Moreno is one of the lawyers representing the former University of South Florida (USF) professor, who was fired from his teaching job shortly after his arrest. “Our defense is the First Amendment—freedom of political speech,” Moreno said.

Others arrested at the same time as Al-Arian were Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fariz, and Ghassan Zayed Ballut. They face a 50-count federal indictment—many of these charges are for “conspiracy.”

Held on the USF campus, the meeting was attended by 120 people. It was sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, Sisters United Muslim Association, the Arab American Student Alliance and Leadership, and the campus chapter of Amnesty International. Dr. Agha Saeed of the American Muslim Alliance and Marty Rosenbloom of Amnesty International also spoke. Anniversary events were also held in Chicago and Falls Church, Virginia.

“Though [Al-Arian] is not convicted of anything, he’s treated in the most degrading and atrocious fashion,” Moreno said. The conditions of pre-trial detention have included 23-hour lockdown, strip searches, use of chains and shackles, and restriction to noncontact visits only from immediate family members. The abuse and mistreatment can even extend to Al-Arian’s lawyers, Moreno said. In a recent episode, they met with him in a holding cell to review some of the hundreds of thousands of documents in the case. The guards told them, “You can sit on the floor to examine the documents,” she said.

According to a letter from the Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, the head of the U.S. Marshal Service in Tampa handcuffed and chained Al-Arian’s co-defendant and cell-mate Sameeh Hammoudeh on February 13 as he was praying.  
 
Guilt by association
In a January 21 hearing in Tampa’s federal court on a defense motion to dismiss the charges, defense attorney William Moffitt argued that the government had built its “terrorism” indictment on guilt by association, attempting to connect the defendants with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The government claims that Al-Arian is a key fund-raiser for the Palestinian organization, and its most prominent U.S. representative.

Steering clear of any claim that the defendants were involved in violent acts, the indictment says that they supported and applauded such acts by “speaking to others about events and receiving information on events in Palestine,” he said.

In another hearing the next day, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas McCoun ordered prosecutors to turn over English transcripts of about 200 out of 21,000 hours of taped conversations, along with other evidence. He rejected a request from Hatim Naji Fariz, however, that English transcripts for the rest of the tapes be made available to the defendants.

The trial is not scheduled to start until the beginning of 2005, by which time the defendants will have been jailed for close to two years.  
 
 
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