How to pre-convict and pre-punish an American Muslim
A four-month hunger strike, mass force-feedings, and widespread media coverage have at last brought Guantanamo, the notorious offshore prison set up by the Bush administration early in 2002, back into American consciousness. Prominent voices are finally calling on President Obama to close it down and send home scores of prisoners who, years ago, were cleared of wrongdoing.
Still unnoticed and out of the news, however, is a comparable situation in the U.S. itself, involving a pattern of controversial terrorism trials that result in devastating prison sentences involving the harshest forms of solitary confinement. This growing body of prisoners is made up of Muslim men, including some formerly well-known and respected American citizens.
At the heart of these cases is a statute from the time of the Clinton presidency making it a crime to provide 바카라material support바카라 to any foreign organization the government has designated as 바카라terrorist.바카라 This material support provision was broadened in the USA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress just after the 9/11 attacks, and has been upheld by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in the case of . Today, almost any kind of support, including humanitarian aid, training, expert advice, 바카라services바카라 of all sorts, or 바카라political advocacy바카라 undertaken in 바카라coordination바카라 with any group on the State Department바카라s terrorist list, can lead to such a terror trial. The Court has never defined what 바카라coordination바카라 actually means.
In that Supreme Court ruling, Justice Stephen Breyer was joined in dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Breyer proposed a narrower interpretation of material support: individuals should not be subject to prosecution unless they knowingly provided a service they had reason to believe would be used to further violence. At the time, the position of the dissenting judges was backed by in . In the three years since, however, more material support cases have resulted in long sentences with very little public notice or critical comment.
Pre-Trial Punishment
In the U.S. these days, the very word 바카라terror,바카라 no less the charge of material support for it, invariably shuts down rather than opens any conversation. Nonetheless, a decade of researching a number of serious alleged terrorism cases on both side of the Atlantic, working alongside some extraordinary human rights lawyers, and Muslim women in Great Britain and the U.S. whose lives were transformed by the imprisonment of a husband, father, or brother has given me a different perspective on such cases.
Perhaps most illuminating in them is the repeated use of what바카라s called 바카라special administrative measures바카라 to create a particularly isolating and punitive atmosphere for many of those charged with such crimes, those convicted of them, and even for their relatives. While these efforts have come fully into their own in the post-9/11 era, they were drawn from a pre-9/11 paradigm. Between the material support statute and those special administrative measures, it has become possible for the government to pre-convict and in many cases pre-punish a small set of Muslim men.
Take the case of Ahmed Abu Ali, a young Palestinian-American who is now serving life in the Administrative Maximum Facility, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, and is currently under special administrative measures that restrict his communications with the outside world. A university student in Saudi Arabia, he was arrested in 2003 by the Saudi government and held for 20 months without charges or access to a lawyer. The Washington Post that the U.S. government finally asked for his return just as his family filed a lawsuit in Washington.
At the time, it seemed like a victory for the family and the various human rights organizations that had supported them, but on arrival Ahmed was charged with material support for al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush. The evidence to convict him came from an anonymous alleged co-conspirator and from taped confessions he made, evidently after being tortured in Saudi Arabia, a there. The evidence of his torture was at his trial. The case was by a staff member of Amnesty International USA as 바카라unusual in the annals of U.S. outsourcing of torture.바카라 An appeal of Ahmed바카라s 30-year sentence actually resulted in the imposition of an even more severe sentence: life without parole.
In addition, special administrative measures have been applied to him. These were in 1996 to stop communications from prison inmates who could 바카라pose a substantial risk of death or serious risk of injury.바카라 The targets then were gang leaders. Each special administrative measure was theoretically to be designed to fit the precise dangers posed by a specific prisoner. Since 9/11, however, numerous virtually identical measures have been applied to Muslim men, often like Ahmed Abu Ali with no history of violence.
A question to Ahmed바카라s sister about how her brother is doing is answered only with a quick look. She is not allowed to say anything because special measures also prohibit family members from disclosing their communications with prisoners. They similarly prevent defense lawyers from speaking about their clients. It was for a breach of these special measures in relation to her client, the imprisoned blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, that lawyer Lynne Stewart was tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Bush years.
Although these measures have been contested in court, few have ever been modified, much less thrown out. Those court challenges and evidence provided to the European Court of Human Rights by American lawyers have, however, provided a window into what one of them described as a regime of 바카라draconian and inhumane treatment.바카라
Under such special administrative measures at the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City, a prisoner lives with little natural light, no time in communal areas, no radio or TV, and sometimes no books or newspapers either, while mail and phone calls are permitted only with family, and even then are often suspended for minor infractions. Family visits are always no-contact ones conducted through plexiglass.
바카라The conditions have quite simply wreaked havoc on Mr X바카라s physical and mental well-being,바카라 one lawyer wrote for the European Court of Human Rights, describing a seven-month period in which a prisoner at the Metropolitan Correction Center was allowed no family phone calls. Another highlighted his client바카라s lost concentration, which made it impossible to work on his case effectively. 바카라Their world shrinks dramatically,바카라 was the way Joshua Dratel, a lawyer who has represented several men under these measures, the situation.
In cases where special administrative measures are in place pre-trial, such as the well-documented ordeal of American post-graduate student , lawyers have often been obliged to prepare cases without actually sitting with their clients, or being able to show them all court materials. After three pre-trial years mainly in solitary confinement under special administrative measures at the Metropolitan Correction Center, Hashmi accepted a government plea bargain of one count of material support for terrorism and was given a 15-year sentence.
His crime? He allowed an acquaintance to stay at his student apartment in London, use his cell phone, and store a duffel bag there. The bag contained ponchos and waterproof socks that were later supposedly delivered to al-Qaeda, while the phone was used by that acquaintance to make calls to co-conspirators in Britain.
Silencing Palestinian-Americans
Just as the Bush administration found the Geneva Conventions 바카라quaint바카라 and ignored them, so the principle of 바카라innocent until proven guilty,바카라 a part of Western civilization since Roman times, has all but disappeared for Muslims who face accusations of 바카라material support바카라 for terrorism.
Such cases have, at times, involved high-profile men and once received significant media attention. Civil rights activist and University of South Florida professor , accused of being a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a State Department-designated terrorist organization), was, for instance, treated like a man already being punished for his crime even before his trial. Previously, he had been a respected American-Muslim political leader with contacts in the White House and in Congress. Now, walking to pre-trial meetings with his lawyers, his arms were shackled behind him, so that, humiliatingly, he had to carry his legal papers on his back.
Amnesty International Al-Arian's pre-trial detention in Coleman Federal Penitentiary as "gratuitously punitive." It cited his 23-hour lockdown in his cell, the strip searches, the use of chains and shackles, the lack of access to any religious services, and the insistence on denying him a watch or clock in a windowless cell. He was transferred to 14 different prison facilities in 6 states. He ended up spending three and a half years in solitary confinement without being convicted of anything. At his trial, the government called 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, while his counsel called no defense witnesses, only citing the U.S. Constitution. A Florida jury nonetheless acquitted him on half of the counts, and deadlocked on the other half. (Ten out of 12 jurors wanted to acquit him on all charges.) He later struck a plea deal on one minor charge.
Today, the Palestinian-American professor is still , under house arrest, awaiting a judge바카라s ruling on whether he has to testify in a separate case. An articulate U.S. Muslim political leader, who helped the Muslim vote for George W. Bush after the candidate came out publicly against the use of in trials, when the Gore campaign did not and so contributed to his Florida victory in the 2000 presidential campaign, has been silenced for his openly expressed pro-Palestinian opinions.
Successful and influential Palestinian-American Ghassan Elashi, a founder and the chairman of what was once America바카라s largest Muslim charity, the Holy Land Foundation, and Shukri Abu Baker, its president, were similarly silenced along with three other foundation officials. The two of them of 65 years for giving charity to orphanages and community organizations in Gaza (also supported by the European Union and the U.S. Agency for International Development). The Holy Land leaders were accused of giving 바카라material support바카라 to a foreign terrorist organization: Hamas, the elected government in Gaza. There were no accusations of inciting or being involved in acts of violence. This case, like Professor Al Arian바카라s, would never have been possible if Justice Breyer바카라s views had prevailed at the Supreme Court.
Even then, it took a second trial before a jury returned a guilty verdict against the Holy Land leaders. Nancy Hollander, counsel for one of the men, the situation this way: 바카라The thought that somebody gets sixty-five years for providing charity is really shameful, and I believe this case will go down in history, as have others, as a shameful day.바카라 In 2012, the Supreme Court refused to rehear the case, and four of the five convicted men remain confined to the especially restrictive 바카라communications management unit바카라 at the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, where Muslims two-thirds of the inmates.
There were also 246 unindicted co-conspirators named in the Holy Land Foundation case, including major Muslim organizations. The case and the particularly long sentences sent a through Muslim communities in the U.S., as was surely intended.
The men바카라s daughters still speak out on their fathers바카라 case. Noor Elashi, for example, told me, 바카라His is the poster case for 'material support.'바카라 In the meantime, 15-minute weekly prison phone calls, monitored in real time from Washington, are the thinnest of threads to hold family relationships together, as are rare visits to distant prisons. Mariam Abu Ali once described to me her annual visit to her older brother Ahmed Abu Ali. The expense was difficult to absorb: two flights, a rental car, and a motel for a three-day visit of about four hours a day, for a family already shouldering heavy debts for legal fees.
The real ordeal, though, was emotional, not financial. 바카라They bring him in shackled at the waist and legs,바카라 she told me. 바카라We see them take off the handcuffs as he puts his hands out through a gap in the door. It바카라s emotionally draining바카라 he바카라s there but so far away behind the glass. Only one of us can hear him at a time as he speaks though a phone바카라 I바카라ve tried to lip read when it isn바카라t my turn, but it really doesn바카라t work. I feel very exhausted and sometimes I fall asleep during the visit. I cry every time, especially when he leaves바카라 It바카라s not like a death. You don바카라t grieve and then finish, because this is not in the past. In fact, it is not even in the back of my mind -- it is always there바카라 This is chronic after nine years and it is not going to end.바카라
In itself, solitary confinement has devastating effects, as Dr. Atul Gawande has vividly , and is becoming ever more common in U.S. prisons in breach of internationally recognized norms on the humane treatment of prisoners. It tends to break the will of inmates, sometimes even robbing them of their sanity. However, in its most extreme use, combining those special administrative measures with the isolation imposed in prison communication management units, it is mainly applied to American Muslims.
The stories of what happens to Muslim men today in U.S. prisons and of the judicial cases that land them there under the harshest of conditions bear a startling resemblance to the cages at Guantanamo Bay and the charade of a legal system that is still in operation there.
Miscarriages of Justice
In addition to the examples of prominent, formerly successful Palestinian-Americans, there are a series of haunting cases of newer Muslim arrivals in the U.S., each of them an evident miscarriage of justice. These include the , originally from Albania, and that of , an Iraqi Kurd. Their entrapment cases, typically based on 바카라sting바카라 operations manufactured by FBI informants, sent men respected in their communities into solitary confinement for long years on what were probably trumped-up charges. In such cases, the only 바카라plot바카라 is often manufactured by the government itself.
This, then, is the state of so many cases of 바카라terrorism바카라 in the U.S. today in which disparate Muslim men have been swept up in a system in which guilt is assumed and people바카라s lives are quickly turned into waking nightmares in what used to be called the 바카라justice system.바카라 Some great miscarriages of justice do get overturned. spent 31 years in prison, 29 in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. His release in 2001 came about by chance when his persistent letter writing attracted the attention of a young lawyer and the founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick, who became his champion alongside a grassroots campaign for his release. Since then, King has himself campaigned at home and abroad for the release of his two colleagues in 바카라the Angola Three,바카라 who still remain in prison, and against the system that could have broken him as it has so many others.
Thanks to the special administrative measures applied in his case, Ahmed Abu Ali cannot do what Robert King did, or what the lawyer and a friend of WikiLeaks informant Private Bradley Manning did to widely known, or what has done throughout his 30 years in solitary confinement via his books and his talks on prison radio. Ahmed cannot contact the world outside in search of the support he and his family need, nor can his family members.
The painful impact of all this on the families is difficult to imagine. Chilean novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman once that torture 바카라presupposes the바카라 abrogation of our capacity to imagine someone else바카라s suffering, to dehumanize him or her so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer바카라 but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness.바카라
Perhaps such a state helps explain why people around the world are far more aware than most Americans of what happens to Muslim men in the post-9/11 바카라justice system.바카라 The particular cruelty of the punishments they endure even before their unfair trials, will someday, like the abuses at Guantanamo, gain the attention they deserve.
Victoria Brittain, journalist and former editor at the Guardian, has authored or co-authored two plays and four books, including Enemy Combatant with Moazzam Begg. Her latest book, (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013), has just been published. Copyright 2013 Victoria Brittain. Courtesy: