And supporters of the jailed Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian
have issued a new warning over his health after he was again placed in
solitary confinement just days before his scheduled release. Al-Arian
is in the second month of a hunger strike to protest his ongoing
imprisonment. Last year, Al-Arian was imprisoned for an additional
eighteen months for refusing to testify before a Virginia grand jury.
He’s been in prison for five years on charges that he was a leader of
the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was jailed on a plea agreement to
avoid a second trial. In his original trial, a Florida jury failed to
return a single guilty verdict on any of the seventeen charges brought
against him.