Victory for Palestinian activist Amer Jubran over racist frame-up charges in Brookline, MA
Nov. 21, 2001
Supporters of Palestinian activist Amer Jubran are celebrating this week as an attempted frame-up of Jubran by Brookline, Massachusetts police and the Boston Israeli consulate has collapsed in the face of a determined, vocal defense of Palestinian free speech rights.
On June 10, 2001 - months before the official post- Sept. 11th unveiling of the U.S. Office of Homeland Security - Jubran was arrested, shackled hand to foot, held for 36 hours incommunicado, interrogated and falsely charged with felony assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (his shod foot). He faced 10 years in Massachusetts' maximum security prison, and deportation to Israel, which practices assassination of activist Palestinians.
Jubran's real crime was that he dared to lead a spirited and peaceful protest of Brookline's June 10th street festival in celebration of the founding of the Zionist state. To police authorities - who spent 2 hours filming mug shots of the 100 or so Palestinians and their supporters that day - protestors chants of "Long live the intifadah," and "Shame, Shame USA, Funding Israel this way," were an intolerable threat to the Israeli Festival Committee's attempt to present a monolithic pro-Israel view. Utilizing known pro-Zionist provacatuers to finger Jubran, police moved in under orders to break up the Palestinians' picket.
Al-Awda-Mass. (Palestine Right to Return Coalition) - the organizer of the June 10th protest - the International Action Center Boston and Portuguese American Relief for Palestine, and members of SUSTAIN, the Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights and others launched the "Committee to Defend Amer Jubran and Palestinian Free Speech Rights" as the arrest wagon pulled away. The committee's international email and fax campaign flooded the office of the Norfolk County District Attorney with over 600 demands to "Drop the racist frame-up charges" - from Australia, Austria, Canada, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, England and 33 U.S. states. The Mass. Civil Liberties Union and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee worked to expose the nature of the fame-up as an overt attack on Palestinian free speech rights and a precursor to the thousands of detentions, interrogations and false arrests of Arab & Muslim immigrants under the jurisdiction of the post-911 "USA Patriot Act."
Political leaders like Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and personalities as diverse as A Peoples' History of the United States author Howard Zinn, Major General Kostas Konstantinidis from Greece of ex-NATO Generals for Peace and Disarmament, and Arthur Buonamia, District Chairperson, Democratic Election Committee of the Democratic Party in Miami, Florida wrote the DA calling for dismissal. Buonamia wrote, "Having witnessed firsthand a fascist rent-a-mob deny us the right to count the votes in Miami on Nov 22, 2000, I have since become concerned with the denial of basic democratic rights throughout this country. Amer Jubran has the right to peacefully demonstrate and I will defend that right."
For months, the Amer Jubran Defense Committee met weekly, producing a mass campaign in the streets from Brookline and Boston, MA to Washington, D.C. In answer to a June 10th Brookline police threat to a shackled Jubran to "teach you a lesson," supporters not only packed all 9 Brookline court appearances, they rallied large and growing pickets in front of the court house each time, with banners and militant chants of "Free, Free Palestine!" Supporters distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets, ran a defense committee web page viewed by thousands worldwide (www.iacboston.org/amerjubran), and forced the issue into the local media spotlight.
Moreover, Amer Jubran's articulate and courageous leadership of Al-Awda's continuing activities, and in the burgeoning anti-war movement following Sept. 11th, became an inspiration to many progressives in the New England area, especially young student activists who rallied to his struggle. While facing felony charges, Jubran addressed 20,000 anti-war marches in Washington, D.C.'s Freedom Plaza on Sept. 29th, and lead 500 demonstrators in Boston on Oct. 27th in a militant 3-mile "March Against the Warmakers", targetting the Boston FBI office, the Israeli consulate, and the Northeastern Univ. ROTC. He has spoken by invitation at dozens of campus and community rallies and meetings in recent months about how to strengthen the Palestinian solidarity struggle for freedom and self-determination.
As Jubran's defense committee mounted its public offense, the government's case against him fell apart in court. Through the pro-bono efforts of Boston's fightin'est people's attorney, Barry Wilson, and the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, many elements of the government's conspiracy against Jubran were fatally exposed. For instance, Captain Mello and his whole Brookline squad were in the pay of the Israeli Festival Committee on the day of Jubran's arrest, totaling more than $10,000.00. Evidence also showed that local Brookline cops had been in illegal and unconstitutional consultation with representatives of the Israeli government in Boston prior to June 10th about how to handle the Palestinian protest. The district attorney was exposed as withholding eye witness exculpatory evidence from Jubran's defense team, and discovery of police video evidence showed a Watergate-type gap of the incident in question in a clearly and clumsily edited version. That undercover police agents were illegally allowed by the judge to film Jubran and his witnesses in open Brookline court on July 16th caught the attention of Boston Phoenix investigative journalists, who helped spotlight the real motives of the police crime on June 10th - a taped police dispatch from HQ ordering cops on the scene to break up the peaceful Palestinian protest that day.
Amid the complete collapse of their public and state sponsored conspiracy to silence Palestinian voices, on Nov. 21, 2001, authorities in Brookline, Mass.offerred Jubran a complete dismissal of the charges against him, with no admission by Jubran whatsoever.
Afterwards, Jubran told the crowd of supporters filling the court house steps that, "My case is only one among thousands of Palesinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and African immigrants who are being wrongly arrested, detained and interrogated in what the U.S. government now calls its 'war on terrorism'. We must use all of our energy and experience gained from this case to stop this extreme racial profiling and violations of civil and human rights, made possible by the U.S.'s continued support of the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and the indiscriminate bombing of the people of Afghanistan."
He urged those present to spread the word about the Dec. 1, 2001, rally and march in Boston to "Defend Civil Rights & Civil Liberties." Protest organizers - the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) coalition's Boston chapter - are calling on people to rally at 1:00 PM in Copley Square to demand freedom for the 1,200 federal detainees locked up for months by the U.S. Office of Homeland Security. The rally will also highlight defense of two Somali brothers arrested in Boston during the current witchhunt of immigrants who provide hawalah money transfers to relatives back home, and support for the Hartford 18 peace activists brutalized and arrested by Connecticut police last month. Protesters will march to Boston Police Headquarters, where they will demand police obey local laws prohibiting racial profiling, and refuse to cooperate with the Bush administration's new roundup and interrogation of "5,000" young Arab immigrants.
For further information on the web: www.iacboston.org/ANSWER
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects
The International Action Center
Home ActionAlerts Press
Share this page with a friend