Why Black Leftists Should Pay Attention To The Alex Saab Case

The Drum and Spear, equivalent to our “Letters to the Editor” column, is dedicated to publishing opinion pieces submitted by the people. The articles published here may not reflect the views of The Burning Spear newspaper or the African People’s Socialist Party. Readers are encouraged to submit responses to any articles that appear under this section.

In my speech at the Black Is Back Coalition this past November in DC, which was translated to Spanish and shared with the world I highlighted how the Alex Saab case is in fact tied to the Uhuru 3 case, also a federal case. Indeed, our Chairman himself in the December 3 #OmaliTaughtMe broadcast, pointed this out; and even said Saab’s case is tied to the Tampa 5, also a case of lawfare. 

This is not the first time our Chairman has brought up the Saab case, a case I wrote a book on now in three languages called “The Diplomat,” one of the few books in the English language that defends Saab, while much has been written to slander him.

In the book I touch on how lawfare is used, lawfare being a combination of the words law and warfare that is now known to be a tactic of the imperialists to use the bourgeois courts to attack revolutionary movements, especially those who are part of the anti-colonialist free speech movement. 

Alex Saab, Ambassador of the Maduro government of Venezuela

In June 2020 during the Trump Regime, while Ambassador Alex Saab of the legitimate government of Maduro in Venezuela, was going on his second trip to a country allied with Venezuela, Iran, in order to find further ways to fight US sanctions, known by the UN as illegal unilateral coercive measures, he was captured in what is called the first kidnapping, the second kidnapping being in 2021 under the Biden Regime when he was brought to Miami on a trumped up charge of conspiring to money launder, which could have him face 20 years in prison (the Uhuru 3 face 15 years). 

While Ambassador Saab was in Cape Verde en route to Iran, despite there being an abundance of evidence presented in court of his diplomatic immunity, having been a diplomat since 2018 prior to the rupture of relations between the US and Venezuela, he not only was captured, but tortured, by US agents.  

This included denial of cancer medication and physical beatings, according to accounts of Saab himself smuggled out of Cape Verde and investigated by the UN. Indeed, even ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), which several African countries are a part of, including Cape Verde, ruled that Saab must be freed while he was held there. 

The new president elect of Cape Verde under pressure from other African nations, his own people, and nations outside the region, said he would free Alex Saab once inaugurated, one day before his inauguration Saab was sent to Miami, against all international norms. No doubt if this is brought to court, as it is still being appealed on his diplomatic status, it will be a jury trial and the jurors will include exiles hostile to Socialists, much like we saw with the case of the Cuban 5. Of all the places they could have sent him I don’t find it coincidental. 

I have not only attended the hearings of Saab in Miami, and confronted fake journalists on the streets of Miami who have slandered him and myself, such as Roberto Deniz–some having escaped justice in Venezuela, and being ashamed to show their faces when I film them. I also went to Venezuela in 2021 observing their electoral process and I must say it is the most democratic country I have ever seen. 

I also got to meet his wife, Camilla Fabri de Saab, a brave woman, who has little children who cannot see their father who is held in a Miami dungeon for fighting US sanctions and against US imperialism and colonialism in general. Even Saab’s son who turned 18 a couple years ago received a US sanction; he is not political, for being his blood. 

Much like Assange, a case I have also become familiar with throughout the years,  is punished for acting as a journalist, Saab is punished for acting as a diplomat, for trying to form alliances and fight US injustice, just as our Chairman and the other Uhuru 3 have done throughout the years to try to unite forces against the injustice, this is why the federal imperialist government persecutes using lawfare. 

These are acts of the last gasps of a desperate empire. Ambassador Saab is an oppressed nation twofold: his mother was Lebanese, father, Palestinian, and Saab is a Latin American as well. Both his parents died from Covid, and he was not able to attend their funerals. However, after the public outcry in Cape Verde the government relented and let him go on house arrest to see his sister to grieve, but she was treated as a criminal as well, no doubt from US pressure. Saab has not been forced by this imperial nation to be a slave but he is being used as a pawn to pressure Maduro, but this will not work. Saab refuses to talk and resists all pressure as a true revolutionary, worthy of our support. 

To conclude, there are some “activists” today, I should say, so-called, who not only try to drive a wedge between the African struggle and the Arab struggle but the Latin American and the Arab struggle or the Latin American and African struggle as well. We are one oppressed people, who must rise up and defend Saab and all the political prisoners of the empire! I remain in solidarity with all the oppressed people.   

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