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Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace – January 14, 2004
Dr. Al-Arian spends 46th birthday in captivity
Today, January 14, 2004,Dr. Sami Al-Arian will spend his 46th birthday as a political prisoner in the maximum-security wing of Coleman Federal Penitentiary, a facility designed to hold convicted felons, not pre- trial detainees.
Dr. Al-Arian has been held in Coleman under atrocious conditions since March 27, 2003, where he is not permitted to make telephone calls or have contact visits with family, rights that are granted to other inmates.
The respected international human rights monitor Amnesty International sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons describing Dr. Al-Arian's detention as "gratuitously punitive." The group cited the 23-hour lockdown, strip searches, use of chains and shackles, severely limited recreation, lack of access to any religious service and denial of a watch or clock in a windowless cell where the artificial light is never turned off.
The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace asks the local and national media to assume their responsibility in bringing facts to the public and request from the government and Judge Thomas McCoun an explanation for Dr. Al-Arian's appalling conditions.
We ask supporters and justice-seeking individuals to remember Dr. Al-Arian today, a prisoner of conscience spending his birthday in isolation from his family and friends.
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