08-07-2003, 10:11 AM
DETAINEE IN FIGHT FOR RIGHTS
By Paul Lomartire, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2003
www.palmbeachpost.com/news
TAMPA -- In a high-security federal prison north of Tampa, Sami
Al-Arian spends 23 hours of every day locked in a 7-by-13-foot cell.
No watch. No clock. No window through which to see daylight.
One hour a day, five days a week, he and his cellmate get to walk
around in a steel cage. That is his only recreation.
He cannot leave his cell without being shackled and chained. When his
family visits, he cannot touch them. They sit on opposite sides of a
plastic window and talk over a phone.
When his lawyer visits, the shackled Al-Arian walks bent-over, his
hands chained behind him, and balances his legal documents on his
back. The guards won't carry them.
After four months in such conditions, including a hunger strike and a
month in solitary confinement, he has lost 45 pounds.
He has never been convicted of a crime. But he is charged with a very
big one.
The former University of South Florida economics professor is accused
of being the American boss for Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian terrorist
group believed responsible for numerous suicide bombings and the
deaths of more than 100 people in Israel and the adjacent occupied
territories. In the post-Sept. 11 climate, that charge isn't likely to
win him much sympathy in security-conscious America.
Champion for his cause
But now Al-Arian has found a champion -- at least for improving his
prison living conditions.
In a July 17 letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Amnesty
International, the respected international human rights monitor,
denounced Al-Arian's detention as "gratuitously punitive."
In a three-page letter to Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the bureau director,
Amnesty International cited the 23-hour lockdown, strip searches, use
of chains and shackles, severely limited recreation, lack of access to
any religious service and denial of a watch or clock in a windowless
cell where the artificial light is never turned off.
Al-Arian shares the small cell with co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh.
Concludes Amnesty: "The prolonged cellular confinement, lack of
exercise, frequent shackling and other deprivations imposed on Dr.
Al-Arian are inconsistent with international standards and treaties
which require that all persons deprived of their liberty must be
treated humanely with respect for their inherent human dignity."
Amnesty International is better known for drawing attention to
torture, rat-hole prison conditions and human rights abuses in Third
World countries.
But in this case, "We're particularly concerned because he's a
pretrial detainee," says Angela Wright, an Amnesty researcher in
London.
"Certainly if he remains in those conditions, we will continue to
raise concerns," Wright says.
The Bureau of Prisons denies any mistreatment.
"We treat all inmates in a fair and consistent manner," says Traci
Billingsley, public information officer for the bureau in Washington.
For specifics, she suggested, "you'd have to go to the Justice
Department."
A Justice Department official who has read the Amnesty letter agreed
to comment only if allowed to remain unnamed: "Like all people
detained by the U.S. Marshal's Service or the Bureau of Prisons, Mr.
Al-Arian is provided with all the protections and services required by
law and regulation."