TAREK'S SENTENCING STATEMENT
APRIL 12, 2012

Read to Judge O'Toole during his sentencing, April 12th 2012.
In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful

Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work
shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was
approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a
choice to make: 1 could do things the easy way, or I could do
them the hard way. The “easy * way, as they explained, was
that I would become an informant for the government, and if
Idid so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a
prison cell As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having
spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary
cellthe size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for
23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked
very hard—and the government spent millions of tax dollars
o put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and
finally to have me stand here before you today to be
sentenced to even more time in a cell

In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have
offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said
Ishould plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while
others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what |
want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes,

When [ refused to become an informant, the government
responded by charging me with the “crime” of supporting the
mujahideen fighting the occupation of Muslim countries
around the world. Or as they like to call them, “terrorists” I
wasn't born in a Muslim country, though. 1 was bom and 2
raised right here in America and this angers many people:
how s it that I can be an American and believe the things I
believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is
exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that
shapes his outlook, and I'm no different. So, in more ways
than one, it's because of America that 1 am who I am.

When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection
of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind,
introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up:
that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there
are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This
resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my
childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that
paradigm — Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Autobiography of
Malcolm X, and I even saw an ethical dimension to The
Catcher in the Rye.

By the time I began high school and took a real history class,
I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world.
learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at
the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the
descendents of those European settlers were in turn
oppressed under the tyranny of King George IIL. Iread about
Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed
insurgency against British forces — an insurgency we now
celebrate as the American revolutionary war. As a kid I even
went on school field trips just blocks away from where we sit
now. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown,
and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about
Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor
unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank,

the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and 2
imprisoned dissidents. I leamed about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King, and the civil rights struggle. I learned
about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for
decades to liberate themselves from one invader after
another. [ learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight
against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in
those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I
was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant
struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With
each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently
siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those
who stepped up to defend them -regardless of nationality,
regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away.
Aslstand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my
bedroom closet athome.

From all the historical figures I leamed about, one stood out
above the rest. I was impressed by many things about
Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of
transformation, his transformation. I don't know if you've
seen the movie *X" by Spike Lee, it's over three and a half
hours long, and the Malcolm at the beginning is different
from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate
criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and
eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim
performing the Hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr
Malcolm's life taught me that Istam s not something
inherited; it's not a culture or ethnicity. It's a way of life, a
state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come
from or how they were raised. This led me to look deeper
into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam
answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were
clueless about, the question that drives the rich & famous to
depression and suicide from being unable to answer: what is
the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it
also answered the question of how we're supposed to exist.
And since there’s no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly
and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Quran
and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the
journey of understanding what this was all about, the
implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an
individual, for the people around me, for the world; and the
more 1 learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold.
This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the
pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and
everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.

With that, my attention turned to what was happening to
other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere
Tlooked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I
loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of
Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the
Muslims of Bosnia. I learned what the Russians were doing to
the Muslims of Chechnya. I learned what Israel had done in
Lebanon - and what it continues to do in Palestine - with the
full backing of the United States. And I learned what America
itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf War, and
the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and
caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq. I learned about
the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine,
and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and how —
according to the United Nations — over half a million children
perished as a result. I remember a dlip from a ‘60 Minutes’
interview of Madeline Albright where she expressed her view
that these dead children were “worth it I watched on
September 11th as a group of people felt driven to hijack
airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at
the deaths of these children. I watched as America then
attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of
“Shock & Awe' in the opening day of the invasion — the
children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American
missiles sticking out of their foreheads (of course, none of
this was shown on CNN). I learned about the town of
Haditha, where 24 Muslims ~ including a 76-year old man in a
wheelchair, women, and even toddlers ~ were shot up and
blown up in their bedclothes as the slept by US Marines. 1
learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl
gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and
her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. Ijust
want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don't even
show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this
young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off;
being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not
four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read
about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily
in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month,
we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims -~ mostly
mothers and their kids - shot to death by an American
soldier, who also set fire to their corpses.

These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but
one of the first concepts I leamed in Islam is that of loyalty, of
brotherhood — that each Muslim woman is my sister, each
man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who
must protect each other. In other words, I couldn't see these
things beings done to my brothers & sisters — including by
America - and remain neutral. My sympathy for the
oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my
respect for those defending them.

I mentioned Paul Revere - when he went on his midnight
ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the
British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and
John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons
stored there by the Minuteman. By the time they got to
Concord, they found the Minuteman waiting for them, 6
weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and
beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution.
There's an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen
did that day. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial
was about. All those videos and translations and childish
bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he
edited that sentence; and all those exhibits revolved around a
single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against
American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did
to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever
plotted to “kill Americans" at shopping malls or whatever the
story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this
claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who
spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained
my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an
undercover agent to prod me into one of their litle “terror
plots” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the
jury never heard this.

So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing
American civilians. It was about my position on Americans
illing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend
their lands from foreign invaders — Soviets, Americans, or
Martians. This is what I believe. Its what I've always believed,
and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it's
not extremism. It's what the arrows on that seal above your
head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with
my lawyers when they say that you don't have to agree with
my beliefs — no. Anyone with common sense and humanity
has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into

your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates
that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your
home. But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader
is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly
change. Common sense is renamed “terrorism” and the
people defending themselves against those who come to kill
them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are
“killing Americans.” The mentality that America was

victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets 2%
centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by
as American soldiers walk their streets today. It's the

mentality of colonialism. When Sgt. Bales shot those Afghans
to death last month, all of the focus in the media was on him
i life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his home—as
if he was the victim. Very little sympathy was expressed for
the people he actually killed, as if theyre not real, they're not
humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to
everyone in society, whether or not they realize it. Even with
my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining.
and dlarifying before they were finally able to think outside
the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was
saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so

intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program
themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected
jury under the premise that they're my “impartial peers,” I
mean, come on. 1 wasn't tried before a jury of my peers
because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no
peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me
~ not because they needed to, but simply because they could.

1learned one more thing in history class: America has
historically supported the most unjust policies against its
minorities — practices that were even protected by the law
only to look back later and ask: ‘what were we thinking?”
Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during
World War Il - each was widely accepted by American society,
each was defended by the Supreme Court. But as time

passed and America changed, both people and courts looked
back and asked ‘What were we thinking?’ Nelson Mandela
was considered a terrorist by the South African govemment,
and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world
changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were,
that it was not he who was the terrorist, and they released
him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is
subjective - even this whole business of “terrorism" and who
is a "terrorist” It all depends on the time and place and who
the superpower happens to be at the moment.

In your eyes, I'm a terrorist, and it's perfectly reasonable that I
be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America
will change and people will recognize this day for what it is,
They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were
killed and maimed by the U military in foreign countries, yet
somehow I'm the one going to prison for "conspiring to kill
and maim’ in those countries - because I support the
Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on
tow the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me
as a “terrorist;” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-
Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped
by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her
who the “terrorists- are, she sure wouldn't be pointing at me.

The government says that I was obsessed with violence,
obsessed with “killing Americans.* But, as a Musiim living in
these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.

- “Tarek Mehanna
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