by Ganesh Sahathevan
Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian who pleaded guilty in 2006 to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has tweeted his admiration for his wife Nahla's "solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students".
In 2005 the Tampa Tribune reported:
Two weeks after President Clinton designated the Palestinian Islamic Jihad an illegal terrorist organization, Sami Al-Arian called the action "propaganda," "stupid" and part of "a war staged by Zionists."
"They are controlling the White House and the State Department, they are in control in the era of the Democrats," Al-Arian said in a telephone call on Feb. 6, 1995, speaking to Lou'ay Safi.
"You will laugh, by God, if you read the executive order," Al- Arian told Safi. "You will completely laugh at the situation. How would a president of the most powerful country in the world sign such a stupid thing like this?"
Al-Arian is standing trial, along with Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fariz and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, on charges they helped finance and organize the Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Until the executive order, which was signed Jan. 23, 1995, and became effective the next day, providing material support to the organization was not illegal in the United States.Louay Safi was formerly the Director of Research at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)..He served as the the Executive Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Malaysia from 1995 to 1997, and was also an Associate Professor of Political Science (1994-99), the Dean of Research (1998-99), and a Senate Member (1995-99) at the International Islamic University, Malaysia.
In June 2008 prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., charged Sami Al-Arian with criminal contempt for refusing to provide testimony to grand juries that were investigating financial transfers involving a think tank called the International Institute Islamic Thought.
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Sami Al-Arian Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy To Provide
Services To Palestinian Islamic Jihad
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law, the Department of Justice announced today.
In a closed proceeding before a federal magistrate at U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Florida last week, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to Count Four of the indictment against him – a charge of conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The plea hearing was closed over the objections of the government and unsealed today. The guilty plea was accepted by U.S. District Court Judge James S. Moody, Jr. this afternoon. Sentencing was scheduled for May 1, 2006.
Al-Arian’s agreement with the government calls for a recommended prison sentence of 46 to 57 months in prison, based on a five-year maximum statutory sentence. Al-Arian, 48, who has been in custody since his arrest on Feb. 20, 2003, has agreed to stipulate to deportation to another country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once his prison sentence has ended. Al-Arian has lived in this country for approximately 30 years.
“We have a responsibility not to allow our Nation to be a safe haven for those who provide assistance to the activity of terrorists,” said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. “Sami Al-Arian has already spent significant time behind bars and will now lose the right to live in the country he calls home as a result of his confessed criminal conduct on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is the same conduct he steadfastly denied in public statements over the last decade.”
“The United States stands committed to bringing terrorists and their supporters to justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division. “Al-Arian has now admitted providing assistance to help the Palestinian Islamic Jihad—a specially designated terrorist organization with deadly goals—as the government has alleged from the start.”
“This conviction is the result of years of exhaustive investigative and prosecutorial work, during which the government utilized the many tools we have available to us in the ongoing war against terrorism,” said U.S. Attorney Paul I. Perez of the Middle District of Florida. “Because of the painstaking work of the prosecutors and agents who pursued this case, Al-Arian has now confessed to helping terrorists do their work from his base here in the United States – a base he is no longer able to maintain.”
In the plea agreement, Al-Arian admits that he was associated with several organizations, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s. He also admits that co-defendants Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, Bashir Musa Mohammed Nafi and Mazen Al-Najjar were associated with PIJ. President Clinton issued an executive order in January 1995 which banned certain transactions with organizations and individuals who were “specially designated terrorists,” including PIJ, Sheik Abd Al Aziz Awda and Fathi Shiqaqi and later, Ramadan Shallah.
Al-Arian admits that he performed services for the PIJ in 1995 and thereafter, when he was a professor at the University of South Florida and after he knew that the PIJ had been designated by President Clinton as a terrorist organization. Al-Arian also acknowledges in the plea agreement that he knew the PIJ used acts of violence as a means to achieve its objectives. Nevertheless, Al-Arian continued to assist the terrorist organization, for instance, by filing official paperwork to obtain immigration benefits for PIJ associate Bashir Nafi, and concealing the terrorist associations of various individuals associated with the PIJ. He further admits to assisting PIJ associate Mazen al-Najjar in a federal court proceeding, a proceeding in which al-Najjar and Nafi both falsely claimed under oath that they were not associated with the PIJ. Moreover, Al-Arian acknowledges that in late 1995, when Ramadan Shallah, co-conspirator and former director of Al-Arian’s “think tank,” the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) was named as the new Secretary General of the PIJ, Al-Arian falsely denied to the media that he knew of Shallah’s association with PIJ.
Al-Arian was arrested by the FBI on Feb. 20, 2003 following the return of an indictment by a federal grand jury in Tampa, charging him and several co-defendants. Al-Arian was acquitted of eight of the 18 counts against him following a six-month trial on Dec. 6, 2005, but the jury deadlocked on three of the four most serious conspiracy charges against him, including the charge of conspiracy to provide services to the PIJ.
This case was prosecuted by Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek and Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Furr of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida, and Trial Attorneys Cherie Krigsman and Alexis Collins of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The investigation was conducted by a Task Force led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service and state and local law enforcement officials, among others.
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Al-Arian saga ends with deportation
By JOSH GERSTEIN
02/06/2015 02:21 PM EST
Former Florida college professor Sami Al-Arian’s epic, nearly-20-year struggle with U.S. authorities came to a low-key end this week as he was deported to Turkey.
Al-Arian’s long battle over his ties to terrorism roiled two political contests: the 2004 race for U.S. Senate in Florida and the early stages of the 2010 Senate race in California.
Al-Arian’s fight also produced a notable and rare act of judicial defiance: U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema’s refusal to rule for more than five years on the former computer science professor's motion to dismiss criminal contempt charges brought against him for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury investigating possible links between Northern Virginia non-profit groups and terrorist organizations.
Brinkema signaled on some occasions that she had doubts about the merits of the case, which Al-Arian’s supporters insisted was retribution for his embarrassing the government at a Florida trial where he was accused of acting as the top American representative for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That trial ended with the former professor acquitted on eight charges and a hung jury on nine other counts.
The Kuwaiti-born Al-Arian ultimately pled guilty to a single count of supporting a terrorist organization and agreed to be deported. However, before he was deported he was summoned to the Virginia grand jury—a move he decried as a “perjury trap.”
The Justice Department only meekly protested Brinkema’s slow-walking of the contempt case, reminding her on a few occasions that rulings were being awaited. But prosecutors never escalated the standoff by asking a federal appeals court to step in. During the the six years the contempt case was pending, Al-Arian was under home confinement outside Washington, but the restrictions were eased over time.
Last June, prosecutors moved to dismiss the contempt case six years after it was filed.
Al-Arian had originally been expected to be deported to Egypt, but a source familiar with the case said the government’s crackdown on Muslim activists there raised questions about whether he would be safe. Eventually, Turkey was selected as a country willing to receive the former professor. He also explored other countries in the Middle East and Latin America, he said Friday on the "Democracy Now" TV program.
Al-Arian, 57, was deported Wednesday night on a Turkish Airlines flight from Dulles Airport in Virginia to Istanbul, officials said.
In an interview from Turkey Friday, Al-Arian said he was escorted to the gate by a U.S. official because he has no identity documents with which to pass through security.
Al-Arian also blamed much of his ordeal on the Tampa Tribune, saying that the newspapers’ series of articles about him prejudiced jurors at his Florida trial. The former professor said the two jurors who refused to acquit him on all charges were both Tribune readers.
The newspaper played “a very destructive role,” Al-Arian told WMNF-FM in Tampa. “I’m not sure if the Tampa tribune was the main reason [I wasn’t fully acquitted], but I think it was.”
Asked to respond to those comments, former Tampa Tribune reporter Michael Fechter said Al-Arian was trying to whitewash the facts that emerged at his 2005 trial.
"This is par for the course. Rather than answer difficult questions about his documented leadership on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s governing board, Al-Arian chooses to blame the messenger," Fechter told POLITICO via e-mail. "It’s worth noting that the presiding judge, who saw all the testimony and evidence, called him a 'master manipulator' and a liar during sentencing. 'You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,' Judge Moody said. 'This trial exposed that as a lie.'"
Fechter also noted that Al-Arian's ultimate guilty plea included an admission of lying to the press.
"No one should believe a word he says," Fechter said.
Al-Arian had been on federal investigators’ radar since the 1990s but rose to national attention via a contentious, post-9/11 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. That set in motion Al-Arian’s suspension from the University of South Florida.
Allegations that former USF president Betty Castor did too little about Al-Arian’s alleged ties to terrorism helped Republican candidate Mel Martinez defeat her in the 2004 Senate race.
Al-Arian said Friday that the prosecution was aimed at resolving the university’s predicament over what to do with him. “It was an attempt to bail out…USF because they put themselves in a very difficult situation trying to fire a tenured professor,” he told WMNF. “The USF put itself in a corner because of pressure applied to them—mostly from groups associated with Zionism, or others.”
Al-Arian’s case took a political turn again in 2010 when Carly Fiorina attacked former Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.) over his ties to Al-Arian. Fiorina beat out Campbell for the GOP nomination but was handily defeated by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the general election.
Aspects of the Al-Arian imbroglio even tangled up two White Houses. George W. Bush was photographed with Al-Arian and his family at Strawberry festival in Florida as part of outreach efforts to the Arab & Muslim community. And Bush aides apologized after the Secret Service kicked Al-Arian’s son Abdullah out of a White House meeting in 2001, prior to his father’s 2003 indictment.
In 2010, Obama White House lawyer and envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain initially said he had no recollection of statements attributed to him at a 2004 conference decrying Al-Arian’s prosecution as one of several “politically-motivated persecutions” by the Bush administration. However, after POLITICO obtained a recording of the event, Hussain acknowledged the remarks and said they “were ill-conceived or not well-formulated.”
UPDATE (Friday, 3:15 P.M.): This post has been updated with comment from Fechter.
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