رسالة من سجن أمريكي كبير



في الوقت الذي يستمر فيه شارون وآلة حربه بجزر الفلسطينيين بلا رحمة، قامت
محكمة في العاصمة ألأردنية عمان بإستصدار حكم مجحف بالإعدام على الأمريكي
من أصل عربي رائد حجازي بتهمة التخطيط لاستهداف صهاينة وأمريكان في الأردن
بعد أن قامت المحكمة نفسها بتبرئته من تهمة الانتماء لتنظيم القاعدة.
وأدناه تجدون رسالة من أحد المعتقلين العرب في سجون الولايات المتحدة يصف
فيها سوء المعاملة التي يتعرض لها في زنزانته الانفرادية منذ اعتقاله في 14
ديسمبر/كانون الأول 2001. هذا المعتقل أسمه رابح حداد، وهو ليس متهما بشىء 
سوى مخالفته لقوانين الإقامة الأمريكية، فهو معتقل لأنه عربي ومسلم، ولأن 
حكومة الولايات المتحدة قد أعلنت الحرب على العرب والمسلمين.

بغض النظر عن صحة التهم الموجهة لرائد حجازي، فإن ما لا شك فيه هو أن
الجريمة لا تتناسب مع العقاب، خاصة في الوقت الذي يسرح فيه ويمرح قتلة
الصهاينة والحكومة الأمريكية في فلسطين والعالم دون حسيب أو رقيب.

وبغض النظر عن ما لم يتهم به رابح حداد، فإن الأنظمة العربية كلها لا
يجوز أن تقبل أن يستمر اعتقال العرب في الولايات المتحدة دون مبرر قانوني، وأن يساء
التعامل معهم، وأن تنتهك حقوقهم، فهذا يسيء إليها بقدر ما يسيء للعرب المعتقلين
أنفسهم.

فسواء حوكم العربي-الأمريكي في الأردن كي يعدم، أو أرسل العربي إلى السجون
الأمريكية دون محاكمة، فإن القاسم المشترك هو تحويل العالم إلى سجن أمريكي كبير. 
للأنظمة والشعوب
ولا يعتقدن أحد أنه بمنأى عن هذا الإرهاب أو أنه بصمته وتعاونه سوف ينجو
بجلده من هذه المحرقة السياسية الكبرى التي تتم تحت ستار محاربة الإرهاب،
بل أن الأنظمة التي تقف حجر عثرة في وجه مخططات واشنطن وتل أبيب، ومنها
مخطط الوطن البديل للفلسطينيين في الأردن، ستكون على رأس من يتعرض للإرهاب
الأمريكي والصهيوني.

فهذا عدونا قد وضع قوانين المعركة: القتل أو القتال.

فلأننا نواجه عدواً لا يرحم،لا خيار أمامنا سوى التصدي والصمود.
ولا مناص من رفع الصوت عالياً لكي لا يتبجحوا أنهم داسوا علينا دون
أن نجرؤ على مجرد الاعتراض.

الحرية للعرب المعتقلين في السجون الأمريكية
الحرية لحملة البنادق في السجون العربية والصهيونية 

د. ابراهيم علوش

A letter from an American Prison

While Mr. Haddad's letter, reproduced below, is initially addressed to one
member of the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism (CCAWR), it's really to
all who are working to defend civil liberties and end racial profiling.
Suggested action is given at the end of the letter. You may also forward
this letter to various human rights organizations worldwide. Mr. Haddad's
only crime is that his visa was expired and he overstayed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan. 27, 2002

Dear Mr. Thayer,

Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful letter of Jan. 22. I do
greatly appreciate your interest and efforts for my release. Please extend
my regards and gratitude to all members of CCAWR.

I am sorry to say that I was not able to see the protests because the window
in my cell is "Whited out" to allow light in but not for me to see anything
out. I was able, however, to hear about it from other inmates who own small
radios and heard it on the news.

Allow me to take this opportunity to bring you slightly into my world here
at MCC [Metropolitan Correctional Center] Chicago. I am in a 6' x 9'
solitary cell that seems to have been designed for extremely violent or
extremely troublesome inmates. The bed is situated in the center of the room
with about a foot and a half on either side of it to the wall. The bed is a
metal slab with four legs bolted to the floor and fitted on all four corners
with special fittings to hold straps if it should become necessary.

I have a camera fixed on me right outside my door that has completely
deprived me of any kind of privacy since that door has a small window which
allows them to check and see if I'm still there around the clock. It's for
my safety, they say.

I am allowed one 15 minute call to my family every 30 days. My food is
handed to me through a slit in the door 2-1/2" x 12". The same opening is
used to put the cuffs on me before the door is opened for any reason. I am
allowed 3 showers a week for which I have to be cuffed to walk 10 paces to
the shower that has a door similar to my cell's door. I'm only un-cuffed
after I'm inside and the door is locked.

I also get 1 hour of recreation 5 days a week, and what a joke that is. I am
led, cuffed, from my cell to a cage (literally) just down the hall which is
the same size as my cell. In it is a homemade stationary bicycle that has no
resistance and thus is worthless for exercising. I have to wait until the
cage is empty because I cannot be put in there with anyone else, for my own
safety, they say.

I have made numerous pleas to the warden and others to let me speak with my
family once a week, but my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I have been under
these conditions for the past month and a half, which can drive a person to
the extreme limits of his/her mental, emotional, and psychological
capabilities.

Where do we draw the line between justice and oppression? Between
prosecution and persecution? Is due process supposed to serve society or is
society supposed to be enslaved by "due process"? Many people on this side
of the fence, I'm sorry to say, have become Pavlovic dogs of sorts when it
comes to "due process." I have been treated like the worst criminal you can
imagine when I have not even been charged with a crime, save overstaying my
visa, which I was in the process of remedying.

All of this has done nothing but harden my will and strengthened my resolve
to overcome and persevere. Your efforts and the efforts of others are like
torches of hope that light my way in this deep and dark tunnel that I've
entered and I am eternally grateful for that.

Please convey my warmest greetings and thanks to all those who planned,
participated or supported your efforts. May God bless you all.

Sincerely,
Rabih Haddad

P.S. Please forgive my spelling. I did not realize how dependant I've become
on my computer's spell-check until now.

P.S.2 I forgot to mention the waves of cockroaches that invade the cell at
night and crawl all over everything, including me.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Letter from An American Muslim on the behalf of Rabih Haddad:

Bismillah irRahman irRaheem
In the Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Kind

Salaam alaikum wa rahmatullah & Greetings of Peace,

I must ask you again: What ever happened to our US Constitution and the
Civil Rights of those accused? When did our government become a government
of secret trials and imprisonment without trial? The above letter from Rabih
Haddad is disturbing to me and if you believe in the "WAY OF LIFE IN
AMERICA" it should be upsetting to you!!! Why have we blindly followed the
same path the German people followed during the rise of Hitler!??? My father
fought in WWII to protect our nation and our constitution. My great- uncles,
grandfather, uncles, brothers and countless friends fought to protect our
freedoms and our constitution...yet it seems we are throwing away all that,
for what?

Above is a letter sent by Assistant Imam (Muslim minister) Rabih Haddad from
his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in downtown Chicago.
Haddad is well known in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area as an ecumenical leader
and assistant Imam of a local mosque. He is co-founder of the Global Relief
Foundation, the second largest Muslim charity in the U.S., which has had its
assets frozen since December 14th, even though the government has yet to
produce any evidence against it.

Haddad, along with thousands of others, has been racially profiled by our
government for being Arab and Muslim. He has been locked up in solitary
confinement since December 14th, without criminal charges, denied bond,
without the government releasing any of the alleged "evidence" against him.

The Detroit Free Press, Detroit Metro Times, Congressman John Conyers and
the ACLU have sued Atty General Ashcroft to open the heretofore closed court
hearings, which even his family, let alone the rest of the public and press,
have been barred from. For more information, please go to the following URL:
http://chicago.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=7428&group=webcast



PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW:

You can also help support Rabih Haddad by sending a letter to him at the
following address:

Rabih Haddad
#30189-039
Metropolitan Correctional Center
71 W. Van Buren Street
Chicago, IL 60605

As several letters sent to him have not delivered by the prison authorities,
we strongly recommend that you send letters via certified mail, return
receipt requested. Please consider enclosing a money order made out to him
also. In order for him to mail stuff back, he needs to purchase stamps from
the MCC commissary. That's also the only way he can get all but the most
basic toiletries and other goods - nothing can be sent in from the outside,
aside from reading materials.

Write/call/fax the following officials and demand that they stand up for
fair treatment for Rabih. No prisoner should be treated this way. MCC
officials claim he is in solitary confinement "for his own protection," but
then why the punitive visitation policies? Why the humiliating shackles?
...all for a man who has no criminal charges. Address messages of protest
to:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney, Northern District, Illinois
219 S. Dearborn St., 5th Floor, Chicago 60604

Phone: (312) 353-5300 Fax: (312) 353-2067

Metropolitan Correctional Center: 312-233-0567. Push option 4 for "staff
directory," and ask the operator if you can speak with Mrs. Kenner, the
warden's secretary. Fax: 312-322-0565

Sincerely Your Sister in Peace,
Sister Anisah David, director

Note: while Sharon and his Zionist war machine continue to slaughter
Palestinians, a Jordanian court has sentenced an American citizen to death
on charges of PLANNING to commit violent acts against Jewish and American
targets in Jordan.  The same court had exonerated the American defendant,
Raed Hijjazi, of belonging to Al Qaeida organization.

On the other hand, the letter from Rabih Haddad above indicates that he has
been in solitary confinement in an American jail since December 14, 2001,
solely for visa violations, i.e., solely for being Arab and Muslim at a time
when the U.S. government has declared war on Arabs and Muslims.

So regardless of the truth of the accusations on which the American-Arab
Raed Hijjazi was indicted, there is no doubt that the punishment doesn't
befit the crime, especially at a time when the assassins of the "Israel" and
the U.S. government roam Palestine and the rest of the planet without any
restraint.

And regardless of what the Arab Rabih Haddad was accused or not accused of
(we don't know), Arab regimes should not continue to tolerate the unlawful
arrest, mistreatment, and violation of the rights of Arabs in America
because that tarnishes their image as much as it affects Arab-Americans.

For whether an Arab-American is tried in Jordan so he may be sentenced to
death, or an Arab was sent to jail in America without due process or a
trial, the common denominator remains the transformation of the whole world
into a large American jail for both peoples and regimes.

Let no one think that they can keep out of the way of this terror taking
place today in the name of fighting terrorism, or that they can save their
hides from this grand political holocaust by offering it their silence and
collaboration.  On the contrary, the regimes standing in the way of
Washington and Tel Aviv's designs on the world, including the project of
having a substitute homeland for the Palestinians in Jordan, shall be the
first to suffer from American and Zionist terrorism.

Thus our enemy has laid down the rules of the battle: to be killed or to
fight back.

So we have no choice but to hold out and remain steadfast, because we are
facing a merciless enemy.

We have no choice but to raise our voices in protest so they can't brag that
they have stepped all over us, without us daring to complain:

Freedom to Arab Prisoners in American Jails,

and Freedom to all Freedom Fighters in Arab and Zionist Jails

Later
Ibrahim Alloush

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