SF 8 Court update – Tuesday - 36th anniversary of Jalil's arrest

SF 8 Court update – Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Today marks the 36th anniversary of Jalil
Muntaqim’s arrest in San Francisco. He has been
imprisoned ever since and was 19 years old in 1971.

A good crowd of supporters attended this
afternoon’s hearing and the SF 8 seemed strong and in good spirits.

The court heard off-the-record discussions this
morning that resulted in an agreement by the
prosecution to re-organize discovery documents
with the participation of representatives from
the defense. The over 200,000 pages of discovery
to date, have been described as impossible to go
through in a systematic way as they are not
indexed and referenced by document or page numbers.

In court this afternoon, it was acknowledged that
this process would be done in a timely way and
then Judge Moscone would address defense
entitlement to missing or incomplete documents.
All decisions are thus tabled until the next
court hearing on Tuesday, September 11 at 1:30 in
Department 23, 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco.

Judge Moscone acknowledged that bail compliance
for six of the brothers will include the
surrendering of passports, that the men stay in
touch with their attorneys, that they stay away
from witnesses (which have yet to be revealed)
and that they abbey all laws. These conditions
are normal but were not stated when bail amounts were set last week.
Several of the brothers are expected to be
released on bail within the week, and equity in
property is being lined up for the remainder of the men shortly thereafter,

Defense attorneys are demanding that the
prosecution disclose who any unavailable or
deceased witnesses are and the existence of any
relevant documents that are unavailable or
destroyed including logs and lists pertinent to the case.

Issues about the continued sealing of documents
that were produced to obtain search warrants and
arrests will also be argued in forthcoming
hearings. As these are documents generated by the
prosecution to justify repression, these
documents are highly prejudicial to the defendants and are factually wrong.



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CDHR/Agape and mail to the address below or donate on line:

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Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR)
PO Box 90221
Pasadena, CA 91109
(415) 226-1120
FreetheSF8 [at] riseup.net