Write a Letter This Ramadan

Letter writing has become a lost art. In today’s world of texting and emailing, a letter received by postal mail, written on paper with pen, is something really special. Fewer and fewer children these days even know how to write in cursive, and thus have trouble reading the sometimes very personal script of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Practicing our penmanship is only one of many reasons why we should encourage our family members to keep in touch with loved ones this Ramadan, and also to initiate contact with those Muslims who are isolated in US prisons.

National Coalition To Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) has initiated a letter writing campaign for the second year in a row for Ramadan. Part of the mission of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms is to educate the public about the erosion of civil and political freedoms in our society, and the abuses of prisoners within the U.S. criminal justice system especially after 9/11. Many individuals have been the victims of government prosecutorial overreach and pre-emptive prosecutions based on thought crimes, entrapment, and manufactured charges.

Last year was a big success with even more letters being requested from the community. “As a result of your letters, many prisoners received communication with the outside world for the first time. Let’s write a short note to tell someone you care, to tell them that they matter, and that they are not forgotten. Let them know they will always be part of our Community and that they are in our prayers. It’s an easy process that takes only a few minutes, but would mean so much to the prisoners and their loved ones.”

NCPCF also organized a Ramadan gift program, sending $100 to the poorest prisoners’ commissaries, enabling them to buy things for Ramadan like dates, honey, books, and things they need. Those who wish to donate or to participate in the letter writing program should contact prisoners@civilfreedoms.org. Since there are hundreds of Muslim prisoners on the list, greeting them all is more work than one person can reasonably promise to do. Writing to the prisoners needs to be a community activity. Why is this so important?

Sharmin Sadequee of NCPCF explains: “Believing the media and government, the larger Muslim American community isolates and ostracizes Muslim political prisoners and their families and treats them as “other”. Different sections of the Muslim community in US have internalized the meta-narratives of our government about their own community, faith and religion, and abandoned the prisoners and their families. But, Muslims have a duty to help prisoners according to traditions of our prophet (pbuh). ” She states:

“We have received many letters from prisoners saying they did not know that there were people and organizations in the US that care about Muslim prisoners, although many Muslims from Europe have been writing to prisoners in the US.”

NCPCF is looking for volunteers from around the country to organize letter writing activities and events in their own community, which would be done as a group. The volunteers will receive pre-addressed envelopes as many as they want. Some people request 100 others request 200 or 50 or 75.

The paintball man, Ismail Royer wrote to NCPCF: “Greetings…I am very grateful for the money your organization sent last Ramadan. It was the first time I’d had that much money in my account for many years and it made Ramadan that much more special.”

TMO asked Ghaliyaa Haq of freedetainees.com why a similar campaign does not exist for the detainees at Guantanamo, who are on hunger strike for freedom or death. She explains that “the reason no one has a specific to Guantanamo letter writing campaign is because the prisoners almost never get the mail. I have never heard of a single prisoner getting mail from anyone but their lawyers and very rarely a wife or mother.  I don’t really ask people to send to Guantanamo because they simply don’t give it to them.”

The current update is “they just decided that despite an attempted lawsuit they will go ahead and force feed during Ramadan – albeit at night instead of daytime.”

There are many things going on that are worse than the lack of mail.

“There are some seriously needy prisoners here in the US though. I mean young people who have no one at all. There are women too like that. Sr. Fatima (Colleen LaRose) has no one. Jamie Ramirez is the other one… I am sure you are aware of the fact that once a prisoner is convicted CAIR and places like that vanish as quickly as possible. The prisoner is almost always left to his own devices then,” concludes Haq.

In May 2013, the female relatives of political prisoners organized a demonstration at the Department of Justice in DC to protest how the DOJ turned their relatives into political prisoners and buried them alive in federal prisons. It was the first time women relatives from around the country, whose loved ones have been snatched away from them in preemptive prosecution cases, came together to demand justice for their loved ones.

“It was historic and beginning of a movement like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,” Sadequee told TMO.

“Unfortunately people do not know enough about what is going on in their own country. People are being imprisoned for crimes that they did not do…. They are basically being framed. They’re being put into prison for feeding hungry children,” said a prisoner’s daughter during the rally,” reported PressTV.

Attorney Steve Downs told TMO: “NCPCF has a data base of over 800 cases that includes all of the preemptive prosecution cases which we are following. We have determined that about 90% of the cases which the government has listed as “terrorism” cases are either preemptive prosecutions or have “elements” of preemptive prosecution (in which the government prosecuted on fake or manufactured charges individuals who seemed suspicious but who had not committed any crime). 

Downs continues: “Many innocent prisoners were abandoned by their Mosque or Community or family following conviction, and are living in isolated conditions that amount to torture. Just the human contact of a letter can make all the difference. This Ramadan, we should do what we can to keep up their spirits and hope until a solution to our civil rights crisis can be found and the prisoners can be freed.”

CMU Prisoners Seek Answers

Daniel McGowan, one of the only white men to serve time in a CMU (Communications Management Unit) prison, has been released to a halfway house in Brooklyn, NY. McGowan was incarcerated for acts of arson credited to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in protest against the Oregon logging industry.

Of the CMU inmates who are there because of a link to terrorism, Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) says, “The vast majority of these folks are there due to entrapment or material support convictions. In other words, terrorism-related convictions that do not involve any violence or injury.”

Alia Malek writes in The Nation, “CCR attorneys also noticed the presence of CMU inmates who had neither links to terrorism nor communications infractions. They fell into three general groups, with occasional overlaps. The first had made complaints against the BOP either through internal procedures or formal litigation, and their placement appeared retaliatory. The second held unpopular political views, both left- and right-leaning, from animal rights and environmental activists to neo-Nazis and extreme antiabortion activists. The third seemed to be Muslims, including African-American Muslims, whose convictions had nothing to do with terrorism and ranged from robbery to credit card fraud.”

With the help of attorneys from CCR, McGowan along with co-plaintiffs Yassin Aref, Royal Jones, and Kifah Jayyousi filed a lawsuit in 2010 against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, questioning why they were transferred from the general prison population to CMUs in Marion, Illinois and Terre Haute, Indiana.

The lawsuit states, “Like all prisoners designated to the CMU, Plaintiffs received no procedural protections related to their designation, and were not allowed to examine or refute the allegations that led to their transfer.”

Earlier this year, Yassin Aref was able to overturn his “terrorism” conviction and was moved to a low security prison closer to his family. However, TMO has learned through personal emails from Aref that he has suddenly without any warning been moved to some other kind of high security prison and put under a new classification called “SIM.”

Aref was told the reason for his transfer is that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) claims he has been convicted for threatening the government, though he was never charged with threatening the government. His attempts to correct the information and to find out why he was moved back into a high security prison have been ignored.

On April 1, 2013 McGowan published a very important article, “Court Documents Prove I was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for my Political Speech” in the Huffington Post, which describes an ordeal very similar to Aref’s:

“I was a low security prisoner with a spotless disciplinary record, and my sentencing judge recommended that I be held at a prison close to home. But one year into my sentence, I was abruptly transferred to an experimental segregation unit, opened under the Bush Administration, that is euphemistically called a “Communications Management Unit” (CMU).”

While serving his time, McGowan continued to write and publish political commentaries.

“No one in the BOP ever told me to stop, or warned me that I was violating any rules. But then, without a word of warning, I was called to the discharge area one afternoon in May 2008 and sent to the CMU at Marion. Ten days after I arrived, still confused about where I was and why, I was given a single sheet of paper called a “Notice of Transfer.” It included a few sentences about my conviction, much of which was incorrect, by way of explanation for my CMU designation… Frustrated, I filed administrative grievances to try to get the information corrected, and find out how this decision had been made. When that did not work, I filed a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. I got nowhere. The BOP would not fix the information, and wouldn’t explain why they thought I belonged in a CMU.”

“Only now — three years after I filed a federal lawsuit to get to the truth — have I learned why the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sent me to the CMU: they simply did not like what I had to say in my published writing and personal letters,” McGowan explains.

Authored by Leslie Smith, the Chief of the BOP’s so-called “Counter Terrorism Unit,” memos catalog in detail things McGowan had said in past years in order to justify his designation to the ultra-restrictive units:

“My attempts to ‘unite’ environmental and animal liberation movements, and to ‘educate’ new members of the movement about errors of the past; my writings about ‘whether militancy is truly effective in all situations’; a letter I wrote discussing bringing unity to the environmental movement by focusing on global issues; the fact that I was ‘publishing [my] points of view on the internet in an attempt to act as a spokesperson for the movement’; and the BOP’s belief that, through my writing, I have ‘continued to demonstrate [my] support for anarchist and radical environmental terrorist groups.’”

Another ELF activist, Marie Mason, who is serving a 22 year sentence on “enhanced terrorism” charges due to property damage including shooting a bottle rocket into a Monsanto office building after hours in protest against GMOs (no one was hurt), was also moved without explanation to a CMU-like prison this year. Mason is an artist, musician, and writer who has a wide following of supporters. She had been housed in a normal women’s prison where she worked in the kitchen with other inmates and was even allowed to teach guitar lessons. Despite good behavior, she now has to spend most of her day in lockdown and has very limited personal contact.

Earth First! Newswire reported on legal challenges filed by Mason related to her sudden and unexplained relocation to a “control-management”-type women’s prison in Carswell, Texas. Ryan Abbot writes that the “FBI denied her FOIA request, to cover up the government’s ‘Green Scare’ program, meant to chill the speech rights of environmental activists.”

A large percentage of these prisoners being isolated under intense scrutiny are passionate idealists, above average intelligence, highly educated, and many of them are eloquent and prolific writers. McGowan was writing for the Huffington Post even while in prison; Aref is a poet with a list of email subscribers; Mason has her own blog where she gives and receives community support. For example, Marie Mason addressed a group of labor organizers with “Words of Encouragement and Respect” on the need to coordinate actions with environmentalists and peace activists.

This is precisely the type of speech that McGowan discovered that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) believes is adequate cause to isolate a prisoner: speech intended to unite political activists of various ideologies. It is genuinely ironic that CMUs are being used to isolate and closely monitor prisoners, while at the same time allowing them email access in order for them to voice their political opinions and even advise people on the outside. It seems to be some kind of social experiment, about which much more needs to be learned.

==
CLASSIFICATION
a poem by Yassin Aref

If the worst trial is,
the one that makes you laugh
then the best joke should be
the one that makes you cry.

My indictment and accusation
my trial and conviction
were the drama and fiction
still I got 15 years in prison

First the placed me in PC
in the name of my protection
then they sent me to CMU
“to manage my communication”
I was cut off from my family
with no any physical contact
even with my baby and children

Now BOP keeping SIM on me
stating I “had been convicted
for threatening the US government”
and I am danger to the community
but why? and how? they always,
refuse to answer my questions

That’s why
I am puzzled
not sure what should I do
call this the worst trial
and laugh on it
or name it the best joke
and cry? 

Palestinian Soccer Player Nears Death

While President Obama awarded Israeli president Shimon Perez with a medal last week, world outrage about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has escalated exponentially as professional footballer Mahmoud al Sarsak nears death from his hunger strike of over 90 days in protest of his illegal incarceration. Thousands of other Palestinian prisoners, including 20 children, have joined his hunger strike. Despite a media blackout, the word has been spreading globally through Facebook and Twitter.

With Sarsak, Akram Al-Rikhawi, a prisoner for 8 years on his 57th day of hunger strike, wrote in a letter to the world: “This is an urgent and final distress call from captivity, slow and programmed death inside the cells of so-called Ramle Prison hospital, that you know that your sons and brothers are still struggling against death and you pay no attention to them and do not remember their cause…You are the ones able to support us for victory in our battle.”

Sarsak, a 25 year old from Rafah, in Gaza, was arrested at a checkpoint while on his way to the West Bank to play with the Palestinian national team in 2009. Since then, he has been detained without charge or trial, and has not been allowed to see his family.

He is being held under the Unlawful Combatant Law, which allows Israel to detain Palestinians from Gaza indefinitely without charge or criminal proceedings being brought to court. As with every other Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, Mahmoud was transferred to a prison outside of the Occupied Territories. This is illegal under Articles 49 and 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of prisoners from an occupied territory to that of the occupying state. 2,000 prisoners, according to Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer, are held as administrative detainees without a chance of trial.

UN Special Envoy to the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, has called for the 25 year old’s release, saying that ‘he has suffered immensely.’ Sarkar has lost 33 percent of his body weight. After three months without food, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel issued a warning that he could die at any moment.

There are huge demonstrations expected in Scotland on Saturday, where Israel’s women’s soccer team is to play against Scotland. Mick Napier, chairman of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), explains: “There should be no business as usual for Israel’s national teams while Israel denies Palestinians the same privileges.”

Meanwhile, dozens of professional athletes have been rallying to Sarsak’s cause, sending out twitters to fans. “In the name of sporting solidarity, justice and human rights, we declare our support for Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak. As European sportsmen, we believe that every person has the right to a fair and independent trial,” wrote Marcelo del Pozo, an Argentinian player for Spain.

Seville striker Frédéric Kanouté posted on his website: “In the name of civil liberties, justice, and basic human rights, we call for the release of Mahmoud Sarsak.” Kanouté gained international fame when he lifted his team jersey to reveal a shirt with the word “Palestine”after scoring a goal during a league match at the height of Israel’s January 2009 attack on Gaza, an action for which he was fined $4,000.

Other supporters include Nicolas Anelka, former player for Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Real Madrid, and French sailor Jo Le Guen. Prominent figures such as former France and Manchester United midfielder Eric Cantona, film director Ken Loach and American philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky have urged Israeli authorities to release Sarsak. Protests under the banner “Let Sarsak Live” took place in London’s Trafalgar Square last week to raise awareness of his ordeal. In a letter to The Guardian, former UK Member of Parliament John Austin called on the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to “reconsider its decision to hold its under-21 championship in Israel in 2013.”

Amnesty International also proclaimed that Sarsak, “who is at risk of death after more than 90 days on hunger strike in protest against his detention by Israel should immediately be admitted to a civilian hospital or released so that he can receive life-saving medical care.”

Philippe Piat, vice-president of FIFPro, the global organization which represents professional footballers said, “freedom of movement is a fundamental right of every citizen. It is also written down in the FIFA Regulations that players must be allowed to play for the national team of their country. But actually for some footballers it is impossible to defend the colors of their country. They cannot cross the border. They cannot visit their family. They are locked up. This is an injustice.’

As the Israeli Asaf Harofe Hospital announced that Sarkar’s death could come within hours, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) became heavily involved in pressing the Israelis for Sarsak’s release. On June 20, Mahmoud Sarsak rejected an offer from negotiators and lawyers to be released to Norway or Sweden.

Mahmoud wants to be free to go to his home in the Gaza Strip only.

Gaza TV News reported on June 21: “After 91 days on Hunger Strike, Mahmoud Sarsak is to be released on July 17th. We will post further news as it reaches us.” This report has not yet been confirmed, so it is vital that the public continue writing letters and making phone calls of support.

Debating Prisoners' Release

Two bills have been introduced in the Massachusetts House and Senate,
which are meeting a lot of protest from the local community,
especially among those of color. House Bill 3811 and Senate Bill 2504
would implement a “three strikes” sentencing policy. The issue is
currently in conference with state legislators, elected officials, and
criminal justice advocates.

The bill would require anyone being charged with certain offenses a
first or second time to serve two-thirds of their sentence before
being eligible for parole, while a third offense would receive the
maximum prison sentence without possibility of parole. The Senate bill
is more lenient than the House bill, as it introduces some leniency
towards drug offenders and targets only dangerous or violent
criminals. The House bill considers any and all felony convictions as
counting towards the three strikes. Opponents are being asked to
contact state lawmakers in hopes of revising these bills so that
prison times will not be extended for non-violent offenders.

State Representative William Brownsberger received a standing ovation
at a recent panel discussion on the “three strikes” bills for saying
this “isn't a black and Latino issue, it's a human issue.”

Nancy Gertner, a retired judge from the US District Court for the
District of Massachusetts, wrote in a recent editorial in the Boston
Globe: “Why is Massachusetts moving in a direction opposite that of
other states -- retaining life without parole for juveniles, refusing
to enact post conviction DNA testing statutes and more recently,
proposing a new version of the discredited “Three Strikes and You’re
Out” crime approach?... Existing get-tough policies have pushed our
system to the breaking point.”

Gertner is particularly “mystified” by the Massachusetts legislature's
repeated rejection of DNA testing: “No one is interested in the
imprisonment of an innocent man.”

Overcrowding averages 143 percent over capacity; one unit at MCI
Framingham is even at 331 percent over capacity. Judge Gertner
concludes that “if the new law increases the prison population as it
is likely to do, the Commonwealth will have to build more capacity
fast – costing $100,000 per cell. This is on top of the $1 billion a
year the state spends on incarceration. Worse yet, since the current
system is too strained to meaningfully invest in keeping prisoners
from reoffending, we are doomed to keep paying to house some of the
same prisoners over and over.”

Mississippi and Texas have implemented far more intelligent reforms.
By reserving prison space for the most violent and instituting
rehabilitation programs for low level offenders, Mississippi has cut
its prison population by 22 percent, saving roughly $450 million,
according to one study. Texas enacted similar reforms in 2007, saving
an additional $2 billion. Crime rates in both states have
substantially declined.

Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, but it is the only New
England state that enforces life without parole for juveniles. Arnold
King has served 40 years of a life sentence for a shooting that
occurred when he was a teenager. While serving his time, King worked
hard to educate and improve himself, and became a valuable member of
the community. The former Massachusetts furlough program used to allow
prisoners temporary leaves of absence from prison in order to work,
participate in educational programs, visit family members, obtain
medical treatment, look for work upon release, attend a funeral or
other valid reasons. King went on 30 furloughs, during which time he
worked actively with the Rainbow Coalition, interned at the State
House, did a number of speaking engagements trying to curb youth
violence, and he was even married at Jamaica Pond while on a furlough.
His brother, Kazi Toure, states:

“Prisoners, piecing their lives back together, truly benefited from
this humane rehabilitation program as a way of reacclimating back into
society. But the program was shut down. Everyone who was a lifer was
pulled back behind the wall - where they have remained.”

While there has been a reduction in clemency towards prisoners who
have tried to better themselves, there has been an increase in the
practice of reducing prison time or releasing prisoners – in exchange
for acting as an informant. For example, a man named Johnny Martorano, who
admitted to killing 22 people, was released from prison after
serving just 12 years, because he gave information about Dan Connelly,
the FBI agent, who let Whitey Bulger, the Rifleman Flemmi, and Stevie
Selemmi commit whatever crimes they wanted including murder for the
FBI, in order to get information about other crimes. Similar deals
have been given to supposedly dangerous Muslims incarcerated for
terrorism related offenses: they are often given softer sentences in
exchange for incriminating old friends.

Why are prisoners who are no longer a threat to society being kept
locked up, while other prisoners, including serial killers, are being
set free in exchange for information? There needs to be more public
involvement and oversight of the process by which prisoners are
granted or denied a second chance at life. Three-strikes laws don't
protect the community but collectively punish taxpayers. They reduce
incentive for good behavior, and increase the financial and emotional
calamities experienced by the families of those incarcerated, who live
in our community.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer.