[Peace] Fwd:[ANSWER]: Protest detention of Palestinian activist Jaou

[jencart]

--------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 15:58:51 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

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 – 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 — 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 Ac