised troubling due process, academic freedom and free speech issues.” His career ruined for supporting what he believed right. He committed no crimes.
Turley said he left behind five children and grandchildren. Throughout his ordeal, his family was “a rock of support.”
He endured “incredibly trying years. Turley met with him before his deportation. It’s unclear if he’ll resume teaching in Turkey, he said.
He’ll likely continue writing and lecturing. “Despite being subjected to extremely cruel treatment and conditions, he is not bitter and remains committed to the principles of freedom that first drew him to the United States,” said Turley.
“Indeed, his family is an American success story with five children who have secured advanced degrees from leading universities and will remain in the United States in teaching, journalism and other fields.”
His case remains “a chilling chapter in” US history. A “shocking abuse” of power.
“(A) flagrant violation of (plea bargain terms) reached with the Justice Department.”
Classic police state injustice. Al-Arian outrageously mistreated for 12 nightmarish years.
Before leaving for Turkey, he issued the following statement. Dated February 4, 2015, saying:
“To my dear friends and supporters,”Al-Arian’s mistreatment is one of many examples of post-9/11 US police state injustice.
“After 40 years, my time in the US has come to an end. Like many immigrants of my generation, I came to the US in 1975 to seek a higher education and greater opportunities.”
“But I also wanted to live in a free society where freedom of speech, association and religion are not only tolerated but guaranteed and protected under the law.”
“That’s why I decided to stay and raise my family here, after earning my doctorate in 1986. Simply put, to me, freedom of speech and thought represented the cornerstone of a dignified life.”
“Today, freedom of expression has become a defining feature in the struggle to realize our humanity and liberty.”
“The forces of intolerance, hegemony, and exclusionary politics tend to favor the stifling of free speech and the suppression of dissent.”
“But nothing is more dangerous than when such suppression is perpetrated and sanctioned by government.”
“As one early American once observed, ‘When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.’ ”
“Because government has enormous power and authority over its people, such control must be checked, and people, especially those advocating unpopular opinions, must have absolute protections from governmental overreach and abuse of power.”
“A case in point of course is the issue of Palestinian self-determination.”
“In the United States, as well as in many other western countries, those who support the Palestinian struggle for justice, and criticize Israel’s occupation and brutal policies, have often experienced an assault on their freedom of speech in academia, media, politics and society at large.”
“After the tragic events of September 11th, such actions by the government intensified, in the name of security. Far too many people have been targeted and punished because of their unpopular opinions or beliefs.”
“During their opening statement in my trial in June 2005, my lawyers showed the jury two poster-sized photographs of items that government agents took during searches of my home many years earlier.”
“In one photo, there were several stacks of books taken from my home library. The other photo showed a small gun I owned at the time.”
“The attorney looked the jury in the eyes and said: ‘This is what this case is about. When the government raided my client’s house, this is what they seized,’ he said, pointing to the books, ‘and this is what they left,’ he added, pointing to the gun in the other picture.”
” ‘This case is not about terrorism but about my client’s right to freedom of speech,’ he continued.”
“Indeed, much of the evidence the government presented to the jury during the six-month trial were speeches I delivered, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I gave, news I heard, and websites I never even accessed.”
“But the most disturbing part of the trial was not that the government offered my speeches, opinions, books, writings, and dreams into evidence, but that an intimidated judicial system allowed them to be admitted into evidence.”
“That’s why we applauded the jury’s verdict. Our jurors represented the best society had to offer.”
“Despite all of the fear-mongering and scare tactics used by the authorities, the jury acted as free people, people of conscience, able to see through Big Brother’s tactics.”
“One hard lesson that must be learned from the trial is that political cases should have no place in a free and democratic society.”
“But despite the long and arduous ordeal and hardships suffered by my family, I leave with no bitterness or resentment in my heart whatsoever.”
“In fact, I’m very grateful for the opportunities and experiences afforded to me and my family in this country, and for the friendships we’ve cultivated over the decades. These are lifelong connections that could never be affected by distance.”
“I would like to thank God for all the blessings in my life. My faith sustained me during my many months in solitary confinement and gave me comfort that justice would ultimately prevail.”
“Our deep thanks go to the friends and supporters across the US, from university professors to grassroots activists, individuals and organizations, who have stood alongside us in the struggle for justice.”
“My trial attorneys, Linda Moreno and the late Bill Moffitt, were the best advocates anyone could ask for, both inside and outside of the courtroom. Their spirit, intelligence, passion and principle were inspirational to so many.”
“I am also grateful to Jonathan Turley and his legal team, whose tireless efforts saw the case to its conclusion. Jonathan’s commitment to justice and brilliant legal representation resulted in the government finally dropping the case.”
“Our gratitude also goes to my immigration lawyers, Ira Kurzban and John Pratt, for the tremendous work they did in smoothing the way for this next phase of our lives.”
“Thanks also to my children for their patience, perseverance and support during the challenges of the last decade. I am so proud of them.”
Finally, my wife Nahla has been a pillar of love, strength and resilience. She kept our family together during the most difficult times.”
“There are no words to convey the extent of my gratitude.
We look forward to the journey ahead and take with us the countless happy memories we formed during our life in the United States.”
Thousands like him remain incarcerated for being Muslims in the wrong countries at the wrong time. Victims of America’s vicious worldwide war OF terror.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
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The latest ISIS atrocity – releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive – prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable – and deliberately achieved – in all sorts of other ways:
“Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan”, NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School, 2012:
The most immediate consequence of drone strikes is, of course, death and injury to those targeted or near a strike. The missiles fired from drones kill or injure in several ways, including through incineration[3], shrapnel, and the release of powerful blast waves capable of crushing internal organs. Those who do survive drone strikes often suffer disfiguring burns and shrapnel wounds, limb amputations, as well as vision and hearing loss. . . .Mirza Shahzad Akbar, The New York Times, May 22, 2013:
In addition, because the Hellfire missiles fired from drones often incinerate the victims’ bodies, and leave them in pieces and unidentifiable, traditional burial processes are rendered impossible. As Firoz Ali Khan, a shopkeeper whose father-in-law’s home was struck, graphically described, “These missiles are very powerful. They destroy human beings . . .There is nobody left and small pieces left behind. Pieces. Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth.” A doctor who has treated drone victims described how “[s]kin is burned so that you can’t tell cattle from human.” When another interviewee came upon the site of the strike that killed his father, “[t]he entire place looked as if it was burned completely, so much so that even [the victims’] own clothes had burnt. All the stones in the vicinity had become black.” Ahmed Jan, who lost his foot in the March 17 jirga strike, discussed the challenges rescuers face in identifying bodies: “People were trying to find the body parts. We find the body parts of some people, but sometimes we do not find anything.”
One father explained that key parts of his son’s burial process had to be skipped over as a result of the severe damage to his body. “[A]fter that attack, the villagers came and took the bodies to the hospital. We didn’t see the bodies. They were in coffins, boxes. The bodies were in pieces and burnt.” Idris Farid, who was injured and lost several of his relatives in the March 17 jirga strike, described how, after that strike, relatives “had to collect their body pieces and bones and then bury them like that.” The difficulty of identifying individual corpses also makes it difficult to separate individuals into different graves. Masood Afwan, who lost several relatives in the March 17 jirga strike, described how the dead from that strike were buried: “They held a funeral for everybody, in the same location, one by one. Their bodies were scattered into tiny pieces. They…couldn’t be identified” . . . .
[3] See, e.g., Yancy Y Phillips & Joan T. Zajchuk, The Management of Primary Blast Injury, in Conventional Warfare: Ballistic, Blast and Burn Injuries 297 (1991) (“The thermal pulse from a detonation may burn exposed skin, or secondary fires may be started by the detonation and more serious burns may be suffered.”); AGM-114N Metal Augmented Charge (MAC) Thermobaric Hellfire, GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-114n.htm (last visited Aug. 17, 2012) (“The new [AGM-114N Thermobaric Hellfire] warhead contains a fluorinated aluminum powder layered between the warhead casing and the PBXN-112 explosive fill. When the PBXN-112 detonates, the aluminum mixture is dispersed and rapidly burns. The resultant sustained high pressure is extremely effective against enemy personnel and structures.”); Explosions and Blast Injuries: A Primer for Clinicians, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.bt.cdc.gov/masscasualties/explosions.asp (last visited on Sept. 17, 2012) (outlining one of the types of blast injuries as “burns (flash, partial, and full thickness”)).
Instead, a few days after [Obama’s] inaugural address, a CIA-operated drone dropped Hellfire missiles on Fahim Qureishi’s home in North Waziristan, killing seven of his family members and severely injuring Fahim. He was just 13 years old and left with only one eye, and shrapnel in his stomach. . . .Al Jazeera, “Yemenis seek justice in wedding drone strike,” May 21, 2014:
Mr. Obama is scheduled to deliver a major speech on drones at the National Defense University today. He is likely to tell his fellow Americans that drones are precise and effective at killing militants.
But his words will be little consolation for 8-year-old Nabila, who, on Oct. 24, had just returned from school and was playing in a field outside her house with her siblings and cousins while her grandmother picked flowers. At 2:30 p.m., a Hellfire missile came out of the sky and struck right in front of Nabila. Her grandmother was badly burned and succumbed to her injuries; Nabila survived with severe burns and shrapnel wounds in her shoulder.
Mousid al-Taysi was travelling in a wedding convoy celebrating a cousin’s marriage when a missile slammed down from the sky. All he remembers are bright red-and-orange colours, then the grisly sight of a dozen burned bodies and the cries of others wounded around him.CNN, December 23, 2011:
Mousid survived the December 12 attack in Yemen’s central al-Baydah province, apparently launched by an American drone, but his physical and psychological recovery process is just beginning. If confirmed, it would be the deadliest drone attack in the country in more than a year. . . .
After talking with victims and family members in the area, it was clear a majority of civilians were among the carnage of the targeted wedding convoy. . . .
Civilians living under drones said they live in constant fear of being hit again. “Many people in our village have expressed terror at the thought of another strike,” Sulaimani said. “When the kids hear a plane they no longer climb the trees searching for where that noise came from. They each immediately run to their houses.”
She has eyelashes but no eyebrows. She has all her fingers but is missing four nails. Her skin is so taut now that she can no longer frown.The Independent, “The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions,” November 15, 2005:
But she can still smile.
Her face tells a story of suffering. Her name, Shakira, tells a story of a new journey. . .
Last week, 4-year-old Shakira arrived in the United States for what her caretaker, Hashmat Effendi, hopes will be the start of the rest of her life.
Shakira, discovered with severe burns in Pakistan, will undergo reconstructive surgery in January. . . . All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack, though U.S. officials say that drones have never struck targets in Swat.
Ever since last November, when US forces battled to clear Fallujah of insurgents, there have been repeated claims that troops used “unusual” weapons in the assault that all but flattened the Iraqi city. Specifically, controversy has focussed on white phosphorus shells (WP) – an incendiary weapon usually used to obscure troop movements but which can equally be deployed as an offensive weapon against an enemy. The use of such incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by international treaty. . . .Lindsay Murdoch, The Age (Australia), March 19, 2013:
The debate was reignited last week when an Italian documentary claimed Iraqi civilians – including women and children – had been killed by terrible burns caused by WP. The documentary, Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, by the state broadcaster RAI, cited one Fallujah human-rights campaigner who reported how residents told how “a rain of fire fell on the city”. . . . The claims contained in the RAI documentary have met with a strident official response from the US . . . .
While military experts have supported some of these criticisms, an examination by The Independent of the available evidence suggests the following: that WP shells were fired at insurgents, that reports from the battleground suggest troops firing these WP shells did not always know who they were hitting and that there remain widespread reports of civilians suffering extensive burn injuries. While US commanders insist they always strive to avoid civilian casualties, the story of the battle of Fallujah highlights the intrinsic difficulty of such an endeavour.
It is also clear that elements within the US government have been putting out incorrect information about the battle of Fallujah, making it harder to assesses the truth. Some within the US government have previously issued disingenuous statements about the use in Iraq of another controversial incendiary weapon – napalm. . . .
Another report, published in the Washington Post, gave an idea of the sorts of injuries that WP causes. It said insurgents “reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns”. A physician at a local hospital said the corpses of insurgents “were burned, and some corpses were melted”. . . .
Yet there are other, independent reports of civilians from Fallujah suffering burn injuries. For instance, Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter who collected the testimony of refugees from the city spoke to a doctor who had remained in the city to help people, encountered numerous reports of civilians suffering unusual burns.
One resident told him the US used “weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud” and that he watched “pieces of these bombs explode into large fires that continued to burn on the skin even after people dumped water on the burns.” The doctor said he “treated people who had their skin melted.”
Jeff Englehart, a former marine who spent two days in Fallujah during the battle, said he heard the order go out over military communication that WP was to be dropped. In the RAI film, Mr Englehart, now an outspoken critic of the war, says: “I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it’s known as Willy Pete … Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone … I saw the burned bodies of women and children” . . . .
Napalm was used in several instances during the initial invasion. Colonel Randolph Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11, remarked during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003: “The generals love napalm – it has a big psychological effect.”
I was not aware the Pentagon had called me a liar. . . .Haaretz, October 22, 2006 (“Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon”):
An editor in Sydney took the call from the Pentagon’s Lieutenant-Commander Jeff Davies a day after the beginning of the ground war in Iraq 10 years ago today. My report for Fairfax Media of the opening of hostilities, which referred to the use of Vietnam-era napalm, was ”patently false”, he said. . . .
It was not until US Marine Corps fighter pilots and commanders started returning from the war zone later in 2003 that the Pentagon’s deceit was exposed in interviews conducted by the San Diego Union Tribune.
The pilots described how they had dropped massive fireballs they called napalm on Iraqi forces as marines battled towards Baghdad.
On August 4, 2003, a Pentagon spokesman admitted that ”Mark 77” incendiary devices were used by the US forces, which he acknowledged were ”remarkably similar” to napalm weapons.
The Mark 77s used a fuel-gel mixture that was similar to napalm, he conceded.
Asked about Safwan Hill, US Marine colonel Mike Daily said: ”I can confirm that Mark 77 firebombs were used in that general area.”
Incendiary bombs were also dropped in April 2003 near bridges over the Saddam Canal and Tigris River, returning officers revealed.
”We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches,” said Colonel Randolph Alles who commanded Marine Air Group 11 during the war.
”There were Iraqi soldiers there. It’s not a great way to die.”
Colonel Alles added that napalm had a ”big psychological effect” on an enemy. ”The generals love napalm,” he said.
Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory. . . .Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009 (“Israel: White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes”):
During the war several foreign media outlets reported that Lebanese civilians carried injuries characteristic of attacks with phosphorus, a substance that burns when it comes to contact with air. In one CNN report, a casualty with serious burns was seen lying in a South Lebanon hospital.
In another case, Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal hospital in Ba’albek, said that he had received three corpses “entirely shriveled with black-green skin,” a phenomenon characteristic of phosphorus injuries.
Lebanon’s President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.
Israel’s repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.Boston Globe, February 14, 2013 (“Girl in famous Vietnam photo talks about forgiveness”):
The 71-page report, “Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,” provides witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza. . . .
“In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died” . . . .
Israel at first denied it was using white phosphorus in Gaza but, facing mounting evidence to the contrary, said that it was using all weapons in compliance with international law. Later it announced an internal investigation into possible improper white phosphorus use. . . .
The IDF knew that white phosphorus poses life-threatening dangers to civilians, Human Rights Watch said. A medical report prepared during the recent hostilities by the Israeli ministry of health said that white phosphorus “can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed.” Burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of damage to the liver, kidneys, and heart, the ministry report says. Infection is common and the body’s absorption of the chemical can cause serious damage to internal organs, as well as death. . . .
All of the white phosphorus shells that Human Rights Watch found were manufactured in the United States in 1989 by Thiokol Aerospace, which was running the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant at the time. . . . The United States government, which supplied Israel with its white phosphorus munitions, should also conduct an investigation to determine whether Israel used it in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said.
The girl in the photo — naked, crying, burned, running, with other children, away from the smoke — became emblematic of human suffering during the Vietnam War. Kim Phuc was 9 then, a child who would spend the next 14 months in the hospital and the rest of her life in skin blistered from the napalm that hit her body and burned off her clothes. She ran until she no longer could, and then she fainted. . . .Unlike ISIS, the U.S. usually (though not always) tries to suppress (rather than gleefully publish) evidence showing the victims of its violence. Indeed, concealing stories about the victims of American militarism is a critical part of the U.S. government’s strategy for maintaining support for its sustained aggression. That is why, in general, the U.S. media has a policy of systematically excluding and ignoring such victims (although disappearing them this way does not actually render them nonexistent).
Phuc went outside and saw the plane getting closer, and then heard the sound of four bombs hitting the ground. She couldn’t run. She didn’t know until later, but the bombs carried napalm, a gel-like incendiary that clings to its victims as it burns.
“Suddenly I saw the fire everywhere around me,” she remembers. “At that moment, I didn’t see anyone, just the fire. Suddenly, I saw my left arm burning. I used my right hand to try to take it off.”
Her left hand was damaged, too. Her clothes burned off. Later, she would be thankful that her feet weren’t damaged because she could run away, run until she was outside the fire. She saw her brothers, her cousins, and some soldiers running, too. She ran until she couldn’t run any more. . . . Two of her cousins, ages 9 months and 3 years, died in the bombing. Phuc had burns over two-thirds of her body and was not expected to live.
One could plausibly maintain that there is a different moral calculus involved in (a) burning a helpless captive to death as opposed to (b) recklessly or even deliberately burning civilians to death in areas that one is bombing with weapons purposely designed to incinerate human beings, often with the maximum possible pain. That’s the moral principle that makes torture specially heinous: sadistically inflicting pain and suffering on a helpless detainee is a unique form of barbarity.
But there is nonetheless something quite obfuscating about this beloved ritual of denouncing the unique barbarism of ISIS. It is true that ISIS seems to have embraced a goal – a strategy – of being incomparably savage, inhumane and morally repugnant. That the group is indescribably nihilistic and morally grotesque is beyond debate.
That’s exactly what makes the intensity of these repeated denunciation rituals somewhat confounding. Everyone decent, by definition, fully understands that ISIS is repellent and savage. While it’s understandable that being forced to watch the savagery on video prompts strong emotions (although, again, hiding savagery does not in fact make it less savage), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the ritualistic expressed revulsion has a definitive utility.
The constant orgy of condemnation aimed at this group seems to have little purpose other than tribal self-affirmation: no matter how many awful acts our government engages in, at least we don’t do something like that, at least we’re not as bad as them. In some instances, that may be true, but even when it is, the differences are usually much more a matter of degree than category (much the way that angry denunciations over the Taliban for suicide-bombing a funeral of one of its victims hides the fact that the U.S. engages in its own “double tap” practice of bombing rescuers and funeral mourners for its drone victims). To the extent that these denunciation rituals make us forget or further obscure our own governments’ brutality – and that seems to be the overriding effect if not the purpose of these rituals – they are worse than worthless; they are actively harmful.
Photo: Horst Faas/AP
UPDATE: One tweeter, responding to this article, made a point harshly though succinctly:
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