{"id":1891,"date":"2007-03-20T06:13:55","date_gmt":"2007-03-20T10:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1891"},"modified":"2007-03-20T06:13:55","modified_gmt":"2007-03-20T10:13:55","slug":"al-arians-gaunt-condition-stuns-his-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1891","title":{"rendered":"Al-Arian’s gaunt condition stuns his family"},"content":{"rendered":"

He has lost 53 pounds during his 58-day hunger strike in prison.<\/p>\n

By Meg Laughlin, St.Petersburg Times<\/em>, 20 March 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sami Al-Arian has been on a hunger strike for 58 days to protest being held beyond his prison sentence. On a water-only diet, he has lost 53 pounds. The former University of South Florida professor can no longer walk, speaks in a whisper and trembles constantly because of low body temperature, said family members who visited him last weekend at a federal medical prison in Butner, N.C.<\/p>\n

“We were stunned when we saw him. His deterioration is shocking,” said Al-Arian’s son, Abdullah, 26.
\n
\nAl-Arian, 49, is bedridden in an isolation cell. A nurse checks on him twice a day, and a video camera records his every move, say officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Three hot meals are placed in his cell every day, for two hours at a time. Then they are removed, untouched.<\/p>\n

“We will not let him die. We will force feed him before that happens,” Nikki Credic, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said.<\/p>\n

But Al-Arian’s family is calling his condition “dire.”<\/p>\n

“We are extremely worried for his life,” said his wife Nahla.<\/p>\n

Al-Arian went on the strike Jan. 22 to protest being held in jail beyond his sentence because he refused to testify before a Virginia grand jury.<\/p>\n

Last May he pleaded guilty, as part of a plea agreement, to helping associates of a terrorist group with nonviolent activities. The plea agreement came after a jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight terrorism-related charges and deadlocked on nine lesser counts.<\/p>\n

While no explicit language was written into the plea agreement about Al-Arian’s exemption from testimony before a grand jury in Virginia, federal prosecutors in Tampa agreed with defense attorneys that Al-Arian would not have to testify in Virginia. That verbal agreement was recorded in court transcripts. Seven months later, he was transferred to a Virginia jail and ordered to testify.<\/p>\n

Al-Arian, who is 6 feet tall, weighed 202 pounds when the hunger strike began, and is now 149 pounds.<\/p>\n

[Last modified March 19, 2007, 22:39:22]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He has lost 53 pounds during his 58-day hunger strike in prison. By Meg Laughlin, St.Petersburg Times, 20 March 2007 Sami Al-Arian has been on a hunger strike for 58 days to protest being held beyond his prison sentence. On … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-uv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}