I have just returned from visiting Dr. Al-Arian, who was transferred back to Northern Neck Regional Jail yesterday.
Dr. Al-Arian has now lost 30 pounds and was in a wheelchair when he was brought to the attorney-client room. He has refused any fluids for days and has had no food for over two weeks. He appears very diminished and gaunt. His skin shows the advanced stages of dehydration and he is very weak. He remains committed, however, to his protest against his treatment and the prolongation of his confinement despite his plea agreement.
Our arguments and the court orders remains under seal. Preventing us to disclose more information. We will be supplying further information as it becomes public.
Our system of justice is completely shattered. I am deeply sorry.
If I were at his bedside, I would tell him that his strike is not unnoticed in the wider world, but that it does not vitiate the strike to take fluids. His keepers will intervene anyway, but by then it may be too late to avoid renal damage.
Be sure to let us know when to celebrate….
Deeply Worried wrote:
His keepers will intervene anyway, but by then it may be too late to avoid renal damage.
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DW, most jails and prisons are notorious for their total lack of medical care or intervention for all inmates, no matter what their charges are. The fact that they would intervene too late doesn’t surprise me at all. I am very sorry to hear of Dr. Al-Arian’s condition.
I am deeply ashamed of this enormity that calls itself an American government. But the monsters are in control until Jan. 20, 2009, and Dr. Al-Arian’s hunger strike is an appeal to a public that is powerless to relieve his suffering before then. Please ask him to halt his strike in the hope that Barack Obama will win the Presidency and order him set free. It is better that he survive to tell his story to the world.
To: msnbc bs
Just go to Hell.
It’s a travesty what this goverment doing to this man.
Harry,
He already is in a hell-realm of a sort, an invisible cage that may pent his true self the rest of his life if he fail to extricate himself.
He will have to give up something he holds very dear, strength. And embrace something he fears, weakness.
To deeply worried:
I’m also deeply saddened and feeling helpless… But like the times we live in— there seems like little an average citizen can do in the face of a tyrannical establishment.
God help the country and the few good souls live within it.
Harry,
“The arc of the Universe bends toward justice.”
-Martin Luther King
with best regards,
DW