The Tampa Tribune
November 13, 2004
By William March
TAMPA – Citing fallout from Florida’s U.S. Senate race and voluminous evidence to be reviewed, a federal judge has granted a request to delay from January to April the trial of accused terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian.

By setting a start date of April 4, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. has given Al- Arian and his co-defendants less than the six more months they sought.

U.S. Attorney Paul Perez did not object to the request, having said he would agree to a delay of at least three months.

Al-Arian and co-defendants Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fariz and Ghassan Zayed Ballut are charged with being organizers for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization responsible for bombings in Israel.

Al-Arian is a former University of South Florida professor who became an issue in this year’s Senate race because candidate Betty Castor was USF president in the 1990s. Her campaign rival, Mel Martinez, said her failure to fire Al- Arian indicated she was soft on terrorism.

Castor maintained she did all she could by placing Al-Arian on paid leave after the allegations emerged against him. He was never charged with a crime during her tenure, and her successor did not fire him until he was indicted in 2003.

Beyond that, Castor pointed out that after she left USF in 1999, Al-Arian was involved in George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential campaign and later was invited to the White House.

In his request for a trial delay, attorney William Moffitt of Washington suggested the jury pool had been tainted by campaign publicity. He noted that one Martinez flier included photos of hooded terrorists brandishing guns, with the words: “Evil was in her midst.”

Perez, the chief prosecutor, did not dispute that such publicity could affect potential jurors. However, he said, “Jurors’ memories fade quickly over time.”

Moffitt, who took over the case a year ago, also cited as grounds for delay a new indictment issued against Al-Arian last month, introducing other charges and another defendant, Mazen Al-Najjar, who is Al-Arian’s brother-in-law.

Moffitt further cited the mass of evidence – including tapes and transcripts of thousands of phone calls tapped by investigators over 10 years – and the difficulty of working with Al-Arian in prison, where private conversations are difficult and there are limits to the number of documents attorneys can bring to visits.

Asked Friday whether the delay to April will be adequate, Moffitt said, “I don’t know. We asked for six months, and in our view that was a conservative estimate. We might get to near the four-month period and have to ask again.”

Asked whether six months would be enough to deal with effects of the Senate campaign, he said, “I guess we’ll find out when we start to voir dire [question] the jury.”