New Trial Ordered for Sabzali

Last month, a Philadelphia judge overturned the conviction of James Sabzali, a Canadian businessman found guilty of violating the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, for selling water purification supplies to Cuban hospitals. The judge overturned the conviction, brought down in April 2002, in light of what she determined was misconduct by the prosecutor, an Assistant United States Attorney from the Justice Department, which had spent five years preparing the case.

Sabzali's lawyers had been fighting for an acquittal which the judge did not grant. Instead she ordered a new trial, even though she suggested that the case against Sabzali was so weak that it could have been affected by the prosecution's "improper arguments". The improprieties the judge cited included stirring up the jury in closing arguments with inflammatory language, including unfounded allusions to "lies, double lies, and packs of lies" and insinuations of document shredding on the part of Sabzali and his associates.

The irony is that even though the judge decided to order a new trial rather than to acquit, her statements against the misconduct committed by the prosecutors at last year's trial were stronger than anything the Canadian government was willing to say at the time of the trial, or at any time since. The Canadian government has been strangely silent about this case in which its own citizen was arrested and convicted for upholding Canadian law.

The Canadian law in question, The Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA) was amended in 1996 in order to counteract pressure from the U.S. Helms-Burton Act. The Helms-Burton Act forbids subsidiaries of U.S. companies operating in other countries (like Canada) from trading with Cuba. The FEMA amendment forbids Canadians from following the Helms-Burton Act. In effect, the FEMA amendment was intended to protect Canadians doing business with Cuba from U.S. prosecution.

So, when James Sabzali, a Canadian working in Hamilton for two U.S. subsidiaries in the mid-to-late 1990s, sold the water purification supplies to Cuban hospitals, he was following the letter and spirit of Canadian law. His arrest challenged Canada's sovereign right to set and follow its own laws. Yet the Canadian government, through its Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Bill Graham, issued no statements at the time of Sabzali's arrest, stating only when questioned that it was monitoring the situation; nor did it respond to his conviction, until questioned, then it simply said that Sabzali's case was complex because some of the violations he was charged with had occurred while he was residing in the United States. Bill Graham stated that the "government of Canada had expressed its concern to the government of the United States over the apparent extraterritorial application of U.S. laws . . . and has requested details."

The Minister has not yet commented on the Philadelphia judge's decision.
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