“It appears that the post 9/11 scare has caused some ammendments in the Bill of Rights to be simply thrown out when convenient.”
A column about the press conference I attended last Friday in Tampa in which the new lawyer in the trial against Sami Al-Arian (a professor who allegedly has ties with terrorists) was introduced. The lawyer said the case was “one of the most important in the nation right now,” and I think he is right.
Opinion Column
For most students at the University of South Florida the Sami Al-Arian saga came to an end when the engineering professor with alleged ties to terrorism was arrested last February. What most do not know is that the trial that he is facing might very well touch on and re-evaluate the most basic rights American citizens have.
At a news conference in Ybor City, Friday, Al-Arian’s new lawyer William B. Moffitt addressed the media in a small, crammed law firm office. He described the case of Al-Arian as one of the first “civil rights cases of the 21st century” while reporters crouched around him.
Moffitt spoke of the conditions Al-Arian is currently being held in as well as how Al-Arian was moved to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County where he is now housed in what is called a Special Housing Unit (SHU). These units were designed to “punish people that have committed offenses while in prison” and are meant to house “the worst of the worst.”
He went on to say that Al-Arian had to change his plan of defending himself mainly because he could not get access to sources such as law books or even talk with his attorney Robert McKee. Even now, Al-Arian has to have every phone call approved by the Bureau of Prisonsin Atlanta, Georgia, something no other detaineeawaiting trial has to do, Moffitt claimed.
This is troubling news because according to the Bill of Rights, every person standing trial in the United States has to have the chance for a fair trial. How can Al-Arian have a fair trial if he cannot even call his lawyer, let alone see him?
As Moffitt put it, it appears as if authorities have decided to start punishing Al-Arian even though he has not yet been convicted.
But how can somebody be held in a high security prison when the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” should apply to him?
It appears that the post 9/11 scare has caused some amendments in the Bill of Rights to simply be thrown out when convenient. This is what led to Al-Arian’s trial start date to be set for January 2005 (let’s assume for now that it is a mere coincidence that this date is after the next presidential election), although Amendment VI of the Bill of Rights calls for the “right to a speedy and public trial.” Speedy, in this case, seems to be relative.
The same apparently goes for Al-Arian’s right to “have the assistance of counsel for his defense,” which he might technically have, although it is heavily hampered by the beurocratic hoops his defending lawyer has to jump through in order to see him.
Do we, as a society, want these liberties taken away? For now we should assume that Al-Arian, just like any other person standing trial in the United States, is innocent until evidence brought forth against him proves otherwise.
If on the one hand he is guilty, the trial should show this. And if the trial was to show that he is innocent, after having spent two years of his life in a SHU in what Amnesty International has deemed “inhumane conditions,” and was treated as if he was guilty, no justice will be served.
It is understandable that the U.S. government wants to show the public that its is actively doing something in its fight against terrorism. This should include the investigation of terrorism suspects, but cannot mean that suspects can be whisked away to be held indefinitely and rights that are granted to them by the Constitution that we are supposedly trying to defend in the fight against terror are broken.
The events on Sept. 11 did end many lives in the crumbling Twin Towers as well as the Pentagon. Let’s not add justice to the list of deceased.
