[Ppnews] Sami Al-Arian - A Prosecutor Is Called 'Relentless'

[Political Prisoner News]

This is from corporate media!

A Prosecutor Is Called 'Relentless'

http://www.nysun.com/national/a-prosecutor-is-called-relentless/82727/

By 
<http://www.nysun.com/authors/Josh+Gerstein>JOSH 
GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | July 28, 2008

A federal prosecutor who has led a series of 
investigations into Islamic militants and Muslim 
groups based in 
<http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Virginia>Virginia, 
Gordon Kromberg, may soon be facing a trial of 
sorts himself, if defense lawyers get their way.

Attorneys for a former Florida college professor 
who pleaded guilty two years ago to aiding 
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 
<http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Sami+Al-Arian>Sami 
Al-Arian, are asking a federal judge to hold a 
hearing on whether anti-Muslim bias led to the 
government's decision to obtain a new indictment 
of Al-Arian in June for contempt for refusing to 
testify before grand juries pursuing the Virginia organizations.

While the motion claims Muslim terrorism suspects 
are generally treated unfairly by the 
<http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=U.S.+Department+of+Justice>Justice 
Department, Al-Arian's lawyers argue that Mr. 
Kromberg, 51, has a particularly egregious record 
of intemperate statements and actions in a series 
of terrorism-related cases and investigations.

"Defense attorneys have objected for years that 
Mr. Kromberg, the lead counsel in many of these 
cases, has been using the Eastern District of 
Virginia to mete out his own brand of justice for 
Muslim terrorism subjects, often openly 
displaying his personal animus," Al-Arian's lead 
counsel, Jonathan Turley, wrote. "This long and 
controversial record forms the backdrop for the 
allegation of selective and malicious prosecution in this case."

Al-Arian's lawyers claim that in 2006, when Mr. 
Kromberg moved to obtain new testimony from the 
former professor following his guilty plea in 
Florida, the prosecutor "became agitated" in 
response to a defense lawyer's request that the 
testimony be put off until after the Muslim holy 
month of Ramadan. "They can kill each other 
during Ramadan. They can appear before the grand 
jury; all they can't do is eat before sunset," 
Mr. Kromberg responded, according to a 
declaration written by one of Al-Arian's 
attorneys, Jack Fernandez. Mr. Fernandez said the 
prosecutor described the request for a 
postponement as "all part of the attempted 
Islamization of the American justice system." Mr. 
Fernandez wrote that he viewed the comments as 
exhibiting "apparent bias against Muslims."

Mr. Fernandez also said Mr. Kromberg called the 
57-month prison sentence Al-Arian received "a 
bonanza" for the Palestinian Arab activist. He 
had faced the potential of life in prison for 
acting as the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad 
in 
<http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+States>America, 
but a trial in 2005 resulted in his acquittal on 
eight counts and a mistrial on nine others where 
jurors could not reach a verdict. Al-Arian's 
lawyers contend that the dogged pursuit of their 
client is retribution for the outcome of the 
Tampa trial, which was widely seen as a failure for the government.

The new motion also asserts that Mr. Kromberg 
joked about the torture of a Virginia man then 
being held in Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Abu Ali. The 
suspect's lawyer, Salim Ali, said that when he 
asked Mr. Kromberg about the possibility of 
returning the young man to America, the 
prosecutor "smirked and stated that 'he's no good 
for us here, he has no fingernails left.'"

In a court declaration, Mr. Kromberg said that he 
had no recollection of making the statement and 
that he was arguing an appeal in another city 
when the comment was allegedly made.

Al-Arian's lawyers are also pointing to the 
arguments Mr. Kromberg made in the trial of a 
Virginia cancer researcher and Muslim preacher, 
Ali al-Timimi, who was accused of exhorting 
others to wage war against America by joining the 
Taliban. In the case, Mr. Kromberg argued that 
the religious beliefs of the defendant and other 
witnesses made it acceptable to lie to kaffirs, 
or nonbelievers in Islam. "If you are a kaffir, 
Timimi believes in time of war, he's supposed to 
lie to you," the prosecutor told jurors. 
Al-Timimi was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison.

"Kromberg argued to the jury that Timimi and the 
other Muslim witnesses ­ their testimony should 
be disregarded just on the basis of their 
religion," al-Timimi's defense lawyer, Edward 
MacMahon Jr., said. "I think it's an outrageous 
thing to argue in the courtroom. Imagine that directed at any other religion."

Mr. Kromberg declined to be interviewed for this 
article and said a written response to Al-Arian's 
motion would be filed in due course. In response 
to questions from The New York Sun, the U.S. 
Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, 
Charles "Chuck" Rosenberg, issued a written 
statement denying any bias and standing behind Mr. Kromberg's work.

"Gordon Kromberg is a dedicated, talented, and 
scrupulously fair prosecutor," Mr. Rosenberg 
said. "Further, when we decide to prosecute an 
individual, that decision is based strictly on 
the facts and the law, and in the pursuit of justice, period."

A lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has 
squared off with Mr. Kromberg in court, Henry 
FitzGerald, said the prosecutor has acquired a 
reputation for leaving no stone unturned in cases 
relating to terrorism or funding for Islamic militant groups.

"Kromberg is absolutely relentless in his pursuit 
of everything that could be pursued in the way of 
forfeiture or prosecutions in this area. He's 
just indefatigable, relentless, tireless," Mr. 
FitzGerald said. "If you say he's doing the 
country's work to fight terrorism, that's good, 
he's a good fighter, but a lot of people say it's 
overkill, he doesn't listen to reasonable 
arguments. Everything is black until somebody 
takes him to court to prove it's white."

Mr. FitzGerald said Mr. Kromberg, while unusually 
persistent, does not take quixotic stances. 
"Kromberg's not a dumb man. He's smart. He's not 
going to go out and take an utterly groundless 
case, raise hell with it, and get himself in 
trouble. He just goes straight ahead, doesn't 
look left or right and pushes to the absolute limit," Mr. FitzGerald said.

Mr. Kromberg sought Al-Arian's testimony as part 
of an investigation into the finances of a 
Herndon, Va.- based think tank, the International 
Institute of Islamic Thought. In 2002, federal 
authorities executed search warrants at IIIT's 
headquarters and more than a dozen other 
locations, including residences of the 
organization's officers. Court papers said 
prosecutors had evidence of financial transfers 
involving the think tank, nonprofit groups, 
including some run by Al-Arian, and terrorist 
movements abroad, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A lawyer for IIIT, Nancy Luque, did not respond 
to repeated requests for an interview for this 
article. However, in 2006, she complained to the 
Washington Post that prosecutors had nothing to 
show for their raids. "You storm into people's 
homes, take their children's toys, terrorize the 
women, and 4 1/2 years later, you haven't got a 
scintilla of evidence against them," she told the Post.

A former federal terrorism prosecutor, Andrew 
McCarthy, said complaints that the Virginia probe 
is moving too slowly are silly coming from 
Al-Arian and others who have refused to 
cooperate. Several witnesses affiliated with IIIT 
have filed legal challenges to grand jury 
subpoenas and have pursued appeals to the 4th 
Circuit, resulting in lengthy delays. "I'm always 
amused when people who have obstructed an 
investigation for years, at the conclusion of 
years say, 'Years have gone by and nothing has 
been revealed,'" Mr. McCarthy said.

Justice Department officials also reject the 
notion that the IIIT probe, which grew out of an 
effort dubbed Operation Green Quest, has yielded 
nothing. They note the arrest and subsequent 
guilty plea of Abdurahman Alamoudi, a former 
Muslim-American political leader and founder of 
the American Muslim Council, who admitted in 2004 
to involvement in a Libyan plot to assassinate 
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Alamoudi, 
whose home was among those searched in 2002 and 
who worked for a group related to IIIT, the Saar 
Foundation, was sentenced to 23 years in prison. 
In addition, a financier with ties to Saar who 
left America just after the 2002 raids, Soliman 
Biheiri, got 13 months in prison for immigration 
fraud and lying to customs agents.

Still, it is true that the principals in IIIT and 
the organization itself have not been charged, 
more than six and a half years after the investigation began.

Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Kromberg's statements about 
Islam seemed directed not to ordinary followers 
but to the beliefs of certain radical Islamic 
extremists. "If he's got an innate feeling of 
disapproval and hostility to that, I don't see 
the slightest problem with that. I do too, and so 
do most Americans," the ex-prosecutor said. "If 
he's concerned about the Islamization of our 
legal process or the idea that we should be 
recognizing certain tenets of Islamic law as we 
conduct law enforcement... Gordon is not the only 
prosecutor ever to have taken that position."

Al-Arian's motion includes no claim that Mr. 
Kromberg's alleged anti-Muslim animus is related 
to him being Jewish or to a pro-Israel bias. 
However, the Atlantic magazine and a left-leaning 
news agency, Inter Press Service, have called 
attention to a travelogue Mr. Kromberg wrote 
after traveling on a United Jewish Communities mission to Israel in 2002.

In the diary, Mr. Kromberg complained that Israel 
is losing the global public relations battle 
because of "a lack of resources on the Israeli 
side to provide information to the innumerable 
members of the press who are fed lies by the 
Palestinians ('hundreds were massacred in Jenin')."

"Bibi Netanyahu can only be in so many places at 
one time to answer so many questions," the prosecutor lamented.

Mr. Kromberg's journal also refers to the West 
Bank as "Judea and Samaria," which Inter Press 
described as "a term favored by right-wing Israelis."

As a whole, the diary exhibits a hostility toward 
Palestinian terrorism and a strong affinity for 
Israel, but gives no indication Mr. Kromberg is 
particularly religious. He wrote that he does not 
speak Hebrew and that his tour group opted to go 
shopping rather than visit Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Many Muslim activists consider Mr. Kromberg to be 
a doppelganger of a journalist and author of 
books warning about the threat posed by Muslim 
radicals in America, Steven Emerson. The 
selective prosecution motion asks for a hearing 
to explore why the prosecutor's statements 
"appear to track writings" by Mr. Emerson.

In an interview with the Sun, Mr. Emerson called 
the motion's claims about him and Mr. Kromberg "baseless."

Mr. Kromberg grew up in the village of Lawrence 
in Nassau County, just east of Queens. He 
volunteered briefly at an Israeli kibbutz and 
went to college at Princeton University, where he 
took part in the Reserve Officer Training Corps. 
The future prosecutor attended New York 
University Law School, where he graduated in 1982.

In the 1980s, Mr. Kromberg spent several years in 
South Korea as a military defense attorney in the 
Army's Judge Advocate General Corps, before 
taking a job in the Justice Department's civil 
division in 1987. He is still in the Army 
Reserve, where he holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In 2000, Mr. Kromberg briefly joined the staff of 
the independent counsel investigating President 
Clinton, Robert Ray. At the time, the impeachment 
trial was long over and Mr. Ray was considering 
whether to bring criminal charges against Mr. Clinton. They were never filed.

That year, Mr. Kromberg started work at the U.S. 
Attorney's Office in Northern Virginia, where he 
became a specialist in seizing money, cars, 
boats, and houses allegedly used in drug dealing 
and other crimes. Defense lawyers, civil 
libertarians, and some conservatives criticized 
the tactic as an end run around the government's 
obligation to prove criminals guilty beyond a 
reasonable doubt. As that criticism mounted, Mr. 
Kromberg became a point person in the Justice 
Department's effort to fend off legislation which 
would have made it tougher for the government to confiscate such property.

Some of the ire directed at Mr. Kromberg by the 
Muslim community stems from his vigorous 
prosecution of the so-called Paintball Eleven, a 
group of Muslims accused of training in Virginia 
to fight with a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar 
e-Taiba, against Indian forces in Kashmir. Nine 
of the eleven men were convicted at trial or pled guilty. Two were acquitted.

Mr. Kromberg later called one of the acquitted 
men, Sabri Benkahla, before grand juries and 
questioned him about his attendance and 
activities at jihad training camps in Afghanistan 
or Pakistan. Convinced that Benkahla's answers 
were false, the prosecutor obtained an indictment 
of Benkahla for obstruction of justice and making 
false statements to the FBI and the grand juries.

As with Al-Arian, defense lawyers for Benkahla 
said the perjury charges amounted to an effort by 
Mr. Kromberg to retry the earlier case in which Benkahla was acquitted.

"When you look at the prosecutions together, 
there is a pattern that really doesn't make Mr. 
Kromberg look very good," a Muslim scholar from 
Maryland who has been subpoenaed in the IIIT 
probe, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, said. "It reminds me 
of the Red Scare. Communism was a serious problem 
for America, but some people seemed to think 
almost every liberal was a Communist. Mr. 
Kromberg and a handful of other people in the 
government seem to have the same approach when it comes to outspoken Muslims."

Mr. Ahmad said the punishments for those 
convicted in the Paintball or, as the government 
prefers, Virginia Jihad, cases, were too extreme 
for individuals who planned no act of violence in 
America. "It's hard to imagine there isn't 
someone in the Department of Justice saying, 'Why are we doing this?'" he said.

Even Mr. Kromberg's critics acknowledge that he 
has a strong record of prevailing in court. Last 
month, a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit 
unanimously upheld Benkahla's convictions and 
rejected the arguments that he was 
unconstitutionally put on trial twice for the 
same crime. "The investigations in which Benkahla 
was interviewed and the questions he was asked 
show no sign of having been manufactured for the 
sake of a second prosecution," Judge James 
Wilkinson III wrote. The court also upheld a 
10-year prison sentence for Benkahla.

However, there are new signs that some judges 
have begun to chafe at Mr. Kromberg's aggressiveness.

Late last year, Judge Gerald Lee, who ordered 
Al-Arian jailed for a year on civil contempt, 
raised questions about the strategy pursued 
against the former professor. "Judge Lee 
expressed his frustration with the government's 
continued attempt to use contempt measures 
against Dr. Al-Arian and stated that he did not 
view these proceedings as a good use of the time 
and resources of either the government or the 
Court," Mr. Turley wrote to Mr. Kromberg, 
describing a court hearing in December. The 
e-mail was attached to a defense pleading filed 
recently in the criminal case. The defense 
attorney also wrote that the judge had urged Mr. 
Kromberg to ask Attorney General Mukasey, who had 
just been sworn in, for a "new review of the case."

Precisely what Judge Lee, Mr. Kromberg, or Mr. 
Turley said at the hearing is not publicly known 
because the judge refused this reporter's request 
for public access to the proceedings. A legal 
challenge to the secrecy is pending before the 4th Circuit.

At a bail hearing for Al-Arian earlier this 
month, Judge Leonie Brinkema sounded skeptical 
about the new contempt charges against him. 
"There's some strange signals coming out of this 
case," she said, according to the Associated 
Press. "I expect the Department of Justice to 
live up to its agreements." She granted bail to 
Al-Arian, but he remains in jail on orders from immigration authorities.

Still, Al-Arian may not get far with his argument 
that Mr. Kromberg used religion to win a tainted 
conviction against al-Timimi. Judge Brinkema, who 
will have to rule on the selective prosecution 
motion, presided over al-Timimi's trial and 
rejected defense motions that Mr. Kromberg's 
comments improperly invoked the defendant's religion.

The frustration and anger Mr. Kromberg provokes 
in some quarters may stem from an irreverence he 
sometimes displays in his dealings with defense attorneys and the courts.

In his declaration about Abu Ali, the terrorism 
suspect who claimed torture in Saudi Arabia, the 
prosecutor deadpanned, "I do not have any other 
information that would lead me to believe that he 
has anything wrong with his fingernails."

When Mr. Turley told Mr. Kromberg that "many" 
viewed the effort to force Al-Arian before a 
grand jury as a "transparent perjury trap," the 
prosecutor shot back an e-mail pointing out that 
a federal judge in Tampa found that Al-Arian lied 
to his neighbors for years by denying involvement 
with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. To underscore his 
point, Mr. Kromberg invoked a legendary British rock band.

"I hope that the next time that your client tries 
to convince the 'many' to whom you refer that he 
is something that he is not, that 'many' will 
remember the slogan of the Who, and loudly sing 
out together, 'We won't get fooled [by your 
client] again!'" the prosecutor wrote.




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