Overblown Case

Submitted by Chawki Hammoud (Lebanon), Oct 6, 2007 at 18:02

My name is Chawki Hammoud. I was a defendant in this case. I finished my sentence three years ago and I am back in my country, Lebanon. This case was over blown case. Some people smuggled cigaratte for easy money knowing that it was a misdemeanor or a class C feloney. They deserve to be punished and expelled from the country. That should've been the end of it.

The government spent millions of dollars on the case and it was highly publicized and of course, politicized. Jury was emotional because of 9-11 and the court was everything but fair. The system helped the government to save their face. With very emotional jury and unjust sytem, they got a conviction. Give any body few million Dollars and I am sure he can makes any group of immigrants as a gang. One common break of the law is that most immigrants get involved in a fake marriage to obtain citizenship.

People break the law every day, but Arabs make good candidates for being seen as terrorist. I am in Lebanon now. For the majority of the Lebanese people Hezbollah are heroes. They defeated Israel twice. Once they liberated Lebanon and once they stopped israel aggression in 2006. I am proud of them.

Our case as "Hezbollah cell" was a joke. I came to Lebanon, no one from Hezbollah bothered to come and ask what happened back in the states. I took it that they don't have time to investigate US lies. I don't know the purpose of overblowing the case.

I deserve what I brought to myself when I broke the law, even though the system was not fair, But it protected us from from malicious DA who only cared to build a name and career for himself. We did broke the law because we knew it was simple offense, but no one helped or was part of any "cell" . The cell senario was a flat lie.

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