DETROIT – Dearborn Heights native Muthanna Al-Hanooti was given a sizable break in his sentencing on Friday, March 18 for violating the economic embargo against Iraq, which began in 1990 and ended in 2003.

Al-Hanooti, age 51, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison but will likely stay a total of 10 months with good behavior; prosecutors had sought almost four years in the case.

He was charged with obtaining  a coupon for two million barrels of oil without receiving approval from the United States Treasury Department in violation of the embargo, although the deal was United Nations-approved, he said.

Al-Hanooti told The Arab American News that the deal was offered to him by Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Naji Sabri at the time as part of the UN’s Oil for Food program, which helped raise money for a UN fund benefiting Iraqi civilians with aid such as food and medicine. He said it was not negotiated by him, however. Al-Hanooti would have received about $40,000 in the transaction, he said.             

Al-Hanooti was acting through the former Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations organization (FAAIR).

“There was no intent to violate the law of the sanctions which is why this coupon was approved by the United Nations,” Al-Hanooti said, adding that he had consulted two professional researchers beforehand about the legality of the deal.

Al-Hanooti is also a former regional director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan, and he worked with Catholic groups nationwide as well to spread the word about the disastrous effects of sanctions on Iraqi civilians. He once handed a copy of a book detailing the vast suffering caused by sanctions to then-presidential candidate George W. Bush at a meeting with Arab American leaders in Dearborn in 2000 in hopes of informing him about the situation on the ground.

“What I was doing was humanitarian work not political work…my concern was always the humanitarian crisis in Iraq,” Al-Hanooti said.

“I knew that people were dying from the sanctions and that if we had war it would not be in the national interest of our country…I knew thousands of American and Iraqi lives would be lost and extremism created.”

Al-Hanooti said that after three years of investigations costing a large legal sum (he was aided by the Muslim Legal Fund of America because it was a cause involving free speech) and feeling “tortured”, he decided to move on and plead guilty; many activists had rallied on his behalf for no jail time.

He also thanked the MLFA and other supporters for their help and said he will begin serving his sentence in approximately a month.