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TAMPA - A national Islamic civil rights organization said Thursday the conditions under which former university Professor Sami Al-Arian is being held are inhumane, while his wife compared his treatment to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Al-Arian has been held for 14 months at the Coleman Federal Penitentiary on charges that he used an Islamic think tank and a charity he founded to raise money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, is being held in a unit designed to house disruptive prisoners, though he has not been convicted of a crime. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on Islamic-American Relations, and Al-Arian's wife, Nahla, said he is held 23 hours a day in a small cell, continues to be strip-searched despite a judge's order that it stop, and has been denied access to religious services. Al-Arian is only allowed one 15-minute telephone call a month, they said. "Maybe my husband is not tortured physically, but mentally and emotionally," Nahla Al-Arian said. "I want this nightmare to end." CAIR sought access to Al-Arian to inspect the conditions in which he is held, but the requests were denied by the warden, who cited security reasons. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office would not comment. Al-Arian's attorneys have raised the issue in court several times during the months he has been confined, and continue to complain to District Judge Thomas McCoun. McCoun has upheld the Justice Department's decision to keep Al-Arian at the prison rather than the local jail, where most people awaiting federal trial are held. Al-Arian is charged in a 50-count racketeering indictment. Sameeh Hammoudeh, one of three co-defendants in the case, is being held with Al-Arian at Coleman. Two others have been released on bond. Awad said in one of the more recent incidents, Al-Arian and Hammoudeh were strip searched in front of other prisoners after a videotaped court conference earlier this month. Awad said there was no reason for Al-Arian to have undergone such a search since he was only moved from his cell to the room where the conference took place and was under a guard's watch the entire time. Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said she could not comment on specifics of Al-Arian's treatment. |
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