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<h1 id="reader-title">Samidoun mourns Muhammad Salah,
Palestinian community leader, former prisoner in US and
Israeli jails</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">April 24, 2016<br>
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<p><strong>Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity
Network expresses its condolences to the Salah family
and the broader Palestinian community of Chicago and
the United States on the passing of <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42042">Muhammad
Salah</a>, prominent Palestinian activist and
community leader in the Chicago area, former political
prisoner in Israeli jails, survivor of Israeli
torture, and subject of extensive U.S. state
repression. We express our deepest condolences to
Muhammad’s wife Maryam, his children, family, loved
ones, and entire community.</strong></p>
<p>Muhammad Salah’s victory in court in 2006 – and his
second victory six years later, with his removal from
the ‘Specially Designated Terrorist’ list – was, as the
<a target="_blank" href="http://uspcn.org">US
Palestinian Community Network</a> Chicago writes, “a
prominent court victory for our community in the period
of the ‘War on Terrorism’ and the consistent political
and legal attacks on Palestinian rights and our struggle
for national liberation.”</p>
<p>For over twenty years, Salah faced joint persecution at
the hands of the Israeli occupation and the U.S.
government. A grocer in Chicago, he traveled to deliver
humanitarian and financial aid to Palestinians in Gaza
in 1993 and was seized as he entered; this was before
the so-called “<a target="_blank"
href="http://peopleslawoffice.com/michael-deutsch-law-expanding-material-support-terrorism-civil-liberties/">material
support laws,</a>” the Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the later revisions to
follow in the Patriot Act and elsewhere, existed.
However, the Israeli state’s policy of mass arrests of
Palestinians and the criminalization of Palestinian
political, social and national institutions was of
course in full force, as it had been for decades; and
Salah’s case played a significant role in the
development of U.S/Israeli strategies of repression of
the Palestinian-American community and its strong,
active role in the Palestinian national liberation
movement.</p>
<p>Salah was beaten and blindfolded before undergoing
“extensive interrogation” at the hands of the Israeli
Shin Bet. Michael Deutsch and Erica Thompson, Salah’s
lawyers, noted in their extensive article on the case (<a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42042">Part
1</a>, <a target="_blank"
href="http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/2008-December/002025.html">Part
2</a>) the various forms of physical and psychological
torture inflicted on Salah by the Shin Bet and
collaborators during a five-week interrogation period,
after which he signed on to a forced confession. The
Israeli state – with U.S. official and media complicity
– launched a propaganda blitz not only labeling Salah an
activist with Hamas, but a “military leader” heading a
massive “U.S. leadership network” for Hamas. An Israeli
military court sentenced him to five years in prison – a
harsh, unjust penalty, yet also highly incongruent with
the dramatic claims of Israeli officials and media.</p>
<p>The targeting of Muhammad Salah was always intended as
a mechanism not only to target this one Palestinian, but
the entire Palestinian community in the United States.
As Salah’s lawyers <a target="_blank"
href="http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/2008-December/002025.html">wrote</a>,
“The goal had been…to get a confession that would…start
a movement to cut off U.S. funding and support for the
Palestinian cause, and provide a road map for pro-Israel
forces in the United States to target supporters of
Palestine.”</p>
<p>On the basis of the confession produced under torture
by the Shin Bet, Salah was designated a “<a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/20129117918748692.html">Specially
Designated Terrorist</a>” – requiring a special
license to earn or spend money and special approval to
work, hire a doctor or lawyer, or conduct financial
transactions. He was so designated by the U.S.
government while imprisoned in an Israeli jail, despite
his U.S. citizenship, and the designation met him –
along with FBI agents and undercover informants -when he
returned to the U.S. in 1997 after his release from
Israeli prison. Salah lived through years of informants,
wiretapping, omnipresent surveillance, and false
allegations, until he was acquitted in 2007 of charges
brought against him in 2004 of “racketeering,” alongside
co-defendant <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.muslimlinkpaper.com/community-news/community-news/3834-jailed-and-abandoned-abdelhaleem-ashqar-continues-to-live-by-his-principles.html">Abdelhaleem
Ashqar</a>. Earlier attempts to charge him with
“material support” for terrorism had failed.</p>
<p>Salah was convicted of one charge of obstruction and
sentenced to twenty-one months in prison, a sentence he
served. When released, once again he lived under
“internal banishment.” He could not get a job,
participate in political activities, donate to charity,
or even buy a book or newspaper. in 2012, he <a
target="_blank"
href="http://afsc.org/story/chicago-muslim-man-gets-his-life-back-government">filed
a lawsuit</a> against the U.S. Department of the
Treasury. “In response to the lawsuit, and without
attempting to defend its designation of Mr. Salah, the
Department of Treasury unilaterally removed Mr. Salah
from the Special Designated Terror list. After 17 years
of oppressive restrictions on his ability to undertake
basic life activities, Mr. Salah and his family are
freed from the burdens placed upon him by the U.S.
Government. The decision represents a total victory for
Mr. Salah,” noted the <a target="_blank"
href="http://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/salah-v-us-department-treasury">Center
for Constitutional Rights</a>.</p>
<p>Muhammad Salah struggled throughout his life: for
justice, freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people,
in Palestine, in the United States, and everywhere in
exile and diaspora. He confronted the same oppressive
forces that today threaten and persecute <a
target="_blank" href="http://justice4rasmea.org">Rasmea
Odeh</a> and imprison the <a target="_blank"
href="http://freedomtogive.com">Holy Land Five</a> –
and the same oppressive forces who brought the full
force of the U.S. repressive machinery to bear against
the Black Liberation Movement, against the American
Indian Movement, against Puerto Rican independentistas.
He was faced with the full force of the U.S./Israel
imperialist-Zionist nexus of power and all forms of
state repression: imprisonment, “internal banishment,”
terror designation, torture – and continued to struggle
and to seek freedom.</p>
<p><strong>We mourn the loss of Muhammad Salah, a victim
and survivor of injustice who continued to fight for
justice and confront oppression throughout his life,
and extend our deepest condolences to his family,
loved ones, and community – and we pledge to carry on
the struggle, to seek freedom and justice for all
political prisoners in U.S. prisons – from Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Oscar Lopez Rivera and Leonard Peltier to
Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Rasmea Odeh, and the Holy Land
Five – Israeli prisons, and international prisons; to
confront the so-called “anti-terror” law that
terrorize oppressed communities and target liberation
movements; and to struggle for justice and liberation
for Palestine and the Palestinian people.</strong></p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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