I just got this very disturbing email from Arel. Please do what you can to help.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arel Lucas
Date: Feb 3, 2007 1:47 AM
Subject: Keith Taken into Custody
To:
Writing to myself and bc'ing you all so as not to compromise anybody's
address. Don't think I've written any of you yet.
Amost too tired to type. Running as fast as I can since around 3 or
3:30 this afternoon when Keith was arrested in Prescott, AZ,
supposedly on the bench warrant issued by the judge in 2001 in
Riverside County.
I can barely think. I gave a nurse his blood pressure meds but
haven't heard anything except that the desk clerk told me he had been
booked and was in a single cell this evening. So I hope he's safe.
The death threats continued unabated, and his last safe house had been
visited by police, so we were seeking lawyers and talking about where
to go when. They stopped the car of the 2 I own that he usually
drives (he's still bankrupt and owns nothing).
I'm running on rage. I have nothing else to give me energy. With
grief or fear I'd break down. So I choose rage. Damned thing they
call a democracy here in this damned country, where he was arrested,
convicted and sentenced for picketing. Damned law enforcement that
lies, has no brains, will do $cientology's bidding. I may have made
some connections that will help him refuse extradition and have his
case in California reviewed here in Arizona. The police told me that
he can't have a lawyer at the hearing Monday morning, and I can't be
there. I was told by a couple of people that it's no good fighting
extradition, but when it's a matter of going into a
$cientology-controlled jail so they can fulfill their death threats,
I'll fight what I can.
The damned $cientologists have carried out *every other threat they've
made* against him *and* me. So I believe the death threats. Why
wouldn't I? I did an oral history with someone in Canada in which she
tells me of their murder of a friend of hers. I've seen the look on
their smug faces. I've been snarled at by Elliot Abelson, the garbage
Mafia lawyer who ran the trial in Hemet.
I can use all the advice and help I can get. I will follow him to
Riverside as soon as I have any clue he's on his way there. I will
make as big a stink as I can. I'm trying to reach press, have given
out my phone numbers to anyone who wants details. Please get press
involved. If my employers can't take the heat, they'll either fire me
or make me resign. The hell with them. I'll have reached the 2nd
tier of social security sometime in July. If I can hold out till then
I'll get a little more of a pittance.
So if you talk to me and I'm mad, well, yes I am. I hate this country
that arrests people for picketing and lets the terrorist
$cientologists run wild. If I can get him out of jail we'll leave
it--for good, if possible. I've lost faith in pretty much everyone
and everything--certainly democracy, justice, law enforcement--but
that was a long time ago. I'm used to it now. But I'm still mad.
Arel
Readers can verify the email's existence by checking the extropy-chat mailing list's archives.
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2 comments:
Of the arrest: Arel said that Keith was driving one of her cars, when he was stopped by police. She doesn't know if he was stopped for a routine traffic stop, at at which point they got info from his Canadian driver's license, or whether they had been given her license plate number.
She is not getting accurate information from the people at the jail either. For a moment one person, whose name she didn't succeed to get, told her that Keith would be in a hearing this morning, but when she ran there, the courthouse was locked. Arel said that she was given information from the people at the jail that Keith has his blood pressure medication. And Arel is not permitted to communicate with him; He is held in a single cell with no communication.
From Arel Lucas (Sun, 4 Feb 2007 10:51:14):
"I want to apologize for a private communication that I didn't realize was going to become public on a blog. In the first fit of my anger and sorrow after seeing my beloved, sweet husband taken away in handcuffs (again!)--I screamed myself hoarse Friday night with no one here to hear me, and I'm still hoarse--I wrote someone that I hated this country and if I could get Keith out of jail couldn't wait to leave it. I had no idea (but I should have realized, even at 1 a.m.) that that emotional outburst would become part of the eternal Internet, and I apologize for my fit of rage. I promise to be careful from hereon about what I say and write both publicly and privately, since I'm clearly subject to being quoted without permission and out of context--the context in this case being rage, fear, and extreme grief, since I don't know if I will ever see him again. The context also includes my sense of betrayal by a country in which I was taught as a child that there was freedom of speech and assembly and person, and that there were human rights upon which one could rely, and that evil would be punished, and that there was justice, etc. Keith's prosecution violated the principle of freedom of speech, since his only "crime" was picketing. Whenever there has been a formal assemblage of people trying to expose $cientology as a criminal syndicate, that assemblage has been destroyed by $cientology with no intervention from any authorities. Certainly neither $cientology's staff members nor targeted critics have had freedom of their persons and property, as the record shows. So please forgive my outburst, and I ask for your understanding of its context. To the person who posted my fit of words on your blog, please post this apology also.
Thanks,
Arel"
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