January 20: Protest bullying US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald – Chicago

Anti-war and international solidarity activists protest US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at John Marshall Law School commencement

Sunday, January 20

3:00 pm

Hyatt Regency Hotel

151 East Wacker Drive
Fitzgerald is a Bully –
End the Grand Jury Investigation of Anti-War Activists

Patrick Fitzgerald will be the commencement speaker at John Marshall Law School’s graduation and will receive an honorary degree.  Praise from the college for his “distinguished” career ignores the underside of his years in Chicago:  a history of bullying and witch hunts.   In fact, Fitzgerald has played a leading role in the U.S. government’s undermining of civil liberties during the so called “War on Terror.”

Marshall’s press release about Fitzgerald’s “high-profile investigations and prosecutions” fails to mention the 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists who in 2010 were subjected to dawn raids of their homes by over 70 armed agents.  Fitzgerald convened a grand jury in 2009 under the pretext of investigating “material support for foreign terrorist organizations,” and together with the FBI, sent undercover officers to infiltrate and spy on the anti-war groups.  The prosecutor in his former office, Barry Jonas, continues the investigation to this day, despite an outpouring of support for the activists from faith leaders, labor unions, and a dozen members of Congress.

The Marshall administration also ignores Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Abdelhaleem Ashqar and Palestinian American Muhammad Salah, in which Fitzgerald’s office presented evidence extracted from Salah through torture in an Israeli prison.

With the case of Aaron Swartz, the net activist who committed suicide last week under intimidation by Boston’s US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, there is growing awareness of this bullying by prosecutors.

In Illinois, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has been exposed for bullying tactics in the prosecution of the NATO 5, young men entrapped by undercover cops before the NATO protests last May.  She has piled on terrorism charges, demanded excessive bail, and then left them in terrible conditions in Cook County Jail for nine months, to coerce them into pleading guilty.

In addition, Barry Jonas was the prosecutor in the case of the Holy Land Five, in which leaders of a Muslim charity were convicted of providing material aid to terrorism, and sentenced to many decades in prison based on the secret testimony of an agent of the Israeli state.

John Marshall Law School shouldn’t honor bullies like Fitzgerald, Ortiz, Alvarez or Jonas.

Also call the Dean of the law school, John Corkery ( 312.987.2352), this Friday, January 18, and tell him NOT to honor Pat Fitzgerald

Sponsors:  Committee Against Political Repression, Coalition to Protect People’s Rights, Palestine Solidarity Group, US Palestinian Community Network