The Palestinian militant won his release from prison April 12 after being locked up in immigration jails for nearly two years—including 250 days in solitary confinement—while fighting a deportation order.

Defenders of Abdel-Muhti waged a public campaign to gain his freedom and defend his right to remain in this country, where he has lived since the 1970s. They have demanded justice not only for him but for hundreds of others, mostly Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants, who were jailed under the cover of Washington’s “war on terrorism” in the months following Sept. 11, 2001.

Moved around between several immigration jails in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, he was repeatedly harassed and threatened by the prison guards and immigration cops. They failed, however, in their efforts to isolate and silence Abdel-Muhti, who continued to speak out, win international support for his fight, and carry out political work among fellow inmates.

On April 12 a federal district judge ordered his release, agreeing with his defense lawyers that he is stateless and cannot be deported in the foreseeable future.

Abdel-Muhti was born in 1947 in the Ramallah district of what is now the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Because he left the West Bank before the 1967 takeover by Tel Aviv, he cannot receive travel documents from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, or Jordan.

For years Abdel-Muhti has been active in New York as an outspoken advocate of Palestinian self-determination, as well as a defender of the Cuban Revolution. In the weeks before his April 2002 arrest by immigration cops—who said they were acting on a 1995 deportation order—he had begun a regular program on WBAI, the local station of the Pacifica radio network, arranging live interviews with Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In an interview at the Militant offices, Abdel-Muhti described his experiences over the past few months as he and his defenders fought for his release.

In the week before his March 30 court hearing, which was based on a habeas corpus petition by his attorneys demanding his release, Abdel-Muhti was shuttled between prisons—from Hudson County, New Jersey, to Philadelphia to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“In the Hudson County jail the guards told me, ‘Pack up and leave everything here,’” said Abdel-Muhti. “I told the other man in my cell, ‘Take care of my documents.’ I knew they would be safe with him because he had been part of the hunger strike with me.” Abdel-Muhti and five other prisoners carried out a hunger strike in January 2003 at the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey. Like Abdel-Muhti, the five men—among those who were swept up by police across the country after Sept. 11, 2001—were being held without charges. The hunger strikers put out a statement calling for “the release of all detainees who are accused of no crimes, and of all detainees who have served their terms.”

A few days after the court hearing in Harrisburg, Abdel-Muhti was whisked away by immigration cops to the federal prison in Atlanta. They did this without the knowledge of his attorneys and in spite of an order “to immediately return the said Farouk Abdel-Muhti to Hudson County Jail,” his defense committee reports.

“I was put on an Air Santo Domingo plane with 180 prisoners,” said Abdel-Muhti. “The U.S. government had seized this plane from those it accused of drug running, and it is now using it to move prisoners around and prepare others for deportation.”

When he arrived at the Atlanta prison, the authorities repeatedly misspelled Abdel-Muhti’s name in their documents. “At one time ‘Farouk’ became ‘Frank,’” he said, and “Abdel” became “Abel.” He worried that the jailers might get him “lost” in the system. In fact, government officials have cynically accused him of trying to hide his identity in an attempt to remain in the United States.

The Palestinian revolutionary was held in 23-hour lock-up from the time he arrived in Atlanta—“I had no documents, no stamps, no envelopes.” It was not until four days later that he was able to make a five-minute phone call. On April 8, the day before, U.S. district Judge Yvette Kane had given immigration authorities 10 days to release him.

In Abdel-Muhti’s brief call to defense committee leader David Wilson, he found out for the first time, “You won the case! You won the case!”

The conditions of his release include reporting regularly to immigration officers.

The government has not given up in its attempt to deport him. Two days after his release, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Bill Strassberger told the Philadelphia Enquirer that a U.S. agreement with the Israeli government may open up Abdel-Muhti to deportation to that country. “I would predict his stay in the U.S. is coming to a close,” the immigration cop asserted.

“I don’t believe the judge released me because she is progressive-minded, but because she felt she had to. We had justice on our side,” Abdel-Muhti said. “You can use the Bill of Rights as a weapon.”  
 
Political discussions in prison
While his defenders were putting heat on government authorities, from the other side of the prison bars Abdel-Muhti engaged in political discussions and classes with those locked up with him.

In prison Abdel-Muhti received a number of publications, including the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. He became known as a source of information and someone to exchange political ideas with.

“Marielitos wanted to know about what was going on in Cuba,” he said, referring to Cubans who came to the United States during a wave of immigration through the Cuban port of Mariel in 1980. “Some were supporters of the revolution, while others just wanted to get information about Cuba.” At that time, the Carter administration “welcomed” these Cubans by locking up thousands of them. Many were later released, but some were subsequently rearrested and are being held indefinitely as “excludable.”

“We organized study classes,” said Abdel-Muhti. “We read articles from the papers and discussed them. In the classes were men from many countries—from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Cape Verde, Brazil, Guyana, and more.” As many as 15 prisoners participated in the classes, which were held in English and Spanish. Abdel-Muhti is fluent in both languages.

Among the popular topics of discussion were the struggle in Venezuela against the U.S.-backed efforts by capitalist forces there to remove President Hugo Chávez, and the union-organizing struggle by coal miners at the Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah.

In January of this year, he and 19 other inmates at the Hudson County Jail co-signed a letter of solidarity to the miners in Utah, who have been on strike since September 2003 to win recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

In their letter, the 20 prisoners wrote, “The right to organize into the UMWA is…a natural right of humanity; the bosses are still living in the epoch of cave-dwellers, and we are obliged to wake them up to reality.”

“We sat down together, and there was no disagreement on what to say,” said Abdel-Muhti. “One of the signers, Abdul Hamid, had experience in the union movement in Colombia, and worked with the others to write the letter.”

“I was glad to see that when the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial wrote about my case, they also mentioned others who have been under attack by the U.S. government, including Sami Al-Arian and the Cuban Five,” said the Palestinian militant.

Al-Arian is a defender of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination who was a professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa prior to his arrest in February 2003 on “conspiracy” charges of belonging to a “terrorist” organization.

The Cuban Five are Cuban revolutionaries who have been locked up in U.S. prisons since 2001 on phony “conspiracy” charges. The five had been gathering information on ultrarightist Cuban-American groups that have organized violent attacks on Cuba from U.S. territory with the complicity of the U.S. government. “They are not spies,” said Abdel-Muhti, “but were defending their country against attacks from the government of the United States, which hates the Cuban Revolution.”

Abdel-Muhti has no intention of allowing the immigration cops to shut him up. He has returned to his regular radio program in New York and has already spoken out on his continuing fight against deportation, and the Palestinian struggle, at a number of events.

Róger Calero contributed to this article.  
 
 
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