Ahmed Abu Ali: Freedom Dinner

Support Ahmed Abu Ali [Fundraising Dinner]

“Whosoever removes a worldly grief from a believer, Allah will remove from him one of the griefs of the Day of Judgement”

• American Citizen
• Wrongfully imprisoned for over 8 years
• Tortured & coerced into confession
• Lawyers filing for the legal right for release from unlawful detention

Saturday, March 3, 2012 [6:00 – 9:00 pm]
@ Dewan – E- Khaas
7081 – 83 Brookfield Plaza
Springfield, VA 22150
(Tickets: $50.00)

Adults only, no children please. For more information, please email asmaaelsayed9@gmail.com and visit http://freeahmed.com.

 

Grand Inquisitor Kromberg & The Ordeal of Sami al-Arian

On January 22 2007, Dr. Sami Al-Arian was called to testify before a grand jury in Virginia for the second time in as many months. Though he had been acquitted of all major charges and reached an agreement with the government last year that was to end his imprisonment within a few months, the latest round of subpoenas threatens to extend Dr. Al-Arian’s incarceration by up to 18 months.

While most observers are wondering what is behind the continued pursuit of a case that was all but concluded, recent revelations have pointed in the direction of one particular individual: a federal prosecutor who has made no secret of his anti-Muslim and anti-Arab beliefs.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg’s past actions and statements reveal a disturbing trend that supports the view that Dr. Al-Arian is being punished for his political activism on behalf of the Palestinian people. Kromberg has joked about torture, improperly confronted another suspect in public and has lamented “the Islamization of the American justice system.”

“Defense attorneys have objected for years that Mr. Kromberg, the lead counsel in many of these cases, has been using the Eastern District of Virginia to mete out his own brand of justice for Muslim terrorism subjects, often openly displaying his personal animus,” Al-Arian’s lead counsel, Jonathan Turley, wrote. “This long and controversial record forms the backdrop for the allegation of selective and malicious prosecution in this case.”

“When you look at the prosecutions together, there is a pattern that really doesn’t make Mr. Kromberg look very good,” a Muslim scholar from Maryland who has been subpoenaed, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, said. “It reminds me of the Red Scare. Communism was a serious problem for America, but some people seemed to think almost every liberal was a Communist. Mr. Kromberg and a handful of other people in the government seem to have the same approach when it comes to outspoken Muslims.”

This widespread suspicion was confirmed to everyone who late last year read Kromberg’s words when he opposed delaying Dr. Al-Arian’s transfer to a prison in Virginia until after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

According to a court motion filed on Oct. 26, 2006 by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, Kromberg’s outburst included the following remarks regarding Muslims:

“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury—all they can’t do is eat before sunset. I believe Mr. Al-Arian’s request is part of the attempted Islamization of the American Justice System. 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.”

 

Following this undignified tirade, Fernandez asked Kromberg to recuse himself because of the apparent bias he holds toward Dr. Al-Arian as a Muslim activist. Needless to say, Kromberg promptly rejected this request.

In a Feb. 8, 2007 letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the respected human rights organization Amnesty International called into question Kromberg’s motives.

“We are disturbed, too, by reports that the prosecutor leading the grand jury case in Virginia expressed anti-Islamic sentiments when discussing a request with Dr. Al-Arian’s lawyer to postpone his transfer to Virginia during Ramadan, a matter which we understand is currently the subject of a complaint before the court. This raises further concern as to whether these proceedings are being taken to punish [Dr. Al-Arian] for his political profile rather than for legitimate purposes.”

Violating an Agreement

Kromberg first called Dr. Al-Arian to testify before a grand jury investigating the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a think tank in Herndon, Virginia, last November—despite a plea agreement five months earlier that did not contain a cooperation clause because both parties agreed that Dr. Al-Arian would not be required to cooperate with prosecutors, and that the plea agreement concluded his entire business with the United States government.

On the advice of his attorneys, Dr. Al-Arian refused to testify because the situation had all the markings of a perjury trap. As a result of his refusal, Dr. Al-Arian was placed in civil contempt, extending his prison sentence indefinitely, until the term of the grand jury expired in late December without having returned a single indictment.

Within days, Dr. Al-Arian was transferred temporarily to a prison in Atlanta until a new grand jury was impaneled in Virginia to look into the same case. Once again, Kromberg called Dr. Al-Arian as a witness and, upon advice from his lawyers, Dr. Al-Arian again refused to answer any questions. He was held in contempt of court for a second time, for which he must serve an indeterminate prison sentence.

Forcing Dr. Al-Arian to cooperate with the government is a clear violation of the plea agreement between prosecutors and defense attorneys.

According to court documents, any information Dr. Al-Arian might be able to provide the grand jury is likely unnecessary or irrelevant because the information the U.S. Attorney’s Office is interested in is very old.

Moreover, Dr. Al-Arian had been under 24-hour surveillance for at least a decade before his incarceration in February 2003. Any information the U.S. attorneys might be seeking surely has been obtained by other means. This leads to the conclusion that forcing Dr. Al-Arian to testify is solely for punitive purposes, namely to keep him in prison beyond the April 2007 date that was determined following a jury trial and plea agreement.

 

My Brother Faces a Lifetime of Solitary Confinement on a Spurious Terror Conviction

By Mariam Abu-Ali

May 2010

My brother, Ahmed Abu Ali, has spent the past five years in solitary confinement, under 23-hour lockdown, in a

Above Ground View

7×12 cell. He has one recreational hour in which he must get strip-searched if he wishes to leave his cell. He gets one unscheduled telephone call a month to his family, and receives the newspaper by the time news becomes history. If I send him a letter wishing him a happy birthday, he gets it 60 days later. When I visit him, once a year, I speak to him from behind a glass window. He is literally in a dungeon, over 20 meters beneath the ground.

Ahmed is not in a foreign prison, nor is he in Guantánamo; he is in a super maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

 

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali: July 27, 2009 (Statement on his Resentencing)

All Praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Universe, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment.

I thank Allah for His countless bounties, His never ending grace, and peace be upon all His messengers and prophets, especially Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus the Son of Mary, and the last and final prophet and messenger, the descendant of Ismail the son of Abraham, Muhammad.

I want to acknowledge and thank my family, some of whom are here, my parents, for their steadfast faith, their beautiful faith and sacrifice, and my brothers and sisters, all of them, I hope I can be with them soon and make up for the lost time. Also, I thank my friends who contributed to my defense, for their prayers and sacrifice, and those I don’t know, and Allah knows them.

To proceed, I’m not ungrateful to this court for the relative civility it has shown me, and I also have been civil with this court. But, I cannot pretend this is justice. The facts of this case were clear. This case was manufactured by the Saudi torture machine, the Mubahith, and exported to the United States.

There is no doubt that I was tortured. This case was prosecuted by a rouge Department of Justice, headed by the same people who crafted laws [allowing torture]. Had this case been a drug case or a murder case, it would have been forgotten. But if you introduce the word ‘terrorism’ in it, America has a second standard.

I’m being held in solitary confinement. Even nazi [war criminals] did not face [the prison conditions I have been facing]. If the government wants to dehumanize me, they should have sent me to a zoo. But we are not animals, we are distinguished by our intellect, our emotions, our manners, our empathy.

I think you have heard of this book rejection, harmless books, this is the type of tyranny I have to face everyday. To give you one example, the book by Jimmy Carter Peace Not Apartheid was denied because it contains “jihadist rhetoric”. They don’t let me communicate with my grandmother because the government thinks they are saving lives by me not being able to say hello, how are you, I’m praying for you, how are my
uncles …

Even letters to my family take months to get there. If I send them a letter now wishing them [a blessed] Ramadhan which starts in about one month, they will get it at the start of the pilgrimage.

They deny me the right to worship in congregation. We [Muslim prisoners] have protested. Even though we are behind bars, we are being prevented from praying in congregation. This reminds me of the story of Moses, when he told the Pharoah to let the children of Israel go, the Pharoah in his arrogance said I don’t know who your Lord is. The government won’t let the children of Ismail worship together behind bars … despite the protests, the hunger strikes going on every year. Another hunger strike began in April.

The BOP would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to force feed prisoners instead of giving them their basic rights. I don’t know where they get the money for this especially during this difficult financial crisis.

They say I am a criminal. I say may God’s curse and wrath be upon the criminals among us.

Judge Lee, I remind you, you too will appear before the Divine tribunal – with me. On that day, there will be no lawyers, no sophistry … nothing will be hidden. He knows the whisperings in the chests. If you are comfortable with that, you can decree upon me whatever you will decree.

 

Randall Royer: December 1, 2005 (Reflections on the ‘War on Terror’)

Dear Jon,

Thank you for all the reading material and the news from home. The sermon really hit home. (Giving the family a copy of the letter is fine!)

I hope my letter answered at least some of your questions. It’s hard to conduct any kind of in-depth (deadline-oriented) interview by mail. I hope I can be of service to you to the extent that it’s practicable.

Thoughts on these cases: what you have is, for the most part, mountains being made of molehills. Before 9/11, law enforcement never would have bothered themselves with someone involved with rebels in the Himalayan mountains or in the Caucasus, or a bunch of Muslims playing paintball, or a cancer researcher given to making incendiary speeches. Now three of us are serving life sentences; me 20, al-Hamdi 15, etc. As far as Ahmed Abu Ali, I give him the benefit of the doubt where Saudi intelligence services are concerned. That video was the end product and its antecedents are unknown. It’s just inconceivable that a videotaped confession in a country known (by the State Department) to torture would be accepted as evidence in a U.S. court. If a murderer can have the charges dropped because he wasn’t properly advised of his rights, how much more extreme is Ahmed’s situation? Plus, I know Ahmed and I just can’t believe it of him.

In our situation, what you have is a passel of prosecutors and FBI agents who are taking advantage of post-9/11 hysteria to build their careers. The outcome of these cases is predetermined by judges who are submissive to the administration and a jury pool ready to believe the worst about Muslims. Many of us laughed when we were arrested and saw these indictments, and read the overblown language with which our legitimate activities were described, and the wild claims of cooperating defendants. But none of us is laughing now, and indeed the wilder the accusations, the more likely, it seems, a Muslim will be convicted.

This is not to say that there are not Muslims in the world who are dangerous to U.S. security. But we just were not those people.

I think the American people need to be concerned because once the system is bent to start putting a minority in prison, the system stays bent. If they can search my house without a warrant, they can do that to you, too. If they can say that a book I had or a newsletter I started were overt acts in a criminal conspiracy, they can do that to anyone.

Bin Laden said in a videotape shortly after 9/11, ‘Now the world will see that America’s freedoms are really an illusion,’ and the politicians and intelligence forces seem intent on proving bin Laden right.

And the reality is that families are destroyed by all this. By my count, there are 19 children of the 13 people arrested in my case (including the 11 plus Timimi and Chandia), and then parents and wives. This is a lot of people to grow up orphaned because of paintball and an Indian subcontinent border dispute.

Sincerely yours,
Ismail