Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (London and Ann Arbor Pluto Press, 2007).

Joel Kovel has given us an impressive and important book. Its first printing sold out without a single review, major or otherwise. Nevertheless word of this extraordinary work is spreading. The taboo in the United States (not Israel) against seriously discussing and criticizing Zionist Israel has been broken with the publication of Jimmy Carter’s bold book labeling the situation in the Occupied Territories “apartheid” and with the exposure by prestigious professors Mearsheimer and Walt – in the London Review of Books after rejection by the Atlantic Monthly – of the power of the Israeli lobby. Kovel, by focusing squarely on how to “overcome” Zionism, takes the discussion exactly where it needs to go from there. He writes beautifully, even poetically, not just on Zionism’s sordid history, but on its ideology, its ethics, and even on the terrible ecological devastation in Israel itself, where every river is polluted, some to lethal levels. And he writes with courage and hope.
Kovel believes that the creation of Israel in l948, as a colony of settlers who established an exclusively Jewish and discriminatory state, has created a multi-faceted disaster – “a dreadful mistake” – that should be undone, with Israel de-Zionized and integrated into the Middle East. His solution is stated in the book’s subtitle and restated in the title of the last chapter: “Palesrael: A Secular and Universal Democracy for Israel/Palestine.” This is an elegant solution, and he lays out an action program to accomplish it.

How did Kovel, a Jew from Brooklyn, the oldest son of Ukrainian immigrants who did well – moving with Joel to “the purgatory of Baldwin, Long Island” – come to this radical critique and equally radical solution? Joel graduated from Yale and became a successful psychiatrist. He taught at medical school before switching careers and taking a social science professorship at Bard, where for a time he held the Alger Hiss chair. He is still there, the only Marxist on the faculty. This book is not going to further his career.
“What kind of Jew am I?” he asks, and answers “a very bad one.” More accurately, he defines himself as what Isaac Deutscher called “a non-Jewish Jew.” Not that he is not spiritual; he writes of reaching for the infinite. But he is not religious. Being part of a sect is too narrowing and confining. He identifies with the Jewish heretics who transcended Jewry, but who are nonetheless part of the Jewish tradition – he lists Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka, Wittgenstein, and Luxemburg – and for whom “the true glory” of being Jewish is to live “on the margin and across boundaries.”
Kovel writes that the ethical reference point for Jews is the tribal unit. Since ancient times they set themselves off as “a people apart,” chosen by Jehovah, with whom they have a covenant. In Kovel’s view, “Zionism’s dynamic was drawn from the most tribal and particularistic stratum of Judaism, and its destiny became the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militarized and aggressive state,” which they implanted in the center if Islam. Herein lies the tragedy.
At the turn of the 20th century, a Zionist conference in Vienna delegated several rabbis to travel to Palestine on a fact-finding mission. The rabbis cabled back, “the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” Kovel writes incisively of what ensued. The “tremendous struggle” to dislodge Palestine’s inhabitants would involve three great difficulties:

the resistance of those who stood in the way and would have to be displaced; the exigencies of geo-politics; and one’s own inner being, which would have to be retooled from the self-image of an ethical victim to that of a ruthless conqueror. All of these obstacles could be dealt with by signing onto Western imperialism and capitalism.

Jewish suffering and persecution became justification for aggression in asserting the “outlandish claim to a territory controlled 2500 years ago by one’s putative ancestors.”
The Israelis took 78% of the territory in l948 and the remaining 22% in l967. The logic of Zionism – to create an ethnically pure Jewish state – led to organized terrorism; “the essentials had been put in place by the mid-1930s” and the opportunity came in l948. The leaders of Zionism, Chaim Arlosoroff, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and especially David Ben Gurion, quietly articulated the need to drive the Arabs out. South African Prime Minister Henrik Verwoerd said in l96l something the liberals wouldn’t: that the Zionists “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” When the smoke lifted in l948, 531 Arab villages had been destroyed, some 750,000 Palestinians driven out. In l948 Menachem Begin (later Prime Minister of Israel) organized the dynamiting of the British headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 88 persons, including 15 Jews. That year also saw the terrorizing of the village of Deir Yassin. With Begin in command, Yitzhak Shamir – who was also to become a PM and whose frankly fascist organization the Stern Gang had actually made overtures to the Nazis to create a Jewish state along totalitarian lines – took part in the operation. The terror at Deir Yassin was a decisive factor in the Arab exodus. The ethnic cleansing had been clearly planned by the Zionist leadership, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has documented. Thus the Zionists established Israel with a crime against humanity.
Ariel Sharon, the third Israeli terrorist PM, was actually found guilty by an Israeli court for permitting the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon in l982, where as many as 3000 Palestinian refugees were killed. In l953 Sharon led a cross-border raid on Qibya, Jordan, “in which the community was reduced to rubble, with 45 houses blown up and 69 people killed, the majority women and children.” He repeated his mass murder in Lebanon in 2006, using US-made cluster bombs. It is truly remarkable, as Kovel points out, that a terrorist could ascend to national leadership three times and “scarcely anybody has bothered to ponder its meaning.” Kovel notes the consequent bad conscience of the Israelis and remarks on how their resulting feelings “become projected and turned into the blaming of others” – whether these be expropriated Palestinians or critics of Israel, who are then labeled as antisemites and/or as that curious entity, the “self-hating Jew.”
Israel, as a racist state, discriminates in the critical areas of immigrants, settlements, and land development. Any Jew in the world who can show that his grandmother on his mother’s side was Jewish may obtain automatic citizenship, yet the Arabs expelled in l948 and l967, despite international law and United Nations resolution 194, are not permitted their right to return. 92% of the land in Israel is administered by The Jewish National Fund, which does not allow its use by non-Jews.
Racism is in the nature of a colonial settler state. What is remarkable is the degree to which Zionists deny this. Kovel gives examples of a top Israeli general calling Palestinians “drugged cockroaches in a bottle”; he cites a 2006 poll showing that more than two-thirds of Israelis would refuse to live in the same building as Arabs and that the idea of deporting Arab citizens is popular. Many Jewish soccer fans curse and attack Arab members of their national team.
Kovel writes, reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson, that no state has an absolute right to exist, hence all states are to some degree illegitimate; he adds that states may be relatively or absolutely illegitimate, and that a racist state is illegitimate. Israel, being an exclusively Jewish state, is a racist state. He concludes that “the problem then is with Zionism and the Jewish state as such, and not its illegal occupation of the West Bank.” The point is to change it, “to dissolve the Jewishness of the state. For this, one does not smash or trample Zionism; one overcomes it and frees people from its chains.”
He goes beyond the two-state solution, necessarily, because by steady aggression and aggrandizement the Zionists have whittled the Palestinian territory down to 8% of what it was in l948, leaving the natives with a negligible fragment, without much water, polluted, economically unviable, denuded of its agriculture, isolated by Jewish-only roads, and partly encircled by an obscene wall.
What to do? Speak the truth about Israel. Expose the Zionist lobby. Force it to register as an agent of a foreign government. Bring lawsuits for violations of human rights, as the Center for Constitutional Rights did against an Israeli general for mass killing in a village, or against the US Caterpillar company for making gargantuan bulldozers sold wittingly to the Israeli army for the express purpose of house demolition (one of which, ran over and killed Rachel Corrie, to whom Kovel partly dedicates his book). Place Israel where it belongs, in the company of apartheid South Africa. Cut the threads of Israel’s support system; boycott it academically, economically, and culturally.
Palestinians are the largest and oldest refugee population in the world. Central to the campaign against Zionist Israel is to support their right of return. Zionism can thus be brought down in an entirely peaceful manner. The Right of Return is more basic than liquidating the occupation, which would leave the Zionist state unchanged. The Right of Return would require the end of the occupation as a pre-condition and can directly undo the Jewishness of the state with the returnees having full and equal rights. Even now, counting the occupied territories, the population is roughly 50/50, Jew and Arab.
The new state – “Palesrael” – could reshape itself according to the South African anti-apartheid precepts of recognition and responsibility, which point to a society organized along essentially non-capitalist lines. Kovel knows that this will not come easily and that the outcome will depend partly on unforeseeable convulsions in the outside world. He concludes: “Such is the reality facing dreamers for a better world: a slim chance, and a long haul. As ever, it is the journey that counts, the seeking of good conscience, good will, and good comrades.”
This is a rich, multi-layered book, reflecting the author’s wide reading and travel. Kovel’s background as a psychiatrist is evident in his wise understanding. Judaeophobia in Nazi Germany “draws from a time when Jews were, if not blameless, at least powerless and were made to pay the debts demanded by the anticommunism of the fascist state and by Christendom’s bad conscience.” He calls it “intellectual barbarism” to take current criticism of Israel as “antisemitism,” but he well understands that given a situation of invasion and occupation of another people’s land, it is not surprising to find “the whole spectrum of human responses … ranging from emancipatory and nonviolent expression to crude atavisms including racist belief.”

Israel has become, in Kovel’s view, the most dangerous place on earth for Jews. It now has the largest gap between rich and poor in the whole industrialized world. Forty percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Half of Israeli families cannot meet their monthly bills. Kovel reports that the immediate cause of this has been a fierce neoliberal assault on the poor and the public sector, which has left Israel with “the worst primary and lower secondary education in the Western world.” Socialist ideals lie in ruins. As a result, a serious amount of emigration is taking place, with some 760,000 Israelis living abroad in 2004. Jews leaving Russian prefer, ironically, to go to Germany.
I think that if persons concerned about the problems of Jews and Zionism could have but one book on the subject on their shelf, it should be this one.

Michael Steven Smith

National Lawyers Guild

member, NLG fact-finding committee in Israel/Palestine, 1985

 

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(CCR) attorneys and co-counsel submitted a ground-breaking brief to the Supreme Court in the case that will determine whether detainees at Guantánamo possess the fundamental constitutional rights to due process and habeas corpus.

“These men have been held unlawfully in abusive conditions while the courts and Congress debate whether they should have any rights,” said CCR President Michael Ratner. ” Read more.

Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Michael Smith

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Guantanamo Bay Detainees Transfers and Abuse

The US Supreme Court said it would not prevent Ahmed Bel Bacha, an Algerian army veteran detained at Guantanamo Bay from being transferred to his home country. Bel Bacha, who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, had argued he would be tortured if turned over to Algerian officials. He is one of nearly 20 Guantanamo detainees who say they will face abuse if sent back to their country. Human Rights Watch article.

Recently, Isa Al Murbati was returned home after six months in Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Six. He was kept under the most cruel conditions of the prison, they include communication lock downs and sleep deprivation.

Guest - Emi Maclean, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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Flying While Muslim

Lyra Porras Garzon is a documentary filmmaker and creator of the recent film Flying While Muslim. This film explores the personal stories and debates surrounding racial profiling post 9/11 in the United States. As Lyra researched the many personal stories, she unearthed countless reports of racial profiling from detainment in airports to illegal detention of Muslims, Arabs and even South Asians. This, along with the imprisonment of those individuals without access to lawyers or the right to habeas corpus.

Guest - Lyra Porras Garzon

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Watch trailor for Flying While Muslim below:

 

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Maze of Injustice – The failure to protect Indigenous Women from sexual violence in the USA
A recent Amnesty International study on the sexual violence against indigenous women in the United States exposes a disturbing trend in human rights abuse. The reasons why indigenous women are at particular risk of sexual violence are complex. According to the report, more than one in three Native American and Alaska Native women are survivors of rape. Most of the abused women have not followed through in their cases to seek justice because of a general inaction within the tribal government authority and its chronic under-resourced law enforcement agencies which should protect indigenous women. As one support worker said, “Women don’t report because it doesn’t make a difference. Why report when you are just going to be re-victimized? Too many times, as the Amnesty Report identifies, those responsible for the violence are able to get away with it.

Guest - Michael Heflin, the Amnesty International USA Campaign Director.
Guest - Juskwa Burnett, counselor for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe in Oklahoma. Juskwa Burnett has a long history of working on domestic abuse and sexual assault of Native women.

Robert R. Bryan
San Francisco

Robert R. Bryan has specialized in death-penalty litigation for three decades and is lead counsel in various murder cases pending at the federal and state level. He is a member of the bar of California, New York, United States Supreme Court, various federal courts, and was elected a Fellow in the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. Also, he serves on the Steering Committee, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Paris, is active in the National Lawyers Guild, New York, and formerly served as Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, D.C.

In 2003 Mr. Bryan became lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the African-American journalist who is Pennsylvania’s death row. They began corresponding nearly two decades ago, but Mr. Bryan was unable to take the case at that time due to other capital-case commitments.

Nr. Bryan has defended many other people against whom the death penalty was sought with the first being an acquittal in the Ammons case in Birming­ham, Alabama when the lawyer was just 26. He represented Jerry D. Bigelow who had spent years on California’s death row before being granted a new trial. Even though the evidence included the client’s 10 confessions to an execution-style murder, a Monterey County jury returned a non-guilty verdict. Another client was Larry Layton, the only person ever charged in the Peoples Temple case which concerned the death of Congress­man Leo Ryan and over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, at the direc­tion of Rev. Jim Jones. Mr. Bryan also defended Buddy Cochran who attacked the leadership of the Klu Klux Klan at their national convention in Plains, Georgia, near the home of the then President Jimmy Carter.

For 15 years Mr. Bryan represented Anna Hauptmann, who died at the age of 95 in 1994 in Pennsylvania. She was the widow of Richard Haupt­mann, a German immigrant who was executed in 1936 in New Jersey for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The attorney uncovered evi­dence from government files establishing that the authori­ties knowingly prosecuted an innocent person and that the Trial of the Century was the greatest fraud in US legal history. He pursued litigation in New Jersey against the FBI and those who prosecuted the case in an effort to officially right the wrong. His findings are the subject of The Airman and The Carpenter by Ludovic Kennedy (Viking, Penguin), various other books, documentaries, and a movie. A section of Mur­ders Die by Denis Brian (St. Martin’s Press) is an interview with the attorney on the Hauptmann case and the death penalty. Mr. Bryan is intermittently working on a book concerning the case.

Mr. Bryan has also been counsel to members of the American Indian Movement. He won a dismissal of all murder charges again Jimmy Eagle, who was indicted for the June 26, 1975 killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota (Leonard Peltier, represented by others, was later convicted). Mr. Bryan represented federally Gladys Bissonette, who was actively involved in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He was also the attorney for the Menominee Warrior Society during its 1975 armed occupation of the abandoned Alexian Brothers’ Novitiate near Gresham, Wisconsin. He successfully demanded that the 65-room mansion, other buildings and its acreage be returned to the Native Americans who had lived on the land long before the white man arrived.

Often Mr. Bryan speaks on the death penalty and other human-rights issues both in the U.S. and Europe. In 2007 he addressed the erd World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Paris. Since 1994 he has been doing legal commentaries for ABC News, San Francisco, and appears on other news outlets.

Mr. Bryan has written articles on the death penalty and human rights, e.g., Taking A Stand, Verdict (Jan. 1998); What Price Justice?, Parliamentary Review (England, Oct. 1997); Waco: Inferno of Rights, San Francisco Attorney (S.F. Bar Assoc., Sept., 1993), Death Penalty Trials: The Inno­cence of Jerry Bigelow and Defense Creativ­ity, Champion (National Assoc. of Crim. Defenders Law., Dec. 1993), Death Penalty Trials: Lawyers Need Help, Forum (Calif. Attys. for Crim. Justice, May-June, 1989), Champion (Aug., 1988); In Trial By Fury: The Lindbergh Case, SF Examiner (Apr. 3, 1996), he discussed the wrongfulness of the death penalty on the 60th anniversary of the execution of Richard Hauptmann in New Jersey for the Lindbergh kidnap-murder. A longer version of the article appears in the book Frontiers of Justice, Volume 1: The Death Penalty (Biddle). He demon­strated that innocent people are unavoidably put to death in any capital punishment system regard­less of precau­tions to ensure fairness, in The Execution of the Innocent: The Tragedy of the Hauptmann-Lindbergh and Bigelow Cases, 18 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 831 (1991). Dedicated Defender, Verdict (July 1998) also contains an interview with the attorney.

A chapter entitled “The Defender” in the book A Punishment In Search Of A Crime by Ian Gray and Moira Stanley (Avon Press) describes Mr. Bryan’s work in fighting capital punishment. His work is featured in Modern Trials by Melvin Belli (West). The lawyer has appeared as an expert witness regarding the minimum stan­dards of attorney compe­tence in capital cases.

The activities and memberships of Mr. Bryan have included: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Steering Committee, Paris; National Lawyers Guild, NY; National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Chair and Board (1985-95), Washington; Chopin Foundation, Board (2004-present); Amnesty International; ACLU; National Coalition Concerned Legal Prof., Board (2000-present); Lycée Fran­­çais La Pérouse, Board (1997-98); No. Calif. Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Board and Chair (1985-92); NY State Defenders Assn.; NY State Assn. of Crim. Defenders Lawyers; Amer. Indians and the Death Penalty, Adv. Council (1985-92); Int’l Soc’ty for Prof. Hyp., Legal Adv. Board; Criminal Trial Law. Assn.; NAACP; Int’l Churchill Soc’ty; Glenn Gould Foundation.

Mr. Bryan is married to Nicole, a French citizen who is actively working on behalf of death-row clients. They live in San Francisco, but also spend time at the family home in France. Their daughter, Auda Mai, is a classical pianist and attends Rugby School, England.

=======================

Contact information:

Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
RobertRBryan@aol.com

Sunday April 1st: I am delighted to be back home in England, with my
family. After over four years in Guantánamo Bay, my nightmare is finally at
an end.

As happy as I am to be home though, leaving my best friend Jamil El-Banna
behind in Guantánamo Bay makes my freedom bittersweet. Jamil was arrested
with me in the Gambia on exactly the same unfounded allegations, yet he is
still a prisoner. He is the father of five young children, the eldest of
whom is ten. He has never seen his youngest daughter who is nearly five
years old. He too should be released and reunited with his family.

I also feel great sorrow for the other nine British residents who remain
prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. Some are now on hunger strike protesting
against their extended solitary confinement. The extreme isolation they are
going through is one of the most profoundly difficult things to endure. I
know that all too well.

The hopelessness you feel in Guantánamo can hardly be described. You are
asked the same questions hundreds of times. Allegations are made against
you that are laughably untrue, but you have no chance to prove them wrong.
There is no trial, no fair legal process. I was alleged to have
participated in terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan. I’ve never
been to Bosnia and the only time I visited Afghanistan was thanks to the
hospitality of the CIA in an underground prison – the Dark Prison – outside
Kabul.

But now, finally, I am back home.

I want to thank everyone who campaigned tirelessly for both me and Jamil
during this long saga of misery, suffering and injustice, a saga in which
Jamil still finds himself enmeshed. My overwhelming feelings of gratitude
and thanks extend to an extremely large number of people. I would love to
mention them all by name, but that would make this statement among the
longest on the record. However, there are individuals whose names are
imprinted in my mind and heart whom I cannot but mention today.

I would like to start with thanking my family, who have suffered greatly
with me throughout. The late Mark Jennings, a person whom I wished very
much to meet and thank in person but it was not to be, and his wife Celia
to whom I extend my hand in friendship for a lifetime. My British lawyer
Gareth Peirce whom I consider to be the best in her field, together with
Irene Nembhard and all those at Birnberg Peirce who were on this case
helping us from day one. My American lawyer Brent Mickum who got on this
case very early on, despite the overwhelming difficulties, restrictions and
complexities imposed by the American regime. Clive Stafford Smith and
Zachary Katznelson whose visits to Guantánamo were a lifeline for me and
meant so much, and of course all those with them at Reprieve. My MP Edward
Davey, who took on what seemed to be an impossible mission, facing high
walls of bureaucracy and doors that refused to be opened. It was a task
very few people would have volunteered to take on. Sarah Teather, my best
friend Jamil’s MP, who is continuing to push for Jamil’s release and his
long-overdue reunion with his wife and children. Victoria Brittain, a name
I will always remember and to whom both Jamil and I feel extremely
indebted.

I would like to thank Amnesty International and all those there whose good
work through out the world is a blooming flower of hope. I sincerely
believe that without Amnesty’s immediate intervention in our case during
those extremely difficult first days after our arrest in The Gambia, we
probably would have been goners. I have to also thank all the other
humanitarian groups who have stood up against the injustices in Guantánamo
Bay and other places, who have kept the pressure on the U.S. government,
and helped as much as possible under these difficult circumstances. All the
good people in this country and elsewhere who have supported us in various
ways, including the many many who have written letters to both me and Jamil
in support and solidarity. Among these, I should mention especially the
young boys and girls whose words were most heart-warming – and whose
hand-writing was much nicer and more legible than mine! My friends in the
UK of all backgrounds who have tolerated me and my many shortcomings for
years, starting from a long time before Guantánamo Bay, and whose memories
I had on replay throughout my imprisonment. My friends at Guantánamo Bay
who were my family, and meant everything to me, in that strange and wearied
land.

I couldn’t but feel happiness, though together with a great deal of
embarrassment, when I read my name in debate transcripts and speeches in
Parliament. I thank the MPs for their interest and concern in what took
place and continues to take place in Guantánamo Bay. Staying on the
political side but a bit further away from home, I would like to thank the
European Parliament for keeping things a bit more sane than would have
been.

I want to thank the officials at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.,
who worked extremely hard to secure my release, together with all the
extremely nice and welcoming guys who brought me back home aboard the
really lavish flight (no expense spared). You made me feel comfortable and
welcomed. I thank you for that.

Finally I would like to express my gratitude to the media. This experience
made me understand better your role in making the wheel of life turn.
Please don’t make me bite my tongue!

I ask that you please allow me some time with my family to come to terms
with the horrific experience I have had. But, I hope everyone who believes
in justice and the rule of law will join with me to work for the release of
Jamil and the other British residents. They have been unjustly imprisoned
for over 4 years without charge or trial. They too should come home.

Thank you.

Download/Listen to this show [40 MB]

Download/Listen to this show [40 MB]

Global Warming Litigation - 3 Main Cases

Since 1947, the Doomsday clock has been used as a symbolic reference to measure the degree of nuclear threat. On January 27th of this year it was set to five minutes to midnight. It was advanced by two minutes on January 17, 2007 by experts assessing the dangers posed to civilization from catastrophic climate change.

Meanwhile the Bush administration continues to play down the threats of extreme weather and dramatic shifts in climate. Last May Law and Disorder aired speeches from the Catastrophic Climate Change Forum at Albany Law School including speakers such as Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies . Hansen cited hard evidence - building the case that global climate change is at a tipping point and emissions from power plants and vehicles are mainly to blame.

Of the main contributors to this one percent tipping point of greenhouse gases are utility companies, automobile emissions and housing stock. This one percent of man made emissions that can be regulated say attorneys involved in 3 major climate change cases.

• Attorneys General Complaint in State of Connecticut v. American Electric Power
• U.S. District Court opinion in State of Connecticut v. American Electric Power,(decided September 15, 2005)
• General information on climate change litigation
• Comprehensive reports on current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at state, federal, and international level

Guest - Eleanor Stein Adjunct Professor of Law Albany Law School at Union University

Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey

A film documentary that chronicles one man’s influence on the American judicial system. The first black attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Kennedy Justice Department, Thelton Anderson was later appointed by President Jimmy Carter as one of the first African American federal judges in the United States. His decisions have been informed by a profound sense of fairness, distinguished also by his tenacity in seeing that they are enforced even in the face of great political opposition. Soul of Justice includes rare archival footage, and interviews with lawyers and a Supreme Court justice.

Guest - Abby Ginzberg, an award winning filmmaker producing films for the last 22 years. Her films focus on race, equality of opportunity and model programs for at-risk youth.

Soul of Justice - NYC screenings: Monday Feb 26, Columbia Law School 116th St. & Amsterdam Ave, 6pm, Rm 107

Tuesday Feb 27, NYU Law School, Tishman Auditorium in Vanderbilt Hall at 40 Washington Square. doors open at 5:30, film at 6pm

Law Students for Government Accountability

LSGA was created out of the Student Hurricane Network run by law students (with some assistance by various attorneys, experienced lobbyists, an international strategy consulting firm, and an international PR firm). Its purpose is 1) to continue to educate the public about the causes and costs of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the Gulf Coast region and the nation at large, 2) to obtain the support of the 110th Congress for a Statement of Principles to ensure that such a disaster never happens again on the Gulf Coast through providing its necessary rebuilding and renewal, or any American soil through a comprehensive federal catastrophe prevention and response plan, and 3) work in partnership and solidarity with the thousands of voices advocating for those directly harmed by this disaster to ensure that the legislation passed by Congress provides a clear and coherent plan to prevent this from ever happening again.

Right now, LSGA is working on recruiting 1000 law students to participate in a March 14 National Lobbying Day in DC, to get their representatives to sign the Statement of Principles, guaranteeing wetland restoration, Category 5 levee and flood prevention, improvement of the management of the Mississippi River that would facilitate the restoration of the land and ensure ecological and economic security, the full recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and address the underlying issues of poverty and racism.

Guest - Andrew Doss - LSGA Board Member

Here is the text of the letter in English from a translator hired by the Chicago Tribune. It is a complete text except for a few edits and missing words that are noted in brackets.

This is how they kidnapped me from Italy … and how they tortured and imprisoned me in Egypt

I / Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr known by the name “Abu Omar” the kidnapped Islamist off the Italian streets of Milan on 17-02-03 by U.S. intelligence agents as well as agents of other countries and the currently imprisoned in the Torah reception jail in Cairo.

I record my testimony from within my tomb and gravesite: and my body has weakened and my mind has become distracted and my illnesses have increased and the signs of my death and termination have appeared.

I record my testimony from within my tomb and gravesite: and my facial features have been altered by the screams of the tortured and the sounds of the whips and the hell of the jail cells.

I record my testimony from within my tomb and gravesite: and I am powerless to do anything other than give the highest thanks and loyalty and appreciation to all who have lit a candle light of hope on the road leading to the uncovering of the mystery of my kidnapping from Italy and my imprisonment and torture in Egypt.

Before I start telling my testimony, I regard it as my duty to give some important pieces of information that may reveal the mystery of my kidnapping and the parties involved in it:

1. One of the Egyptian security officials who was interrogating me told me, as I was blindfolded with my hands secured behind me, and dispossessed of all my clothes, naked as the day my mother had given birth to me, hanging from my feet, my head down, I say this interrogator told me that he visited Italy a little while prior to my kidnapping and he told me and described to me the Mosque in which I pray as well as the Mosque of the Islamic Cultural Institute on [Jenner] Street, he also described to me the streets leading to my home and the home building number as well as the floor that I live on; i.e. the Egyptian regime was aware of the kidnapping operation and the Egyptian authorities may have been involved with the U.S. intelligence and others and I cannot describe this interrogator or identify his name as I was blindfolded.

2. One day after my kidnapping, as I heard from trusted sources in Italy, the Austrian security authorities subpoenaed Sheikh/ Shawky Mohamed who is an Austrian citizen and who works in the field of Da’wa [missionary work] and they asked him about everything with regards to a person called Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr (me), and none of my friends, or my wife or anyone had knowledge [missing words]. So did the plane that transported me above Austrian lands.

3. I ask that the Italian judiciary listen to the testimony of Mr. Nabil El Tounsi who is currently imprisoned in Milan for he has information that may be important regarding my kidnapping.

4. Approximately one month prior to my kidnapping, I used to receive phone calls on my cell phone and someone would ask: “Is Abu Omar there?” Or “could I speak to Abu Omar?” and when I would tell him that I am Abu Omar he would hang up, i.e. my cell phone was being monitored all day and night as well as my private computer, I would receive many emails which when I opened would result in causing defects to my computer.

5. One of the security officers in Egypt told Sheikh Mohamed Reda El Badry that there was a video camera inside Abu Omar’s apartment in Milan and he was videotaped for a period of time that was not small. And now I begin to describe my kidnapping:

I was walking from my home on (Conti Verdi Street A18) in the middle of the day on Monday 17.02.2003 to perform my noon prayers at the Mosque of the Islamic Cultural Institute on [Jenner] Street, and I had left my job at the Mosque of the Islamic community on road 95 a few months prior to my kidnapping and all connections between me and those who prayed there had been severed.

I say: As I was going to perform my noon prayers, I had in my pockets the following items:

A. 450 Euros, I was going to pay 400 Euros, the rent amount for the apartment in which I resided with my wife.

B. My Italian passport (the political asylum passport)

C. The Italian Residency (the Sigorno).

D. My cell phone.

E. The social security card.

F. My medical card.

G. A watch that was in my hand.

H. My apartment keys (Conti Verdi Street A18).

And these items are present at the headquarters of the Egyptian Intelligence in Hadayek Al Quba across from the Republican Palace and I have not gotten them back to this date and they ordered me to write a declaration that I had come to Egypt without any possessions.

And I witnessed while outside the doorway of the building in which I reside, I witnessed a white van (about 2 ton) and completely closed, the van passed in front of me and I did not pay attention to it and as I walked on the street next to the mosque and across from a public park and a few meters away from uninhabited apartment buildings and a security kiosk at the bottom of the buildings, I saw a red Fiat 127 that stopped near the sidewalk where the gate to the public park is and the driver of the car rushed towards me and took out of his pocket a card and passed it in front of my face and told me police and asked for my Sigorno papers and so I took out my Italian passport as well as my Sigorno and showed them to him. He took out his phone and called a number that I don’t know and began to give out my details and he was standing on the sidewalk where the buildings were and he was facing the public park while I had my back to the public park and was facing the officer and the features of this person who stopped me suggested that he was an American: His hair was blonde with a bald spot in the front and his face was white with a reddish tint and he was about 169 cms in height and my entire focus was on this person and so I did not pay attention to the car that kidnapped me and which is the same car that passed in front of me as I left my home (the white van) and I think that this van arrived as this person was speaking to me and parked by the sidewalk on which I stood. Suddenly, I was being lifted off the ground so I turned my head and saw two Italian-looking people each of whom was at least 187 cms tall or maybe more and who seemed to be in their thirties, as for the American, he was probably in his forties.

And an Egyptian woman who was walking witnessed my kidnapping and she resides on the same street that I was kidnapped off and she was the one who informed the Arabs in the mosque on [Jenner] Street-the cultural institute.

I say: I saw myself lifted into the van so I tried to resist but I was severely beaten in my stomach and the rest of my body and was forced down onto the floor of the car and my face was then masked and the van was dark inside after the door was shut and my hands and feet were then tied and the car sped away while I was in pain from the severity of the beating and as the car drove on, my physical power began to collapse and sounds came out of my mouth that resembled the death gurgle and liquid came out of my mouth (white foam) and my body began to stretch out and both my legs began to stretch out strongly and unawares a few drops of urine fell from me without my will and then I heard the screams of one of these two persons who kidnapped me and they both began to tear at my clothes quickly and one of them began to compress on my heart (massage) and the other removed the mask on my face and pointed a small light onto my eyes and then after he was reassured that my eyes were following the light he covered my face again and spoke with his partner and they both left me.

The car drove on for many hours, I don’t think I would be mistaken if I said around 4 hours approximately and then the car stopped and some people carried me by the arms and legs after removing my shoes and taking them and I don’t know whether they were other than the two people who were with me in the car and who kidnapped me off the streets of Milan. And was I transferred to another car or onto a small plane? I’m not sure. But what I can say is that I felt no air bumps or shortness of breath the way it happens to those who ride a plane. At the same time I felt no shaking or the presence of bumps as those who ride a car might feel.

And I don’t think that they sedated me for I was self-aware and aware of those around me although the awareness was not full perhaps because of the beatings and the pain I was feeling or maybe they did lightly sedate me, all conjectures are possible.

The car or the plane went on for a short while, about an hour or slightly longer and then they took me out and put me somewhere while I was still blindfolded and with my hands and legs still tied, this place where they put me is an airport, I recognized that from the sounds of the air conditioners or the sounds of engines or maybe both. They left me alone for a while or maybe they were with me but I heard after a short while the sounds of many feet maybe 7 or 8 sets. After that they stood me on my feet and began to cut the plastic restrictions binding my feet and they removed my clothes and they definitely cut off my clothes with tools that they had for I did not feel their hands and they did the same with the restrictions on my hands and they dressed me in other clothes and in a sudden moment they removed the blindfold that was on my eyes and I saw many men or shadows in front of me, for I could not see very well because of the length of time that I was blindfolded; these people were wearing the same clothes like the ones worn by special units and I saw in the many pockets in their clothes tools such as those carried by men of special operations such as knives and screwdrivers … etc. I saw all of this in just a few seconds in which they photographed me and then they bound my whole head and face with wide adhesive tape (wide Sellotape as it is called in Egypt) and they left an opening for my nose and one for my mouth and they tied my feet and hands from behind with plastic binds and then they lifted me into an airplane, I realized that it was a plane after it flew for I felt what a passenger may feel at takeoff as in shortness of breath and a narrowness in the chest. Inside the plane, I felt an extreme chill to the extent that I thought that I was inside a fridge as the temperature was under zero and as the plane took off the temperature in the plane began to rise.

When I went on the plane I heard the sounds of soft classical music and I was lying down maybe on the floor and there was a mattress beneath me or maybe I was lying across more than one seat but I did not move left or right during the cruise and as the plane took off they placed earphones in my ears so I didn’t hear anything other than music and the movement of feet of those on the plane. Were there others with me on the plane, passengers or other abductees? Was the plane a civilian plane or a military one? I know nothing.

I forgot to mention that they tied my right toe with wire I believe it was attached to an instrument that was measuring my heartbeats. And maybe they placed other wires on my body, I don’t remember because I’ve been living in a state of terror, fright, fear and shock since I was kidnapped off the street and until the moment that I am writing these papers (the testimony) for I am absolutely certain that I will be physically eliminated after this brutal torture that I am experiencing day and night.

The plane flew for many hours, approximately 7 hours. I wasn’t aware of our destination and I wasn’t presented with any food from the moment of my abduction off the street. I experienced on the plane extreme difficulty breathing but nobody cared except after they were certain of my impending death then I felt a respirator invade my nose and they hit me several times on the face after which I felt that we had arrived at our desired destination as I felt the plane circling about the airport waiting for permission to land

Sure enough, it was only a few minutes before the plane began its descent and a little while later I felt someone tying my feet and hands with more plastic binds in addition to the ones already there, I screamed from the severity of the pain as if knives were cutting into my hands and feet and sure enough I was bleeding and I think they feared that I would do something as I was descending from the plane even though I was in a very bad health condition.

They removed the earplugs that were in my ears and I heard the sounds of airplane engines and the voices of people but I was unable to distinguish the language that they were speaking in. Then, I heard the sound of feet coming towards me and they carried me and stood me on my feet and they began to walk me and I saw myself go down about 3 or 4 steps and became certain that the plane was not a civilian plane or that it was a small military plane as the stairs to civilian planes are not less than 20 steps. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I heard someone speaking in Arabic with an Egyptian accent and say to me, “come up”–although he could see the bindings on my feet, so they helped me up, and it must have been a mini-bus. They seated me in the back seats and someone sat next to me and I think he saw the bleeding from my hands for I felt a knife cutting through the plastic binds and replaced by metal cuffs. I was scared to ask him to do the same with the plastic binds on my feet for I am dead dead for sure, so there is no harm in me being patient for the remaining hours before I meet the angel of death.

The mini-bus sped through the streets of Cairo and it was little under a half hour later when the vehicle stopped and the door was opened and they ordered me out. I didn’t know where am I? What’s the name of the place they were taking me to? I entered a building and in a room they removed the binds on my feet or to be more exact they cut the plastic binds on my feet and they directed me towards and facing a wall and they removed the tape on my face as I screamed in pain as the tape took out some of the hairs of my beard and mustache as well as my eyelashes and eyebrows and my face bled. They ordered me to open my eyes and close them very quickly and a few minutes later they began to completely undress me and they replaced the clothes and dressed me in blue garb (prison clothes) and I saw the faces of three Egyptian men of course and a photographer came and began to photograph me from all angles and then they bound my hands and feet and blindfolded me and took me to an office and I was in a terribly ill state. They sat me on a chair and I heard the voice of someone say to me, “We will begin interrogations with you now,” and he began to ask me my name, age and everything about my job and family and my travel outside Egypt and then he said to me, “In the room there are two great Pashas and one of the Pashas will speak to you,” (and the word Pasha in Egypt currently means someone of extreme importance either politician or military) and the great, great Pasha said to me, “Do you hear me well?” So, I answered, “Yes.” Then he said to me, “I will ask you one question and I want a brief response from you without excess, actually no, just a one-word response. Do you accept to work with us in exchange for your safe return to Italy?” So, I said no and I wanted to continue but he said, “Be quiet, don’t speak at all.” [Brief passage redacted to remove unconfirmed speculation about Egyptian interrogator’s identity.] After this, they took me to a cell approximately 2 meters by 11/2 meters and which had no toilet and it had a simple light and a very small opening in the ceiling for penetration of air and they removed the bindings on my hands and feet as well as the blindfold on my eyes and I slept the first night or more correctly the first day, for it was approximately 5 or 6 a.m. since I had heard the call to dawn prayers when I first arrived at the building. I slept for a few hours out of extreme pain, worry, despair, fear and terror and then someone wearing a military uniform opened the cell door, I later learned that I was in the National Security and Egyptian Intelligence headquarters building, and he tied a blindfold around my eyes and took me to a bathroom and instructed me, “Do not remove the blindfold until after you enter the bathroom and the door is closed and knock on the door when you are done so that I may come and blindfold you again.” Then they presented me with some food and about an hour later they opened the cell door and blindfolded me and tied my hands and took me to an office and the interrogations and torture began, they removed all my clothes and removed the binds on my hands and replaced them with other binds that were like three binds; 2 binds on my hands behind my back and one bind which they tied around one foot so that I was standing on one foot and I would fall to the floor naked as they laughed and lifted me back up and again and again and the electric shocks began as well as the hand beatings and the threats to rape me if I refused to talk and if I held back anything I knew and then they gave some paper and a pen and asked me to write everything about my life and to the day that I departed Egypt and what I did outside Egypt. The interrogations were repeated a number of times and they showed me many pictures of people in Italy (Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, etc.)

The atmosphere inside the cell was really bad despite the presence of lighting and despite leaving me without a blindfold but the size of the cell was like hell in the summer with the temperature approaching half boiling point (50 degrees Celsius) and as for the winter the temperature was close to 5 degrees below zero which led to my suffering from rheumatism and weak bones and pain in my chest.

The interrogation with me lasted a complete 7 months, I entered on 18-02-03 and left on 14-09-03. I managed one time to see an Islamist leader at night as the bathroom was outside the cells and each of us would bang on the door for a guard to open and take us and the guard took this leader and I looked through a tiny hole in the cell door and saw him.

Seven months passed as if seven years. I experienced pain and torture and reading papers and magazines was completely prohibited as well as radio and television or seeing family members, everything was prohibited, an unbearable hell and I kept myself busy by telling myself that my Italian government would not let me down and that the Italian ambassador will come and release me by force for I am an Italian citizen by law and hold an Italian passport, but none of this happened. During the interrogations, they asked me about some of the words written in my Italian passport and in the Sigorno and what they meant in Arabic and they asked about the phone numbers stored on my cell phone and then they told me that I was going to be moved to another place and they gave me two papers. One paper stated that I had been well treated and that I was never tortured and they forced me to sign it under the threat of further torture until I signed. As for the second paper, it stated that I had no belongings in their custody, so I refused and told them that I brought with me from Italy a few items that were on me and I listed them but he said to me that the people who brought me from Italy stole them and took them and I responded, “The things are here and they asked me during the interrogations about them,” so they tortured me until I signed that I had no belongings.

I took off the clothes they had dressed me in (the blue clothes) and they gave me the clothes I had worn coming in from Italy, the clothes that the people who kidnapped me had dressed me in; a training suit (pajama style) the sleeves were torn as well as the legs of the pants were cut at the bottom down to the legs. They then bound my hands behind my back as well as bound my feet and blindfolded me and then they placed me on a mini-bus and I was very happy as I imagined that I was returning to my country, Italy, after the intervention of the Italian government. They asked me, “Do you know where you are going?” I responded, “To the airport to return to Italy,” and they left me and did not respond. The vehicle drove for approximately half an hour and then it stopped and they opened the door and ordered me to step down and they took me to a building and I heard footsteps coming towards me and take me to a room and suddenly I saw many hands beating me all over my body as well as feet and curses from many mouths and then they asked me my name and my age and job and about my family and they told me, “You are now in a place that even blue flies cannot get to,” and they put me in a cell while my hands and feet were still bound and I was still blindfolded and they warned me against taking off the blindfold or moving it even a little and they told me that “there is a guard at the door who will be watching you and if he sees you moving the blindfold you will undergo a torture campaign.”

I asked them about the “Qibla” [direction for prayer] and where the bathroom was so that I could use and wash for prayer and they said, “You are in a bathroom,” and they moved the blindfold slightly to the top and said, “Look at this place where you will urinate and defecate,” there was an extremely small hole, “and this is that water that you will use for drinking and for washing after urinating and defecating,” the same water container. The cell had no electricity and one cannot tell night from day and has no openings for ventilation and there was one blanket. How can I sleep in a bathroom that smells so disgustingly rotten, that cattle would be embarrassed to urinate or defecate in, let alone a human being? The cell was approximately the same size as the cell in which I stayed for about seven and a half months at the Egyptian National Security & Intelligence building near the Republican Palace in Hadayek El Quba. As for this new place, I found out later that it is called the State Security Apparatus and is in Nasr City in Cairo. And although I do not wish to recollect this place which every time I remember, I remember what I experienced in brutal torture and sexual abuse and I am overtaken with [unclear word] and uncontrollable and continuous weeping. But I will tell of some of what happened to me there.

1. The size of the cell, as I mentioned is 2 meters long by 1 and half meters wide. It has no openings whatsoever for ventilation except for an air filter with a motor that resembles, in sound, the sound of a tank’s engine, and there is one blanket that I sleep on and that is extremely dirty and exudes a terrible rotting smell. I believe that dozens of other people have slept on it before me. And the cell is underground where you cannot distinguish between night and day and the cockroaches and rats and insects walk all over my body night and day.

2. I didn’t know the times for prayer and was not allowed to wash for prayer, so I would pray in any direction and the beatings and kicking and the electric baton if the guard opened the door and found me sitting or sleeping, I had to get up quickly when I heard the key in the cell door, so I would stand up, face to the wall and my hands lifted high up and would rest on my knees afterwards and they gave me a number in place of my name, number 27 and it was the same number on my cell, so he would say, “Hey number 27!” and I would respond and if I didn’t respond, he would brutally beat me. This in regard to the number in the cell as for when they take me for interrogations, they call me by a woman’s name or by vagina or male or female asshole.

3. The food presented to me is a kind of rotting hard (like stone) bread that if I eat a piece of, the gums become torn and causes pain to the teeth, the percentage of dirt in this bread is higher than the percentage of flour, one must first wet it in water to be able to chew and swallow and they sometimes present rotten food and very little of it as the policy is to not fulfill the prisoner and to just keep him barely alive merely bones covered in a little meat (a skeleton) or (a semi human being).

4. I stayed in this place “State Security Apparatus” for about 7 and a half months spent in interrogations. And interrogations are held twice a day. The first is at 11 noon [noon prayers are sometimes performed at 11 a.m.] up to afternoon prayers approximately (3:30-4:30 pm) and from 9 p.m. until slightly before dawn. The interrogations are conducted in rooms close to the cells and the prisoner hears in his cell the screams, the howling and the weeping.

When I was first kidnapped in Italy, I had maybe 4 or 5 white hairs in my head and in my beard, but after going to Egypt and after the brutal torture the hair on my head and beard has turned white.

I will try to relay quickly some of what would happen in the interrogation rooms:

1. In the preliminary times, they would curse Italy and its government for giving me political asylum and they would say to me, “It is Italy that gave you to Egypt, and no one will come to rescue you from this torture.” And they ordered me to write a waiver of my political asylum which I obtained in Italy .

2. At the beginning of the interrogation process, the guard opens my cell door and makes sure to blindfold me tightly and changes the position of my bound hands to behind my back out of fear that I would remove the blindfold and witness the officer that is interrogating and torturing me. My feet remain bound and then I’m dragged to the interrogation rooms. They then remove all my clothes (naked as the day my mother gave birth to me) and they let me into where the interrogators are who order them to play with my genitals in order to humiliate me and then the brutal torture begins and which continues throughout the time that one spends in this “State Security Apparatus” seven and a half months.

3. I was hung like slaughtered cattle, head down, feet up, hands tied behind my back, feet also tied together, and I was exposed to electric shocks all over my body and especially the head area to weaken the brain and paralyze it and in the nipples and my genitals and my penis and I was beaten in my genitals with a stick and they were squeezed if I refused to answer or lied to the interrogator.

4. I was exposed to all forms of crucifixion. They crucified me on a metal door, and on a wooden apparatus which they call “El Arousa” or “the bride” hands up high, behind my back, to the sides as well as the feet tightly together and spread apart and torture during crucifixion by means of electric shocks and by being kicked and beaten with electric cables, water hoses and whipped.

5. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, paper, pen, talking with the guard and even the Koran are all absolutely prohibited; it would be easier to ask for my release than to ask for the Koran. I dared once to ask the guard for the Koran and it turned into a day that was blacker than night; they told me, “So you can see through your blindfold and you have the strength to hold the Koran in your hands and you have the patience to bear the pains of torture.” So, they multiplied my torture many times more than what I used to endure and had they brought me the Koran, I wouldn’t have been able to read it for the room is dark black and you can’t see your own hands but I had hoped to kiss the Koran with my lips and to hug it to my chest even for just a few minutes so that some of the humiliation and torture and pain that I`ve been through would depart from me.

6. They beat me severely on both ears until I lost hearing in one ear.

7. I underwent torture through what they call “the mattress” and it is a mattress that is placed on the tiled floor of the torture chamber and it is wet down with water and attached to electricity. My hands were tied behind my back and so were my feet and someone sat on a wooden chair between my shoulder blades and another sat on a wooden chair between my legs and the electricity was switched on and I find myself raised from the strength of the electricity that is touching the water but the wooden chairs are keeping me from rising high and then the electricity is switched off and the interrogator tortures me by electric shocks to my genitals while cursing me and telling, “Let Italy be of benefit to you.”

8. Depriving me of any long periods of sleep and leaving me standing for hours and not allowing me to bathe except once every 4 months and they left the hair on my head and beard without cutting it until they released me in April 2004 and returned me to my home and family and I saw myself in the mirror and found myself resembling Saddam Hussein when they captured him in the famous hole.

9. I was placed near the torture chambers for long periods of time to hear the screams of the tortured and their moans and their howls so that I would collapse psychologically and sure enough I experienced episodes of epilepsy and passing out.

10. I was sexually abused and sodomized twice and this was the worst thing that I went through for signs of physical torture eventually go away and the pain goes away but the psychological repercussion and the bitterness and scandal of sexual violation remain. This sexual violation occurred twice where my hands were restrained behind my back and so were my feet and they lay me on my stomach, naked, and someone lay on top of me and began to try to rape me and I screamed so hard and so loud that I passed out and I don’t know whether he raped me or he was just intimidating and threatening.

11. When they took me to the State Security Prosecution in March and April 2004 they tortured me before going to the prosecutor and they would say, “Memorize what we say to you to repeat to the chief prosecutor, tell the chief prosecutor that you came to Egypt of your own free will and that you bought an Egypt Air ticket and upon descending into the Cairo airport you went to the security office at the airport and gave them your Italian passport and explained to them your story and that you want to reside in Egypt. Every time I returned from the State Security Prosecutor they question me and ask about what I’d said and they would say to me, “We will know if you are being honest or are lying.” Sure enough I said to the prosecutor what they told me to say and the prosecutor never asked me why my face was swollen or the reasons behind the wounds on my face or for the reason for leaving my hair, moustache and beard so long.

I can no longer continue to write about the conditions of brutal torture that I experienced. All I care about with regards to my presence at the State Security Apparatus in Nasr City is death. But there are no means or tools that I can use to do so, for it is the crime of suicide, but I had lost my mind after the electric shocks to my brain and head.

I obtained, later in April 2004, a release from the State Security Prosecution after several interrogations and I was released and they brought me back to the State Security Prosecutor and some investigators sat with me and told me that I was going home to my family and siblings but that I should beware of opening my mouth and telling anything about what had happened to me from my kidnapping in Italy to my torture in Egypt. And I returned to my home and family in Alexandria and I stayed with them for approximately 20 days, and during those days I called my wife and children in Europe as well as my friends and told them everything in detail beginning with my abduction to my torture in Egypt; and they arrested me again. I forgot to say that after I was released, I was transported from the State Security Appartus in Cairo to its branch in Alexandria where I stayed for about 3 days and where I was met by state security officers and they gave me what is known as “the Holy Nos” and they told me, “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare go against these holy nos:

“1. Do not go the mosques of the Islamic Jama’a and don’t pray there.

“2. Do not call Europe at all and do not go to the Italian Embassy or Consulate.

“3. You are prohibited from any form of travel.

“4. Do not go to human rights groups nor contact them.

“5. Do not speak at mosques or teach.

“6. Do not mention what’s happened to you to anyone.

“7. Do not travel outside Alexandria without prior authorization not even to nearby governorates.”
Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune

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Eric Schlosser on the United States Prison System
We’ve covered in depth on Law and Disorder the US run prison industry abroad, from Guantanamo Bay prison, Cuba, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. These are the exports of one of the most highly profitable businesses in the United States. The prison industrial complex in this country has reached record breaking occupancy. Nearly 2.1 million Americans are behind bars, the majority of them nonviolent offenders, they’re usually poor, many have substance abuse problems and many have are mentally ill. This according to exhaustive research by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser who spoke at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York about his compendium on the American Prison system.

Law and Disorder caught up with Eric during this talk and we listen to the second part of his one hour speech. In his talk he warns our society of the perils of a profit driven penal system and backs his research with well-documented facts and staggering statistics.

Muhammad Salah Case - Update

Hosts talk with Salah’s attorney Michael Deutsch on the latest in the case involving a Palestinian businessman accused of funding Hamas in 1993. His defense argues he was tortured and his confessions coerced.

The government also called to the witness stand former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Law and Disorder hosts fill in the background of this reporter who was fired from the NY Times for writing numerous stories backing the Bush administration’s war campaign chant, “weapons of mass destruction.” Miller was allowed to witness Israeli agents interviewing Salah in 1993. She testified a month ago that Salah seemed comfortable and that he boasted about Hamas operations.

Guest - Michael Deutsch, Muhammad Salah’s attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.

The Mishandled Lethal Injection of Florida death row inmate Angel Nieves Diaz

Angel Diaz was executed by lethal injection for killing a Miami topless bar manager 27 years ago. He was given a rare second does of deadly chemicals as he took more than twice the usual time to succumb. Needles that were supposed to inject drugs in the 55 year old man’s veins were instead pushed through the blood vessels and into the surrounding soft tissue.

The error in Diaz’s execution led Florida Governor Jeb Bush to suspend all executions. Bush still defends the death penalty itself and rejects calls for its abolition. In a separate case, a federal judge extended a moratorium on executions in California, declaring that its method of legal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Those are just the latest challenges to lethal injection, which is the preferred method in 37 states. Missouri’s injection method, similar to California’s was declared unconstitutional last month by a federal judge.

Guest - Kristin Houle with the Amnesty International Program to Abolish the Death Penalty

Lynch Mobs and the Killing State

Lynchings. That word alone is at the root of racism in the United States. Those who may regard lynching as a shameful part of the past need only read the book “From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State” edited by Austin Sarat and Charles Ogletree to realize that state-sanctioned executions are sanitized forms of lynching justified by society.

Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat have assembled a lucid and intelligent work in which essays from sociologists, historians, criminologists and lawyers weave toegether a social history that starkly reveals how this country’s death penalty is rooted in lynchings.

Racism informs both kinds of killings. The 985 lives lost to official lynchings in the United States since the practice resumed in 1976 symbolize according to one of the book’s contributors, a much broader and enduring culture of American apartheid.

Guest - Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His books include Mercy on Trial: What it Means to Stop an Execution.