Authorities Probe Alleged Abuse Of Al-Arian

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the NY Sun
April 19, 2007

Authorities have opened an inquiry into claims that federal guards abused and threatened a prominent Palestinian Arab inmate, Sami Al-Arian, as he was being transferred last week to a jail in Northern Virginia from a prison hospital in North Carolina.

"It has been referred for an investigation," a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, Traci Billingsley, said yesterday.

Sami Al-Arian, 49, complained to family members that he was kept in freezing temperatures, cursed at, and subjected to religious insults by a guard during a strip search at a facility in Petersburg, Va., Al-Arian's daughter, Laila, said in an interview. A supervisor who overheard the taunts later tightened shackles on her father's legs so tight that they were numb during a four-hour drive to Alexandria, Va., from Petersburg, she said.

"This corrections officer saw my dad and asked the question, ‘Where are you from, Afghanistan?'" Ms. Al-Arian said, recounting the story her father told her by phone last week. She said her father, who was born in Kuwait but considers himself to be Palestinian, declined to answer.

Ms. Al-Arian said the guard began cursing and shouted, "It doesn't matter where you're from. If I had my way, you wouldn't be in prison. I'd put a bullet in your head and get it done with it. You're nothing but a piece of s—."

The prisoner's daughter said that her father replied, "Why do you say that? You don't know me." She said this set the guard off on another rant, in which he declared, "I know enough about all you guys. You're all pieces of s—. You can go pray to the f— that you pray to."

Ms. Al-Arian said the lieutenant who painfully shackled her father also shoved him against a wall when he arrived in Alexandria on Thursday. She said a lawyer had filed a formal complaint.

Al-Arian, a former engineering professor at the University of South Florida, pleaded guilty last year to one felony count of aiding a designated terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The plea followed a six-month trial in 2005 in which Al-Arian was acquitted on some charges while jurors could not reach verdicts on other counts.

With time served since his arrest in 2003 and other credits, Al-Arian's 57-month prison sentence was scheduled to expire last week. However, his sentence was put on hold after he refused to testify before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities in Northern Virginia. He could serve a total of 18 months for civil contempt before finishing his criminal sentence.

A spokesman for the Alexandria Detention Center, which is run by the local city government but houses some federal prisoners, confirmed that Al-Arian was at the jail.

Ms. Al-Arian said she was disturbed to learn that her father was placed in an isolation cell. "My mom just called to tell me he was moved to solitary confinement," she said. "That means he's under lockdown 23 hours a day. We don't know where these orders are coming from."

Sami Al-Arian undertook a two-month hunger strike to protest the contempt finding as unfair. He said his plea deal gave him the right not to cooperate with authorities. So far, the courts have rejected his arguments, but related appeals are pending.