More than two weeks after being granted bond by a federal judge, Sami
Al-Arian is still being held in prison. In fact,
Dr.
Al-Arian is now being subjected to the worst treatment by prison officials
since his stay in Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida three years
ago.
On July 12th, Judge Leonie
Brinkema pronounced that Dr. Al-Arian was not a danger to the
community nor a flight risk, and accordingly granted him bail
before his scheduled August 13th trial. Nevertheless, the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) invoked the jurisdiction it has held over Dr.
Al-Arian since his official sentence ended last April to keep him from
leaving prison. The ICE is ostensibly holding Dr. Al-Arian to complete
deportation procedures but, given that Dr. Al-Arian's trial will take place
in less than three weeks, it would seem somewhat unlikely that the ICE
will follow through with such procedures in the near future.
Not content to merely keep Dr.
Al-Arian from enjoying even a very limited stint of freedom, the government is
using all available means to try to psychologically break him. Instead of
keeping him in a prison close to the Washington DC area where his two oldest
children live, the ICE has moved him to Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, VA,
more than one hundred miles from the capital. Regardless, even when Dr.
Al-Arian was relatively close to his children, they were repeatedly denied
visitation requests.
More critically, this
distance makes it extremely difficult for Dr. Al-Arian to meet with his
attorneys in the final weeks before his upcoming trial.
This is the same tactic employed by the government in 2005 to try to
prevent Dr. Al-Arian from being able to prepare a full defense.
Pamunkey Regional Jail has imposed a
23-hour lock-down on Dr. Al-Arian and has placed him in complete
isolation, despite promises from the ICE that he would be kept with the general
inmate population. Furthermore, the guards who transported him were
abusive, shackling and handcuffing him behind his back for the 2.5-hour
drive, callously disregarding the fact that his wrist had
been badly injured only a few days ago. Although he was
in great pain throughout the trip, guards refused to loosen the
handcuffs.
At the very moment when Dr. Al-Arian
should be enjoying a brief interlude of freedom after five grueling years
of imprisonment, the government has once again brazenly manipulated the
justice system to deliver this cruel slap in the face of not only Dr.
Al-Arian, but of all people of conscience.
