(With copies to John O’Brien, Fred Fiske and letters@syracuse.com)

Dear Rosemary Robinson,

Please forward the email below to Richard A. Lindsay and please print the three letters from court watchers together this week.

Katherine Hughes

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Below are three letters that have been sent to the Post-Standard with regard to the case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir. They represent another view of the court proceedings than the one that has been presented in the newspaper. All three letters are from people who attended the 17 week trial. Two are in response to Richard A. Lindsay’s letter of Tuesday, September 13th, one is in response to the prosecution’s decision to bring the charge of “aid to terrorists” to the sentencing. Our aim is to get a fair hearing and equal justice for Dr. Rafil Dhafir.

Because the charge of terrorism was not allowed to be addressed at the trial, it has been virtually impossible to get any media coverage on this case. This email is a way of circumventing the press in order to get another side of Dr. Dhafir’s story heard before his sentencing on October 19th. He is facing between 20 and 30 years for sending aid to starving Iraqi’s during the 12 years of brutal US sanctions against that country. One and a half million people died during that time, 500,000 of them under the age of five.

Katherine Hughes

Link to Richard Lindsay’s letter:
Post-Standard

The three letters were attached to this email. They can be viewed in the “Court Observers” folder. Two were sent on September 13th and one was sent on August 24th.