Fw: [ANSWER]: Protest detention of Palestinian activist Jaoudat Abouazza

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "A.N.S.W.E.R." <answer.general at action-mail.org>
To: <answer.general at action-mail.org>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 9:58 PM
Subject: [ANSWER]: Protest detention of Palestinian activist Jaoudat
Abouazza


> International A.N.S.W.E.R.
> Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
> http://www.internationalANSWER.org
>
> PROTEST THE DETENTION OF PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST JAOUDAT
> ABOUAZZA
>
> March on the FBI Headquarters in Washington DC on June 29
> to Defend Civil Liberties!
>
> Leaders in the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition -- who have called
> the June 29 Washington DC March to Defend Civil Liberties,
> to take place at FBI headquarters &#8211; are calling on
> activists nationwide to send letters and e-mails of
> protest and solidarity demanding the immediate release
> from detention of Jaoudat Abouazza.  Abouazza is a
> Boston-based Palestinian activist swept into INS detention
> on the basis of a traffic violation. (Contact info at the
> end of this e-mail.)
>
> On the evening of May 30, Abouazza was stopped by the
> Cambridge police. Without being charged with a crime or
> read his rights by the arresting officers, he was
> handcuffed and brought to the Cambridge police station.
> Within hours, Jaoudat would find himself in jail being
> interrogated by the FBI for suspicion of "terrorism."
>
> The evidence? He was Palestinian and in possession of
> leaflets calling for the protest of the Israeli
> Independence Day Festival on June 9th in Boston.
>
> "The government's shameful policy of racial profiling is
> now rapidly expanding to include political profiling,"
> said Carl Messineo, a lawyer with the Partnership for
> Civil Justice and a member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Steering
> Committee.  "This was always the true goal of the attack
> on civil rights engineered by John Ashcroft:  to stifle
> dissent by trying to intimidate people from speaking out
> against injustice.
>
> "On June 29, thousands will turn out at the FBI's
> Washington headquarters to show they won't be intimidated
> by these tactics," Messineo continued. "For every one
> person they place into administrative detention, as they
> have done to Abouazza, there will be scores who will take
> to the streets.  It is the mass mobilization of the people
> that will turn back this extremist and repressive
> government program."
>
> Jaoudat is still being detained. Initial motions by his
> lawyer for a bail hearing and an official arraignment on
> the charges of his original arrest were circumvented in a
> pattern now familiar in the detention of Arabs and Muslims
> across the nation after September 11. Held over the
> weekend in jail, he was interrogated more than seven times
> by the FBI &#8212; sometimes awakened at 1:00 a.m. for
> questioning. Although he had already obtained a lawyer,
> she was present at none of these proceedings. By the time
> of his arraignment in court on the Monday following, the
> INS had already filed a detainer. Jaoudat was moved to an
> INS detention facility in the early hours of the morning
> on Tuesday, June 4.
>
> Incredibly, at Abouazza's pre-trial hearing on June 12, he
> was found in default for failure to appear at his
> pre-trial hearing, after the efforts of his
> court-appointed attorney to secure his transfer to the
> courtroom were rejected by the court.
>
> Jaoudat was of course unable to appear because he remains
> in INS detention.  Efforts by his court-appointed lawyer
> to either secure his transfer to the courtroom or arrange
> for videoconferencing, which the facility Jaoudat is being
> held in is equipped for, were both denied. The court also
> decided to issue a warrant for his arrest on the same
> charges following his release from federal custody.
>
> Under legislation in force since 1996 (the
> Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), now
> bolstered by the recent USA Patriot Act, Jaoudat can now
> expect indefinite detention by the INS. In case after case
> since September 11, Arab and Muslim immigrants have been
> imprisoned by the INS, generally for minor infractions or
> irregularities in their immigration papers, and then held
> incommunicado, denied access to lawyers or family, with no
> procedures for appeal or judicial intervention. Under
> provisions for "secret evidence," they and their attorneys
> may never even learn the nature of the case against them.
>
> The Bush administration has now extended their reach to
> indefinitely incarcerate citizens without charge of
> wrongdoing, without trial and without access to lawyers.
> In two recent cases the Bush administration has named U.S.
> citizens "enemy combatants," transferred them to military
> jails and denied them access to lawyers. The government
> has said that it has no intention of charging them with
> any illegal act nor providing any trial. The Justice
> Department has stated that a U.S. citizen can be put in
> prison indefinitely at Bush's discretion, never to be
> taken before any tribunal, until President Bush decides
> his "war on terrorism" is over.
>
> Expanded powers of domestic surveillance put into place in
> the last week of May have made it easier to target
> political dissidents. The Justice Department and the FBI
> appear to have begun a new wave of arrests, specifically
> targeting Palestinian political activists. The case of a
> Palestinian student organizer in Chicago and the case of
> Jaoudat Abouazza here in Boston are two prominent
> examples. Both occur in the context of increasingly vocal
> criticism of Israel, and U.S. support for Israeli
> policies, in which Arab and Muslim immigrants have played
> a significant role. On April 20, 100,000 people marched on
> Washington to protest Bush's "war on terrorism." The large
> presence of Palestinian activists made itself felt across
> the country.
>
> In Boston, Abouazza has been a leading activist in the
> Palestinian struggle. His photograph appeared in the
> Boston Globe as one of the leaders in a local march
> against the Israeli occupation on April 6th that drew
> close to 2,000 activists--the largest to date in Boston.
> He has participated in weekly protest vigils in front of
> the Israeli Consulate. Several of those protests have come
> under heavy surveillance by the Boston police, who have
> repeatedly photographed demonstrators and their license
> plates.
>
> His arrest on May 30 occurred a little more than a week
> before a major protest against the Israel Day Festival
> planned for June 9th in which Abouazza has been a key
> organizer. Flyers for the protest which were found in his
> car were cited by the prosecutor in court as a reason to
> continue holding him.
>
> People who are familiar with the history of this protest
> will recognize that this is not the first time Palestinian
> free speech rights have come under assault by the police
> here in Boston. A similar protest in Brookline last year
> was illegally suppressed by the local police; its leader,
> Amer Jubran, was arrested on trumped up assault charges
> which were ultimately thrown out of court as completely
> groundless--but only after a militant national campaign in
> his defense. His lawyers later revealed through motions of
> discovery that the police had been in communication with
> the Israeli consulate, and had given them the names and
> photographs of Palestinian demonstrators. Such actions
> represent a serious threat of retaliation against them if
> they should return home and against family members still
> living in the occupied territories.
>
> This shameful history of illegal arrests and detention and
> the unconstitutional suppression of Palestinian free
> speech rights must stop. The increasing criminalization of
> dissent in the United States in the aftermath of September
> 11th endangers the rights of all of us, citizens and
> immigrants alike. We urge everyone who is concerned for
> fundamental human rights to act now in defense of Jaoudat
> Abouazza.
>
> We urge people to send letters of protest and solidarity
> to our office so that they can be forwarded both to the
> judge and to Jaoudat himself.
>
> SEND TO:
> Jaoudat Abouazza Defense Committee
> International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End
> Racism)
> 31 Germania Street
> Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
> 617/522-6626
>
> http://www.iacboston.org/ANSWER
> ANSWERBoston at iacboston.org
>
>
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