Tarik Shah update (March 18, 2006)

I'm really too upset to write coherently about yesterday in court, compounded by the fact that I'd only had two hours of sleep the night before, so please forgive me if this is not the most reliable of reports. But as I notified you all before, Tarik Shah had decided a change of attorney was essential to his defense, and he and the family had obtained the services of Joshua Dratel, a powerful and highly reputed defense attorney, and president of the New York chapter of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in 'O5. But Mr. Dratel's appointment had to be approved by Judge Loretta Preska (my own descriptive modifiers about her reluctantly deleted by me after due consideration). In yesterday's public pre-trial hearing, after chief counsel for the government registered not an objection but a “concern," stating that while this was not unprecedented it was highly unusual, Judge Preska refused to approve Joshua Dratel and instead appointed a lawyer who was next in rotation and available to the court, whose name I believe is Mr. Lin. And she sent Tarik and his co-defendants back into solitary confinement, with their next chance of anything being done about getting them released into the general prison population being October 3Oth, the date set for arguments in the case.

Tarik Shah has already been in solitary confinement for 1O months. This will mean another seven months in solitary confinement.

I didn't get Mr. Lin's contact information but can get it for anyone interested.

The other thing that happened in court yesterday was that the attorney for co-defendant Dr. Brent asked to have his client released on bail, stating that he is a practicing physician and not a threat to the public and that putting up his property in order to obtain bail would assure the court that he would return to stand trial. But the Judge said Dr. Brent's attorney should have filed a motion to have his case severed from the others first, so the request was refused, and Dr. Brent also went back into solitary confinement.

So far as I know, there will be no more proceedings open to the public (at least not until next October, if then), so if you didn't go to witness and stand up for Tarik Shah, you've missed your chance at this time.

You can still write letters to Tarik Shah: c/o Unit 1O-S, reg. #53145-O54, Metropolitan Correctional Center, 15O Park Row, New York, NY 1OOO7. (Please do not send him anything potentially troublesome for him.)

And please keep checking http://tariksfriends.faithweb.com for further news.

Oh, P.S. I'm told the Federal prison holding Tarik and the co-defendants is NOT the one known as “the Tombs" as I had written previously, so I apologize for my mistake.