When Palestinian Farouk Abdel-Muhti was finally freed on April 13, 2004 after two years of grisly abuse in nine rat-infested prisons, this newspaper and many others published jubilant articles. One more political prisoner — free at last!
Three months later, an angry and saddened movement salutes his generous-hearted and courageous life, and denounces the imprisonment that surely hastened his death due to heart attack on July 21.
Born in Ramallah in 1947, Abdel-Muhti, like so many Palestinians, became a refugee. For years he lived and organized with the oppressed in Latin America. In the early 1970s, he settled in New York — a city enriched by the freedom struggles of so many.
In March 2002, Abdel-Muhti began broadcasting live interviews with Palestinians from the occupied territories on Pacifica Radio station WBAI. Less than a month later, the government abducted him and threw him in jail without charges. In bad health, he received woefully insufficient healthcare while in prison.
That did not keep him from solidarizing and organizing with other inmates. Fluent in Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and English, he helped unite detainees from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the former Soviet Union and China in militant protests against the abysmal prison conditions.
“Farouk was a genuine universalist,” says Stephen Durham, New York organizer for the Freedom Socialist Party, who worked closely with Abdel-Muhti in a coalition supporting Kurdish political prisoner Abdullah Öcalan. “With his languages and revolutionary politics and Middle Eastern origins, he brought together all currents of history and culture and struggle.” He will be sorely missed by family, friends and comrades.
