The trial of Raunaq Alam, one of the Tarrant 2, concluded Friday (9/12). The activist was found guilty of vandalism and innocent of the hate crime enhancement leveled by the state. The jury recommended a sentence which included probation but not prison. The judge in the case opted to include 180 days in county jail on top of a five year probation sentence, shocking jurors and supporters alike. The revoking of his bond was the first indication of the judge’s plan to add time to the sentence against jury recommendation to appease the reactionaries and prosecution.
The criminal mischief charge itself is a state jail felony in the state of Texas; such sentences result in day for day time without parole or early release for good behavior. Since the judge sentenced Alam to serve his time in the county jail, it indicates that he used Texas Penal Code 12.44 which could result in early release with the option of two for one good time, that is, where one day counts as two.
The jury’s rejection of the hate crime enhancement is a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement and all conscious people who oppose restrictions of democratic rights, including Alam and his supporters, as the state failed in its miserable attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Alam has entered the local county jail a hero on Thursday night.
The vandalism accusation was not denied by the defense, whose legal strategy revolved principally around confronting the much more dangerous hate crime enhancement. Prosecutors were able to successfully flip Julia Venzor, who testified against her co-defendants in the Tarrant 2 and indicated them in the vandalism of Uncommon Church, a reactionary non-denominational Christian Mega Church in Euless, Texas, a suburb of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex.
The trial itself was a propaganda victory, confronting Zionist lies spanning a hundred years and serving to educate the jury and the masses following the case. Alam was proven by his attorney and his own testimony to have acted in solidarity with the Palestinian people, confronting the church for its display of the Israeli flag during the mass genocide carried out on video. The church in question has administrative family ties to the Israeli Defense Forces and its leading pastors organize “solidarity trips” with Zionism to occupied Palestinian land. The action proved a political act and not one based on religion.
Alam courageously took the stand in his own defense, despite facing unrelated charges for a minor case of drug possession; the prosecution used this as an excuse to gather evidence for this unrelated case by forcing him to discuss it with the risk of self-implication and waving his constitutional right. The prosecution used this case in a transparent attempt to make Alam appear to be a dishonest criminal and a hypocrite, exposing their own desperation.
Prosecutor Lloyd Whelchel presented text message logs seized from the activist’s phone and forced Alam to read them to the jury. The text messages included discussion of a desire to use psychedelic mushrooms, a common practice among young people in the US. The prosecutor spent over an hour harping on drug questions even though this unrelated charge amounts to less than a gram of the controlled substance.
Alam, who lives with his parents and takes care of his ailing father, is not a criminal; he routinely helps with the household expenses and drives his father to doctor’s appointments.
The prosecutor argued that Alam had no honest feelings of solidarity with Palestine, that his activism is just a façade. In his closing statement Whelchel told the jury that Alam is “self-righteous” and that “he has co-opted the story of his parents”, claiming that he could not care about Palestinians if he was going to raves. Such hysterical and hate-filled arguments failed to convince anyone.
Alam’s parents are immigrants from Bangladesh who survived the genocide of the 1970s—their story is also his story, the story of his people, of all oppressed nations people of the world including the Palestinians. It is due to the chaos and misery sown by the system of imperialist domination and oppression which forces people to leave their home countries for stability of life in the imperialist countries. In such countries as the US, drug use among the youth is endemic and the activity Alam was accused of engaging in is commonplace and not remotely as dangerous as millions of other cases where serious narcotics are used. US imperialism cultivates and utilizes the international drug trade for its political purposes, creates the world’s largest illegal drug consumer at home, and then uses the most vile condemnation of all those who fall into its self-engineered traps.
It is by serving the people bravely and without trading testimony for leniency from the reactionary old-state, just as Alam has heroically demonstrated, that the people in this country can find a way out of the rotting and decadent culture of the US and maintain their posts in the struggle for a better world.
The second trail against the Tarrant 2 begins for Afsheen Khan on September 30.
The Worker calls on all its readers, supporters and people of conscience to support political prisoner Raunaq Alam during his imprisonment by writing letters, donating money to his commissary, and sending him books. Donations to his legal fundraiser are still needed as well, as he has the right to appeal. FREE RAUNAQ ALAM SO THAT HE MAY RESUME HIS POST SERVING THE PEOPLE!
Image: Raunaq Alam.
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