US court clears Sami al-Arian of terrorism

Tampa, Florida – It’s been years since people have called USF “Jihad U” and the controversy over the 2003 firing of Sami Al-Arian has died down, still some students on the Tampa campus have been following the Al-Arian case closely.

John Alford’s a political science major and he says the case brought out freedom of speech issues in a time of terror.

John Alford, USF senior:
”It’s very, very complex…whether we should give up civil rights in order to better protect ourselves against terrorism…so I think it’s a very important case.”

Other students also saw this as a freedom of speech case. Hassan Koteiche, a civil engineering student from Lebanon, thinks Al-Arian was targeted because he made inflammatory statements against Israel.

Hassan Koteiche, Lebanese student:
”The man…they couldn’t prove he did something wrong…all he did was talk. And the main freedom in this country is freedom of speech.”

Yet for other students the federal trial was more personal. Diana Mitwalli has known Al-Arian and two of his co-defendants for ten years.

Diana Mitwalli, Knows defendants:
”They’ve been my role models. I wouldn’t follow people who would inflict harm on others. Our community knows they are great people.”

For a time Sami Al-Arian put USF on the map. Now some say his acquittal on several serious charges could be a study in justice.

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=22263

Al-Arian was considered one of the most important terrorist figures to be brought to trial in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His indictment in 2003 was hailed by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as one of the first triumphs of the Patriot Act, which was enacted in the weeks after Sept. 11.

The Patriot Act gave the government greatly expanded powers and broke down the wall between foreign intelligence investigations and domestic law enforcement. In the Al-Arian case, officials said, it allowed separate FBI investigations _ one of them a yearslong secret foreign intelligence probe of the professor's activities _ to be combined and all the evidence used against him.

A male juror, whose name was being kept secret by the court, said he did not see the case as a First Amendment issue, as defense attorneys had claimed, explaining that the decision came down to lack of proof. "I didn't see the evidence," he said.

Al-Arian, a Palestinian who was born in Kuwait, has lived in the United States since 1975. He was granted permanent-resident status in 1989 and denied U.S. citizenship in 1996. He was fired from the university shortly after being indicted.

The government alleged that the defendants were part of a Tampa terrorist cell that took the lead in determining the structure and goals of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the State Department has listed as a terrorist group.

Prosecutors said Al-Arian and other members of the terrorist organization used the university to give them cover as teachers and students, and held meetings under the guise of academic conferences.

Prosecutor Cherie Krigsman likened the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Mafia and named Al-Arian as one of its "crime bosses."

The defendants said that although they were vocal advocates in the United States for the Palestinian cause and may have celebrated news of the terrorist group's attacks, the government had no proof that they planned or knew about any violence. They said the money they raised and sent to the Palestinian territories was for legitimate charities.

"This shows we have faith in the American justice system," said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which had supported Al-Arian. "This has shown that America is not only the best country in the world, but the jurors proved that we also have the best justice system."

The federal jury heard from 80 government witnesses and listened to often-plodding testimony about faxes and wiretapped phone calls.

The case was built on hundreds of documents, including financial records, papers seized from the defendants' homes and offices, and their own words on video. At times, the participants appeared to speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried out suicide attacks.

The jury also heard from the father of Alisa Flatow, a New Jersey student killed in a 1995 bus bombing carried out by the terrorist group in Gaza.

Five others indicted in the case, including Al-Arian's brother-in-law, have not been arrested. The brother-in-law was deported in 2002, and the others also are out of the country.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/07/ap/national/mainD8EB5RUOL.shtml