Dear Friends,

We are happy to announce that the legal team for detained Palestinian activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti has now been expanded to include attorneys from the Center for Constitional Rights and the Pennsylvania ACLU, along with one private attorney (see the press release below). Each member of the team has invaluable expertise in different areas affecting Farouk's case, and we feel renewed confidence on the legal front.

The next few weeks will be a crucial period in the case. As the legal team steps up the pressure on the immigration authorities through the judicial system, grassroots political pressure will be more important than ever. We're asking all of you to do whatever you can to help. If you've put off writing to deportation official David Venturella to demand Farouk's release --or getting signatures on the petition, or getting the video about Farouk and showing it to friends--now is the time. And if you've already being working hard for Farouk's release, thanks, and keep up the good work.

In solidarity, David Wilson, Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti

PS. Don't delay to get the Farouk video. Place your order right away by return email, and we'll send it ASAP (see form below).

1. Ask Top Deport Officer: Why are you breaking the law? Free Farouk! (Click)
2. Step Up the Struggle Against Unlawful Detention (Click)
3. Press Release: Expanded Legal Team for Detained Palestinian (Click)

Contact David J. Venturella at phone 202-514-8663, fax 202-353-9435, email david.venturella@dhs.gov (w/copies to freefarouk@yahoo.com) and ask him:

1) Why are you keeping Farouk Abdel-Muhti in jail, in violation of the Supreme Court's June 2001 ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis?

2) Why are you keeping Farouk in solitary confinement?

3) Given the high profile of Farouk's case and the number of people who have contacted you about it, how can you possibly pretend on national radio that you are not familiar with the relevant details of the case?

4) The Supreme Court ordered your office to release detainees held over six months. Why do you refuse to do so? Why should detainees and their attorneys have to sue you to force you to comply with the law?

Please send copies of your correspondence (or reports on your phone conversations) to the Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti at fax 212-674-9139 or freefarouk@yahoo.com. 

-- If you live or work in New York City, please join the Free Farouk vigil/leafleting every Friday from 12 noon to 1 pm outside the Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza (Broadway at Worth Street, take the 4/5/6 or N/R to City Hall, or the A/C/E to Chambers Street).

Please tell us if you can join the vigil. Even if you can't make it every week, can you sign up for a specific day? And are you part of a group that can mobilize people for it? Could your group agree to sponsor the vigil for one day?

-- Oct. 26 will mark eighteen months since Farouk's arrest. We may hold an expanded vigil at the New York federal building that Friday, on Oct. 24, and organize a Free Farouk contingent at the massive antiwar demonstration in Washington the next day, on Oct. 25. We'll notify you as our plans firm up.

-- You can help tremendously in the educational work by circulating material about Farouk and getting people to sign the petition for his release. Material can be downloaded from http://www.freefarouk.org.

We also have a six-minute video: "Farouk Abdel-Muhti: Political Prisoner" (2003), by Konrad Aderer, maker of the award-winning short "Life or Liberty" (visit http://lifeorliberty.org for more information). Ideal for showing at an event, or just at a meeting in your living-room, as a short introduction to the realities of immigration policy and how it can be used to stifle dissent. VHS: $10 suggested donation. Inquire for other formats.

Please provide the following information by return email to order the video:

Name:

Address:

City/State/Zip:

Evening Phone:

We will mail you the video right away, but please send a contribution as soon as you can; make checks payable to "NSN," w/"Farouk video" in memo line & mail to Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti, PO Box 20587, Tompkins Sq Sta, NY, NY 10009. We're happy to send a copy free of charge to any group or event supporting Farouk or related human right issues. ===================================================
Press Release: 

For Release: October 11, 2003 Contact: David Wilson, 212-674-9499, freefarouk@yahoo.com

Expanded Legal Team for Detained Palestinian

A newly expanded legal team for Palestinian-born New York activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti filed an updated brief with Judge Yvette Kane of the US Middle District of Pennsylvania on October 9 in his ongoing habeas corpus petition. Abdel-Muhti, 56, has been held by US immigration authorities since April 2002 on the basis of a 1995 deportation order; he is currently in York County Prison in York, Pennsylvania, where he has been kept in a segregation unit since late February.

As a stateless Palestinian Abdel-Muhti is unlikely to be accepted by any country, according to his legal team, which notes that immigration authorities have now had a year and a half to try to deport him. He originally filed his habeas petition in November 2002, based on the Supreme Court's June 2001 ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis, which barred indefinite detention and set six months as a reasonable period of time for immigration authorities to carry out a deportation.

Joining the legal team as lead attorney for the habeas petition is Shayana Kadidal, who is the William Kunstler racial justice attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a civil and international human rights law group based in New York. CCR legal director Jeffrey Fogel is consulting on the case.

Joel Kupferman--who as executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project has led the fight to expose the health dangers in downtown Manhattan following the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001--is continuing to work on the case, as is legal assistant Macdonald Scott, a former National Lawyers Guild membership coordinator.

Two other attorneys have also joined Abdel-Muhti's legal team: Paula Knudsen, Pennsylvania ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) staff attorney for northern and central Pennsylvania, is representing Abdel-Muhti in connection with a complaint he has opened with the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Joanne Macri, a private immigration and civil rights attorney based in Buffalo, is investigating Abdel-Muhti's treatment by prison authorities.

Abdel-Muhti's case has drawn widespread attention because of his claim that he was detained as a result of his activism on behalf of Palestinian rights, including work he did at New York community radio station WBAI-FM.