The Ordeal of Dr. Sami Al-Arian

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg Displays Anti-Arab, Anti-Muslim Bias

By Melva Underbakke

In a scene from the new Norwegian film “USA vs Al-Arian,” Dr. Sami Al-Arian arrives for an interview at the Orient Road Jail in handcuffs (Courtesy Dalchows Verden from film “USA vs Al-Arian”).

ON JAN. 22, 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.

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.

Why does Kromberg continue to call Dr. Al-Arian as a witness? Besides the anti-Muslim bias evident in Kromberg’s statements to Fernandez, one need look no further than the racist comments and vindictive behavior exhibited in previous cases he prosecuted.

In May 1999, Kromberg spoke to the Cato Institute about asset forfeiture in a lecture which was called “shocking” by Michael Lynch. In an article in Reason Magazine, Lynch wrote that Kromberg “admitted that he currently had 10 money laundering cases in which he couldn’t figure out how the people were washing the dough. But still, he knew these people were guilty and was certain they needed to be punished. ‘Should we let these people get away?’ he asked, before answering in an illuminating way: ‘Not if we can punish them through other means.’…[Kromberg] bluntly declared that people like him ought to be able to punish individuals they believe are guilty, even if they can’t prove that guilt in a court of law.”

Rather than advance the cause of justice, this case served as nothing more than an example of the abuses of power by a renegade official. As a result, Dr. Al-Arian’s decision not to testify was lauded by legal experts as the best possible response.

Abuse of Power

Indeed, as did Dr. Al-Arian’s attorneys, lawyers for defendants in other cases have also requested that Kromberg recuse himself, arguing that “Prosecutor Kromberg has abused his position as an officer of this Court and engaged in unlawful coercion, threats and intimidation.” These serious allegations were made by attorneys in a November 2003 motion for Abdulkadir Ali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia indicted on charges of operating a money transfer business without a proper license.

In another case, defense attorney Salim Ali filed a motion suggesting that Kromberg acknowledged the torture of Falls Church, VA resident Ahmed Abu Ali by Saudi Arabia. Kromberg’s statement even expressed disappointment that Abu Ali could not have been tortured further in the U.S. According to the affidavit, the attorney asked Kromberg if Abu Ali should be brought to the United States in order “to avoid the torture that goes on in Saudi Arabia.” Kromberg “smirked and stated: ‘He’s no good for us here, he has no fingernails left.’”

In a July 2005 article in the Legal Times titled “Putting Islam on the Stand: How far can prosecutors go in using religion to make their case?” Vanessa Blum suggests that Kromberg has exploited a culture of bias against Islam to obtain guilty verdicts from juries. Blum cites the case of Ali Al-Timimi, in which Kromberg “secured the guilty verdict by appealing to religious bigotry against Muslims.” For example, she writes, he told jurors: “If you’re a kafir [non-Muslim], Timimi believes in time of war he’s supposed to lie to you. Don’t fall for it. Find him—find Sheik Ali Timimi—guilty as charged.”

In a letter published in the June 29, 2004 Washington Post, E.A. Khan, the mother of Virginia 11 defendant Masaud Khan, took issue with Kromberg’s use in closing arguments of inflammatory subject matter against her son, especially when such remarks reflected none of the evidence presented in the trial. The Post quoted Kromberg as saying, “While the Pentagon was still smoking, Mr. Khan decided now is the appropriate time to go fight the Americans.”

In fact, as Khan pointed out, her son “was cleared of any implication relating to al-Qaeda, and the judge reaffirmed that fact.” She continued, “Mr. Kromberg’s parting thrust was to link the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon with Masaud’s trip to Pakistan more than a week later, knowing that my son had planned his trip since July 2001 and that nothing linked him to that tragedy. That statement was the lowest blow of all, but the court did not chastise him for it.”

The Roots of Bigotry

Kromberg’s bias against Muslims and Arabs may stem from his ideological support of Israel. Following his participation in a 2002 United Jewish Communities mission to Israel, he published a journal of his trip on the UJC Web site. In it, Kromberg makes several generalizations that indicate his distrust of Arabs as an entire ethnic group. “When we left the bus, I for one was nervous, looking around to see if anyone was lurking around with what could be a suicide bomber belt,” Kromberg wrote. On the rights of women, he opined: “Of course, the contrast between the freedom of women in Israel and that of women in the Arab world couldn’t be more stark.”

Mentioning a briefing by Gideon Meir, Israel’s deputy director general for public affairs, Kromberg made wild claims about a Palestinian media conspiracy, including: “Reporters and stringers in areas under control of the Palestinians know that they will be killed (at worst) or ejected (at best) if they don’t report the stories with the spin the Palestinians want.” He bemoaned a “lack of resources on the Israeli side to provide information to the innumerable members of the press who are fed lies by the Palestinians.”

Furthermore, Kromberg displayed complete disregard for international law and the American-led peace process, by referring to the Israeli-occupied lands of the West Bank and Gaza in the language of Jewish extremists who advocate their ethnic cleansing. Judea and Samaria are terms intended to dispossess the Palestinians from their homeland and repopulate the occupied territories with colonial settlers.

Finally, Kromberg described visiting Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in Jerusalem, best known as the site of a 1946 act of Jewish terrorism by the militant Zionist organization Irgun which killed 91 people and injured 45. Kromberg expressed disappointment that there were not more tourists there. In July 2006 a celebration of the 60th anniversary of this terrorist act was attended by former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

It seems that the Al-Arian case provides Kromberg a perfect opportunity to punish Dr. Sami Al-Arian—even though, when all the evidence was heard in a court of law, a jury found him not guilty. Instead, Kromberg should recuse himself and Dr. Al-Arian should be released from prison when his sentence ends in April.

Melva Underbakke is an educator, researcher and activist from Tampa, FL and the founder of Friends of Human Rights, which opposes the denial of due process and human rights to Dr. Sami Al-Arian and many others.

SIDEBAR

Dr. Sami Al-Arian’s Statement* Before Judge Gerald Lee of the Eastern District of Virginia, Jan. 22, 2007

“Thank you, your honor, for giving me the opportunity to address the court. First of all, I have no contempt whatsoever for this honorable court, but all the respect in the world for it.

“The initial draft of the plea agreement presented by the government to my defense team contained a cooperation clause. I told my defense team, Bill Moffitt and Linda Moreno, that my belief system and conscience are totally against talking about anyone, and if the government insisted on including this section they should break off negotiations and proceed toward trial. The chief prosecutor in my trial, Mr. Terry Zitek, acknowledged as much during the Nov. 6, 2006 hearing in Tampa before Judge Moody when he said: ‘Mr. Al-Arian said no cooperation and we said fine and took it out.’

“Furthermore, from the outset of the negotiations both the government and the defense agreed that the disposition of the count I pleaded to on level 26 with three points deduction [was reduced] to level 23. The sentencing guideline for level 23 is 46 to 57 months. It was also agreed between the parties that I will receive time served and have an expedited deportation. Therefore, the government agreed to recommend the low-end of the guideline, which was essentially time served.

“However, there was always the risk that the judge [Moody] would go for the higher end or somewhere in between. So I asked Mr. Bill Moffitt what we could do to ensure the low end. He advised me that the only way to guarantee the low end would be to include cooperation, which I totally ruled out; this would have reduced it to level 21, with a maximum sentence of 37 months—way below the time served. So I took the risk of serving 11 more months; in fact, I am serving 11 more months for totally refusing the cooperation section.

“Moreover, in August 2000, I was subpoenaed by the government in a federal immigration proceeding, and I was asked the following question: ‘Do you believe in the use of violence to free Islam?’ My answer was one word, ‘No.’ Despite the absurdity and awkwardness of such a question, it was count 47 in the indictment and count 50 in the superseding indictment.

“I also would like to bring to the court’s attention to the way I have been treated for the past three weeks. In the past three weeks, I have been to four prisons. I spent 14 days in the Atlanta penitentiary under 23-hour lockdown, in a roach- and rat-infested environment. On two occasions, rats shared my diabetic snack. When I was transported from Atlanta to Petersburg (Virginia) and from Petersburg to Alexandria, they allowed me only to wear a T-shirt in subfreezing weather during long walks. In the early morning, the Atlanta guard took my thermal undershirt which I purchased from the prison and threw it in the garbage, and when I complained, he threatened to use a lockbox on my handcuffs, which would make them extremely uncomfortable. In Petersburg, the guard asked me to take off my clean T-shirt and boxers and gave me dirty and worn out ones. When I complained, he told me to ‘shut the f--- up.’ And when I asked why he was treating me like that, he said, ‘because you’re a terrorist.’ When I further complained to the lieutenant in charge, he shrugged it off and said if I don’t like it, I should write a grievance to the Bureau of Prisons. When I said he had the authority to give me clean clothes, he refused and said if I don’t like it I should write a grievance to the Bureau of Prisons.

“During one of the airlifts, an air marshal further tightened my already tightened handcuffs, and asked me ‘Why do you hate us?’ I told him, ‘I don’t hate you.’ He said, ‘I know who you are, I’ve read your s-h-i-t.’

“These are examples of the government’s harassment campaign against me that’s been taking place for years because of my political beliefs.”

The judge then interrupted Dr. Al-Arian and told him that he should not be harassed but that he [Judge Lee] has no control over the Bureau of Prisons. Adding that Dr. Al-Arian should not be mistreated because of his political beliefs, Judge Lee nonetheless held him in contempt.

* Fair summary, not verbatim