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.