Biography
Dr. Rafil Dhafir was arrested on February 26, 2003.
Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir was an American Iraqi-born physician, who founded the charity Help the Needy, to respond to the humanitarian crisis created by the Gulf War and US Sanctions on Iraq. After 9/11 the U.S government began surveilling Dhafir, intercepting his mail, email, faxes and telephone calls; bugging his office and hotel rooms; going through his trash and physically following him. Despite no evidence he was connected to terrorism Attorney General John Ashcroft and Governor Pataki publicly referred to Dhafir as a "suspected terrorist," Dhafir was arrested for violating sanctions over the humanitarian work his charity performed in Iraq. After Dhafir refused to accept a plea agreement, the prosecutor added 45 additional charges ranging from money laundering for collecting donations for the charity to Medicare fraud due to the fact he was sometimes not present in the room when patients were treated by other licensed medical technicians. During the trial the prosecution continuously hinted that Dhafir had connections to terrorism, a false assertion that the Judge refused to allow the defense to rebuke. Dhafir was convicted on 59 of 60 counts and sentenced to 22 years in prison. Sentenced to 22 years federal prison; served at FCI Terre Haute, Indiana; released April 26, 2022.
Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-American oncologist near Syracuse, ran the charity Help the Needy, which sent food and medicine to Iraqis suffering under sanctions. Arrested in 2003 and publicly branded a "suspected terrorist" by officials (a charge never brought), he was convicted of sanctions-violation, fraud, and tax offenses and sentenced to 22 years. He was released in 2020.
The Justice Department’s 2006 account dates the start of Dhafir’s trial to October 21, 2004 and the verdict on 59 of 60 counts to February 10, 2005.
The May 15, 2020 report dates Dhafir’s transfer from Allenwood prison to home confinement to that morning. It was a physical departure from prison, while the remainder of his sentence continued at home, rather than an unconditional discharge. The report traces earlier confinement at Terre Haute’s Communications Management Unit, transfer to Devens in 2012, and a January 2019 move through Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn before Allenwood. These transfers are parts of the same imprisonment, not additional consecutive prison terms.
The September 2012 Nuclear Resister reports that an appeal of Rafil Dhafir’s conviction was filed in federal court that June. It does not report a decision on that appeal or a new custody episode.
The April 17, 2019 follow-up reproduced in this report says Rafil Dhafir left solitary confinement at the Devens federal medical center on January 11 after fifty-two days, with no finding of a rules violation. It then describes his transfer through Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn during the February power and heating failure. Dhafir later reported being locked down in darkness for three days. These are attributed accounts of conditions within his existing imprisonment, not additional days added to its total. The transfer to Allenwood was completed by the end of February, but the report gives no exact arrival day. The same April follow-up reports that the Allenwood warden refused his compassionate-release application; it gives no exact decision day.
The Nuclear Resister, February 2019 report with April 17 follow-up.
A December 30, 2011 report states that Rafil Dhafir had been moved from the Communications Management Unit into the general prison population at Terre Haute, Indiana. The report anticipated that this would permit family contact visits; it did not establish that any such visit had occurred. It also reported that attorney Peter Goldberger submitted support letters and a memorandum seeking a reduced sentence, and that a resentencing originally scheduled for January 5 had been postponed to February 3. Those were scheduled proceedings, not a reported resentencing outcome or release.
Contemporary historical transfer report, The Nuclear Resister, December 30, 2011.
The November 2011 report placed Dhafir in the Terre Haute Communications Management Unit and announced a January 5, 2012 resentencing that was still prospective. The later 2014 trial-observer account describes continuous pretrial confinement after his February 26, 2003 arrest and separately reports his February 3, 2012 resentencing before Norman Mordue. Its June 18, 2014 placement in special housing at Devens was an internal custody change, not a physical release. Two contemporary reports differ by one day on his return to general population, August 28 versus August 29; that discrepancy remains unresolved. Neither internal move establishes an additional prison stay or a release date.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister report 829; The Nuclear Resister report 534; The Nuclear Resister report 542.
