Syed Fahad Hashmi is a 28-year-old Muslim American citizen currently being held in solitary confinement in a federal jail on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support – and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services – to Al Qaida. The conditions of Mr. Hashmi’s pre-trial detention are draconian. He is subject to a regime of severe deprivation. Under the SAMs imposed by the Attorney General, Hashmi must be held in solitary confinement and may not communicate with anyone inside the prison other than prison officials. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside of his cell and 23-hour lockdown. He has no access to fresh air, and must take his one-hour of daily recreation - when it is given - inside a cage. Family visits, which were not granted for many months, are limited to one person every other week for one and a half hours; they cannot involve physical contact. Mr. Hashmi may write only one letter (of no more than three pieces of paper) per week to one family member. He may not communicate, either directly or through his attorneys, with the news media. He may read only designated portions of newspapers - and not until thirty days after their publication - and his access to other reading material is restricted. He may not listen to or watch news-oriented radio stations and television channels. He may not participate in group prayer. While the Attorney General claims that these measures are necessary because "there is substantial risk that [Hashmi's] communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons," he was held in a British jail with other prisoners for eleven months without incident.
These Special Administrative Measures undermine Mr. Hashmi’s right to a fair trial: they threaten his mental state and ability to testify on his own behalf; the severity of their constraints casts a pall of suspicion over him, effectively depicting him as guilty before he even enters the courtroom; and by prohibiting Hashmi's attorney from conveying the content of his conversations with Hashmi to outside experts, they impair Hashmi's right to counsel. They also rise to the level of cruel and unusual punishment.
The government’s ability to impose Special Administrative Measures was established in 1996. Since 9/11, it has been dramatically expanded. SAMs can now be imposed for a year; previously it was 120 days. The standards for their imposition – and conditions for their renewal – have been relaxed. Previously, in the Justice Department’s own words, renewals required an intelligence agency head to “certify that ‘the circumstances identified in the original certification continue to exist.’” Now, renewals “may be based on any information available to the intelligence agency,” whether that information confirms the persistence of the original circumstances or not. Of 201,000 prisoners currently within the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, fewer than fifty are being held under SAMs.
The Special Administrative Measures imposed upon Mr. Hashmi expire in October. We are calling on all concerned people to ask the Attorney General not to renew them. You can email the Attorney General and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York using the following form: