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Iraqi-American is imprisoned by US for saving his family from US sanctions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/28/iraq-us-constitution-and-civil-libertiesA harrowing case of a Missouri engineer highlights the travesties routinely imposed on Muslim Americans
Such is the case with the treatment of Dr. Shakir Hamoodi, an Iraqi-American nuclear engineer who just began a three-year prison sentence at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas penitentiary for the "crime" of sending sustenance money to his impoverished, sick, and suffering relatives in Iraq - including his blind mother - during the years when US sanctions (which is what caused his family's suffering) barred the sending of any money to Iraq.
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Nobody, including the US government, claims that these amounts were intended for anything other than humanitarian assistance for his family and those of others in his community. Everyone, including the US government, acknowledges that these funds were sent to and received only by the intended recipients - suffering Iraqi family members - and never got anywhere near Saddam's regime, terrorist groups, or anything illicit. As a Newsweek article on the Hamoodi case made clear:
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In a country that has stood by while torturers, government kidnappers, and Wall Street thieves have been completely protected - to say nothing of those who aggressively attacked Iraq - Judge Laughrey, as recounted by Inside Columbia, invoked the mandates of the "rule of law" to explain why Hamoodi, now 60, would have to spend the next three years in a federal prison despite having harmed absolutely nobody:
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The lawyer from the Obama justice department - the same agency that shielded all Bush-era criminals from even an iota of accountability on the ground that we must "Look Forward, not Backward" - invoked the same rationale for why Hamoodi must be punished for the payments he sent to his suffering family nine years ago:
...
Nobody, including the US government, claims that these amounts were intended for anything other than humanitarian assistance for his family and those of others in his community. Everyone, including the US government, acknowledges that these funds were sent to and received only by the intended recipients - suffering Iraqi family members - and never got anywhere near Saddam's regime, terrorist groups, or anything illicit. As a Newsweek article on the Hamoodi case made clear:
...
In a country that has stood by while torturers, government kidnappers, and Wall Street thieves have been completely protected - to say nothing of those who aggressively attacked Iraq - Judge Laughrey, as recounted by Inside Columbia, invoked the mandates of the "rule of law" to explain why Hamoodi, now 60, would have to spend the next three years in a federal prison despite having harmed absolutely nobody:
...
The lawyer from the Obama justice department - the same agency that shielded all Bush-era criminals from even an iota of accountability on the ground that we must "Look Forward, not Backward" - invoked the same rationale for why Hamoodi must be punished for the payments he sent to his suffering family nine years ago:
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