10/29/07 "Truthdig"
-- -- A Dallas jury, a week ago, deadlocked in its
deliberations and caused a mistrial in the government case
against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action
raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law
could curb the despotism of the Bush administration, this
mistrial might be counted a victory. But we do not. The jury may
have rejected the federal government’s claim that the Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development funneled millions of
dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists. It may have acquitted
Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the foundation, of
virtually all criminal charges related to funding terrorism (the
jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against el-Mezain), and
it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been lodged
against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be
fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the
administration’s ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will
do nothing to stop the curtailment of our civil liberties and
rights. The grim march toward a police state continues.
Constitutional rights are minor inconveniences, noisome chatter,
flies to be batted away on the steady road to despotism. And no
one, not the courts, not the press, not the gutless Democratic
opposition, not a compliant and passive citizenry hypnotized by
tawdry television spectacles and celebrity gossip, seems capable
of stopping the process. Those in power know this. We, too,
might as well know it.
The Bush administration, which froze the foundation’s finances
three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and
indicted its officials three years later on charges that they
provided funds for the militant group Hamas, has ensured that
the foundation and all other Palestinian charities will never
reopen in the United States. Any organized support for
Palestinians from within the U.S. has been rendered impossible.
The goal of the Israeli government and the Bush
administration—despite the charade of peace negotiations to be
held at Annapolis—is to grind defiant Palestinians into the
dirt. Israel, which has plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the
world’s worst humanitarian crises, has now begun to ban fuel
supplies and sever electrical service. The severe deprivation,
the Israelis hope, will see the overthrow of the Hamas
government in Gaza and the reinstatement of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, who has become the Marshal Pétain of
the Palestinian people.
The Dallas trial—like all of the major terrorism trials
conducted by this administration, from the Florida case against
the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami al-Arian, which also ended in
a mistrial, to the recent decision by a jury in Chicago to
acquit two men of charges of financing Hamas—has been a judicial
failure. William Neal, a juror in the Dallas trial, told the
Associated Press that the case “was strung together with
macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.”
Such trials, however, have been politically expedient. The
accusations, true or untrue, serve the aims of the
administration. A jury in Tampa, Chicago or Dallas can dismiss
the government’s assaults on individual rights, but the
draconian restrictions put in place because of the mendacious
charges remain firmly implanted within the system. It is the
charges, not the facts, which matter.
Dr. al-Arian, who was supposed to have been released and
deported in April, is still in a Virginia prison because he will
not testify in a separate case before a grand jury. The
professor, broken by the long ordeal of his trial and unable to
raise another million dollars in legal fees for a retrial,
pleaded guilty to a minor charge in the hopes that his
persecution would end. It has not. Or take the case of Canadian
citizen Maher Arar, who in 2002 was spirited away by Homeland
Security from JFK Airport to Syria, where he spent 10 months
being tortured in a coffin-like cell. He was, upon his release,
exonerated of terrorism. Arar testified before a House panel
this month about how he was abducted by the U.S. and
interrogated, stripped of his legal rights and tortured. But he
couldn’t testify in person. He spoke to the House members on a
video link from Canada. He is forbidden by Homeland Security to
enter the United States because he allegedly poses a threat to
national security.
Those accused of being involved in conspiracies and terrorism
plots, as in all police states, become nonpersons. There is no
rehabilitation. There is no justice.
"He was never given a hearing nor did the Canadian consulate,
his lawyer, or his family know of his fate,” Amnesty
International wrote of Arar. “Expulsion in such circumstances,
without a fair hearing, and to a country known for regularly
torturing their prisoners, violates the U.S. Government’s
obligations under international law, specifically the Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment.”
You can almost hear Dick Cheney yawn.
The Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development six years ago and froze its assets. There
was no hearing or trial. It became a crime for anyone to engage
in transactions with the foundation. The administration never
produced evidence to support the charges. It did not have any.
In the “war on terror,” evidence is unnecessary. An executive
order is enough. The foundation sued the government in a federal
court in the District of Columbia. Behind closed doors, the
government presented secret evidence that the charity had no
opportunity to see or rebut. The charity’s case was dismissed.
The government has closed seven Muslim charities in the United
States and frozen their assets. Not one of them, or any person
associated with them, has been found guilty of financing
terrorism. They will remain shut. George W. Bush can tar any
organization or individual, here or abroad, as being part of a
terrorist conspiracy and by fiat render them powerless. He does
not need to make formal charges. He does not need to wait for a
trial verdict. Secret evidence, which these court cases have
exposed as a sham, is enough. The juries in Tampa, Chicago and
Dallas did their duty. They spoke for the rights of citizens.
They spoke for the protection of due process and the rule of
law. They threw small hurdles in front of the emergent police
state. But the abuse rolls on. I fear terrorism. I know it is
real. I am sure terrorists will strike again on American soil.
But while terrorists can wound and disrupt our democracy, only
we can kill it. Source: Information Clearing House |
Middle East 
