Back in February an Arab man was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 21 months in prison plus a $25,000 fine. At the time the ruling came down the defendants lawyer Michael Deutsch said “We see it as a victory that he just got 21 months.”

First a little background on the man convicted, his name is Mohammad Salah. Salah is a naturalized American citizen who taught at local community colleges in the Chicago area. He was put on a U.S. list of “specially designated terrorists” for his role in planning suicide bombings in Israel. He was arrested in Israel on Jan. 25, 1993 - for being a member of Hamas and funneling money to that terrorist group. He spent five years incarcerated, before returning to the United States.

According to the Turkish Press:

Muhammad Salah spent nearly five years in an Israeli prison in the mid-1990s after admitting he committed a number of crimes on behalf of Hamas, which swept to power in January elections this year but remains designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Painted as a top “bag man” whose US citizenship and gentle demeanor helped him slip across borders with piles of cash, prosecutors allege that Salah continued to launder money for Hamas when he returned to the United States in 1997.

Initially Salah was indicted on charges of providing material support to terrorists, racketeering and obstruction of justice. The charge of providing material support to terrorists was dropped amid pre-trial legal wrangling, and he was aquitted of the racketeering charges. The obstructions of justice charges were brought on by testimony he gave in a civil lawsuit over the death of 17 year old David Boim who was killed by Hamas gunmen at a Jerusalem bus stop.

So, in a nutshell, Salah was convicted of obstruction of justice for false testimony, for which he recieved a prison term of 21 months. Recently an editorial was posted in the Southwest News-Herald under the title Mohammed Salah Sentence Is Unjust.

The author Ray Hanania (an Arab American) stated “The decision by Judge St. Eve follows in that tradition, a pathetic miscarriage of justice, and the continued mistreatment of an innocent man whose only crime is that he is an Arab who has an unpopular view of Israel…. What Judge St. Eve did by sentencing Salah to 21 months in prison is to make a politically motivated ruling that declares that an Arab can never receive justice in America”.

Apparantly the author believes it is because of racism that Salah has to serve his sentence of 21 months, while Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted by President Bush. The fact remains, Libby recieved a tougher sentence and a stiffer fine than Salah did, for the same crime. To accuse a judge, or in this case, the entire justice system to be racist shows how little respect Mr. Hanania has for this country, and explains why he prefers to identify himself as “Arab-American” as oppossed to just being American.

His slanderous remarks, and misrepresentation of facts (such as when he called Salah an innocent man) show the lengths he, and indeed the entire Arab community will go to exonerate a now twice convicted criminal.

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CAIR, Politics, Terrorism