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Alleged Palestinian terrorist walks in major blow to Patriot Act

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, December 12, 2005

The federal government has lost one of its biggest terrorist cases in a decade.

A Palestinian charged with being the head of Islamic Jihad in North America was essentially found not guilty in a two-year trial in Tampa, Fla.

On Dec. 6, Sami Al Arian was acquitted by a jury on eight of 17 counts, including conspiring to murder and maim people outside the United States. The jury was deadlocked on the others.

In a verdict that stunned prosecutors and law enforcement officials, Al Arian's co-defendants were acquitted on all charges. The government has not announced whether it will seek a retrial, Middle East Newsline reported.

"They have long proclaimed this as Exhibit A in the successful use of the Patriot Act and as one of their most important prosecutions in the war on terror," said David Cole, a Georgetown University instructor who represented Al Arian's brother-in-law in a deportation case in 2001.

"People are just jubilant," Ahmed Bedier, director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.

Jurists said the acquittal marked a defeat of the Patriot Act, which expanded the powers of search and surveillance of terrorist suspects. They said this was the first criminal terrorism prosecution that relied on evidence gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Al Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, was regarded as one of the most prominent terrorist defendants since the Al Qaida attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

The indictment of Al Arian in 2003 was said to have been the result of the Patriot Act, enacted in late 2001. The Patriot Act allowed the use of intelligence in prosecutions and combined separate investigations of the FBI. One was a probe by a secret foreign intelligence agency.

[On Dec. 8, House and Senate Republicans agreed to extend the Patriot Act until 2010. The act would be amended to limit the range of personal records that could be obtained by the FBI without a court order.]

In a five-month trial, the government, employing 20,000 hours of phone conversations and hundreds of faxes recorded and collected since 1993, argued that Al Arian and his co-defendants formed a Jihad cell based in Syria that directed financing and consulted on major terrorist attacks in Israel. Al Arian, 47, said he supported attacks against Israel, but the money he raised was sent to legitimate Palestinian charities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"While we respect the jury's verdict, we stand by the evidence we presented in court against Sami Al Arian and his co-defendants," Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said. "Discussions are ongoing as to whether the government will seek to retry defendants Al Arian and Hatem Fariz on the outstanding charges."

But several jurists said the government failed to prove its case against Al Arian. The defense did not present evidence during the trial, but argued that this was a case of free speech.

"The government itself has said you are free to praise groups that engage in terrorism as a means of achieving their ends," William Moffitt, Al Arian's attorney, said. "This case concerns Dr. Al Arian's right to speak, our right to hear what he has to say and the attempt of the powerful to silence him."

The prosecution of Al Arian was loaded with political significance. Al Arian campaigned for President George Bush in 2000 and a year later met with White House adviser Karl Rove. The Al Arian trial was the focus of the Senate race in Florida, with the former president of the University of South Florida defeated amid charges that she failed to stop Al Arian.

Al Arian remains in jail as federal prosecutors consider the prospect of a retrial. Another option was to deport Al Arian, regarded as a stateless Palestinian, to the Middle East. Cole said he expected a tough legal battle.

"If he decides he wants to stay in the country, it will be a contentious immigration case, because at the end of the day you're trying to deport a permanent resident who has not been convicted of any crime based on his political affiliations alone, and that raises serious constitutional questions," Cole said.


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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