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Knowing
that Al-Arian and his family could not stand the strain of solitary
confinement for another two and a half years while a new case was
prepared, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would retry
him. His attorney urged him to make a plea in order to end the ordeal.
Al-Arian's
plea is innocuous and bears no relationship to the serious charges on
which he was tried. According to Wikipedia, as part of the plea
agreement "the government acknowledged that Al-Arian's activities were
non-violent and that there were no victims to the charge in the plea
agreement."
Under
the plea agreement, Al-Arian's sentence amounted essentially to time
served, but he was double-crossed by Judge Moody, who according to
Alexander Cockburn used "inflamed language about Al-Arian having blood
on his hands" (a charge rejected by the jury) and handed down the
maximum sentence.
The
"terrorist" prosecutors had yet more in store for Al-Arian. In October
2006, federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, reportedly "notorious as an
Islamophobe," demanded, in violation of the plea agreement, that
Al-Arian testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia,
investigating an Islamic research center. According to Wikipedia, "in a
verbal agreement that appears in court transcripts, federal prosecutors
agreed [as part of the plea agreement] that Al-Arian would not have to
testify in Virginia."
Al-Arian's
lawyers saw Kromberg's subpoena of their client as a setup, and
Al-Arian refused to testify. On January 22, 2007, Al-Arian was brought
before a federal judge on contempt charges. He described to the judge
the extraordinary abuse he had suffered at the hands of federal prison
officials. The guards and officers all felt free to abuse Al-Arian,
because they had heard the lie on right-wing talk radio and from
neoconservative media that he was a terrorist who hated Americans. The
hostile judge sentenced Al-Arian to eighteen months more on a civil
contempt charge for refusing to testify about a case that he knew
nothing about.
Kromberg
contrived to put Al-Arian in a situation in which truthful answers in
court under oath could be turned into a perjury charge by offering the
defendants reduced charges in exchange for their testimony that
Al-Arian was involved with them in some alleged activity and lied under
oath. Alternatively, Al-Arian would be cited for civil contempt for
refusal to testify. The ease with which Kromberg violated the plea
agreement and abused the prosecutorial power in full view of federal
judges should give pause to every American.
When
a university professor, who has done nothing but try to correct the
one-sided story Americans are fed about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, can be treated in this way by the U.S. Department of Justice,
civil liberty in the United States is in a precarious condition.
The
ease with which Al-Arian was transformed into a terrorist should be a
lesson to us all. People in charge of Homeland Security are no less
inclined than police and prosecutors to make expansive interpretations
of their mandate and what constitutes terrorism and suspect behavior.
On May 28, 2007, the Associated Press reported that the Alabama
Department of Homeland Security had included among terrorist groups
listed on its Web site environmentalists, antiwar protesters, abortion
opponents, and gay- and animal-rights advocates. It is an ancient
practice of government to hype fear in order to gain arbitrary power
that can be turned against anyone. Perhaps this expansive definition of
terrorist explains the eighty thousand names on the government's no-fly
list.
Another
problem with arbitrary and undefined power is that it ends up being
exercised by people who tend to receive low marks for good judgment and
intelligence. English film director Mike Figgis was held for five hours
in an interrogation cell at Los Angeles International Airport because
U.S. immigration officers are unfamiliar with the professional language
of television show producers and lacked the common sense to avoid a
misunderstanding. When asked the reason for his visit, Figgis said:
"I'm here to shoot a pilot." "Shoot," of course, means to film, and
"pilot" is the first episode of a new TV show. The people providing our
security concluded that Figgis had voluntarily confessed to a plot to
come to America in order to murder an airline pilot. Figgis survived
his assumption that people in Los Angeles understood movie talk, but
the desire of people empowered to thwart terrorism to use their power
is great. Any excuse will do.
Sliding Toward Dictatorship
The
assaults of the Bush regime on civil liberty, the Constitution, and the
separation of powers are more determined and more successful than its
military assaults on the Middle East, which provide the "war time"
justification for the attack on civil liberty in the United States. The
regime and its supporters are determined to raise the president to
dictatorial powers, at least in times of war, the initiation of which
is being turned into a presidential prerogative.
On
May 9, 2007, President Bush signed the National Security and Homeland
Security Presidential Directive. If in the president's opinion a
"catastrophic emergency" occurs, the directive places all governmental
power in the hands of the president, effectively abolishing the checks
and balances in the Constitution. Underlying this directive is the
"unitary executive" doctrine, a theory pushed by the Federalist
Society, an important source of law clerks, DOJ appointees, and
judicial nominees for the Republican Party. The doctrine, supported by
Supreme Court justices such as Samuel Alito, claims that the executive
power of the president is completely separate and independent of the
legislative and judicial powers and not subject to infringement by
them. The manner in which this doctrine is being institutionalized is
creating the additional claim that executive power is the supreme
power. In effect, unitary executive theory is elevating the president
to a dictator with the power to ignore or suspend laws.
The
unitary executive doctrine is a direct attack on the constitutional
separation of powers established by the Founding Fathers. One of the
alleged advantages of the unitary executive is that the president can
act more quickly and efficiently if he is not subject to interference
from Congress and the judiciary. However, as Justice Louis Brandeis
explained in 1926, "the doctrine of the separation of powers was
adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to
preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid
friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the
distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to
save the people from autocracy."
News
reports that the Bush administration has contracted with Halliburton to
build detention centers in the United States at a cost of $385 million
revive memories of the World War II detention of Japanese American
citizens. It has not been explained who are the intended detainees for
the new detention centers. Do the American people want to trust with
detention centers an executive branch, which claims the power to set
aside habeas corpus, statutory law, due process, and the prohibition
against torture?
Polls
show that 36 percent of the American public and more than half of New
Yorkers lack confidence in the 9/11 Commission Report. Despite a
significant percentage of the public's disbelief in the explanation of
the event that took America to war in the Middle East, Congress and the
media continue to tolerate the Bush administration's aggressive
rhetoric, which seeks to widen the "war on terror" from Afghanistan and
Iraq to Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. The diligence with which Vice
President Cheney and the neoconservatives press for an attack on Iran,
and the extreme position that the Bush administration has taken on
executive power, raise the question whether the Bush administration has
an agenda that takes precedence over America's constitutional democracy.
Never
in its history have the American people faced such danger to their
constitutional protections as they face today from those in the
government who hold the reins of power and from elements of the legal
profession and the federal judiciary that support "energy in the
executive." An assertive executive backed by an aggressive U.S.
Department of Justice and unobstructed by a supine Congress and an
intimidated corporate media has demonstrated an ability to ignore
statutory law and public opinion. The precedents that have been set
during the opening years of the twenty-first century bode ill for the
future of American liberty.
Excerpted from PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Lawrence M. Stratton is
a Ph. D. candidate in Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological
Seminary and a former adjunct professor of Georgetown University Law
Center. He is currently on the adjunct Ethics faculty at Villanova
University.
>
posted on June 3, 2008 2:43 PM ()
Hold it, hold it. Al-Arian may not have directly committed any violent acts, but he himself admitted under oath at the time of his plea that he collected and provided funds to known terrorist organizations which in turn killed innocent people. Let's not make this guy out to be an innocent dupe of American misjustice. He funded terrorist activity and he admitted it.
Did Steve see this.looselob?
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