Certain cases make it abundantly clear that the interplay between internationalism and national integrity remains, as it always was, an important issue. Consider the case of Homaidan Al-Turki, a Saudi national, who continues to serve a 20-year jail sentence in the United States.
Al-Turki’s guilt or innocence is a matter that we, viewing the case from this distance, cannot properly judge. It was alleged that he imprisoned and sexually assaulted a young woman in his employ. In his defense, Al-Turki stated that the woman was not a “slave,” as was alleged, but that he was following practices common in his culture regarding the employment of domestic workers. He also stated that the sexual assault claims were fabricated, and that, indeed, the plaintiff had been tutored in the falsification of these allegations.
The courts were, in my opinion and in the opinion of many, unable to incontrovertibly prove Al-Turki’s guilt or innocence. What we can say is that the charges, if true, point to extremely abusive, possibly sociopathic behavior. On the other hand, we could also cite numerous cases of wrongful accusation, judgment and imprisonment, and point out that a disturbingly large proportion of those wrongfully accused in the US have been racial minorities. We know that, furthermore, Al-Turki’s original sentence of 28 years was subsequently lowered to 20, as a result of his good behavior in jail.
Issues of guilt or innocence aside,the most disturbing issue to me is that the US has refused to allow Al-Turki to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home. The forcible holding of a foreign national in a US prison seems to me to be an overstepping of boundaries of propriety, and yet disturbingly consistent with other aspects of US foreign policy. It is problematic for one country to unilaterally decide to be an international law enforcer, and that is exactly the role the US has adopted, consistently and cumulatively over the past several decades.
We already have an international body to govern transnational affairs — it is called the United Nations, and its role is to determine not only what type of action is to be taken against a foreign country, but which issues are domestic and which fall under an international scope. Surely, the behavior of an individual like Homaidan Al-Turki, whether or not he is guilty of the accusations made against him, fall into the former category. Because Al-Turki is a Saudi citizen, his own country, surely, can and should be in charge of his trial, sentencing and punishment, if such is warranted.
Al-Turki has stated, in his defense, that judgment against him was unjust and was the result of “Islamophobia” and the misperception of cultural norms. Whether or not that is the case in this particular instance, we all know that such harmful misunderstandings are all too common, perhaps even ubiquitous. Surely, then, if Al-Turki’s case were retried at home, he would have a greater chance of a fair trial without extraneous cultural bias? And is not the fact that the US resists this course of action a measure of their distrust of the justice systems of other countries?
We are not, of course, uniquely singled out for this distrust on the part of the US. A Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, was imprisoned in the US for over a decade following 9/11, most of that time being spent at Guantanamo Bay, despite repeated requests by the Canadian government that he be returned to Canada to serve out his sentence there. Khadr was only 15 at the time of his arrest. Now 26, he has spent his youth trapped in the US prison system. Just in the past few weeks, however, Khadr was finally allowed to return to Canada, where the judicial system sprung into action to grant him a hearing — as a result of which, last week, Khadr was freed on bail. Whatever his actions as an impulsive 15-year-old, Khadr has been a model prisoner ever since. The large majority of Canadians feel that justice is served by his release.
So, there is hope. But convincing the US system that they are not the unilateral arbiters of international justice takes a great deal of time and patience, apparently — time and patience we must be willing to expend for such an important cause.
