Weekly Planet
December 29, 2004
By John F. Sugg

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In case you were wandering around the Florida wilderness recently and heard a mighty “ka-boom!” — it might have been FBI agent Kerry Myers blowing up a bus. Somehow, Myers’ exercise in pyromania is supposed to be “evidence” in the terrorism case against Sami Al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor who was indicted two years ago for terrorism. The Justice Department invited the Al-Arian defense team to witness the “bombing,” tapes of which will apparently be used to show jurors what happens when a bomb destroys a bus.

This, then, must be the Justice Department’s logic: Some Palestinians have blown up buses. Al-Arian is a Palestinian. Thus, he must be guilty of blowing up buses. Call it George Bush logic.

If that seems farfetched, keep in mind that we are talking about the Tampa office of the U.S. Justice Department, for which Myers was the lead Keystone Kop in the atrociously botched prosecutorial debacle of the famed Aisenberg missing-baby case. That case collapsed because the FBI misrepresented wiretap evidence, and lied to get a judge’s permission to conduct the surveillance. Now the same agent wants folks to believe he has really juicy proof against Al-Arian on telephone intercepts.

When last we heard from Myers, the federales’ case against Al-Arian was so thin, the FBI agent was demanding that I reveal my federal sources. He also leaned on me and other journalists (but only those who were skeptical about the prosecution of Al-Arian) to help the government prove Al-Arian had lied to the press when he said he wasn’t connected to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Of course, the feds have conceded to the defense that they have no evidence Al-Arian had anything to do with the bombing, or any other bombing.

“They can’t prove Sami provided or funded one bullet for an illegal act, or one bomb, or had any advance knowledge of any illegal act,” says Al-Arian’s Washington, D.C., attorney, Bill Moffitt.

That’s been the case since federal agents raided Al-Arian’s home and office in 1995. Moffitt is seeking to exclude evidence seized in the raid because agents failed to provide proof supporting their beliefs that Al-Arian had committed any crime.

Not having evidence doesn’t deter the prosecution. In letters to the defense, the feds have stated that they don’t need to prove that Al-Arian committed a crime. There are 14 terrorist actions cited in the indictment, and the prosecutors say they don’t need to prove Al-Arian had any connection to those events. Nor, according to the prosecutors, do they have to prove money raised by Al-Arian went to bad guys.

And, finally, the feds contend that only violence against Israelis is at issue in the trial. Violence against Palestinians, the reasons behind the Palestinian resistance — even the fact that the government’s own 2003 edition of Patterns of Global Terrorism states that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has not targeted America — is all “irrelevant.”

In America, we get one side of the story. In Tampa, it’s even worse because the Tribune from the beginning of this story has been a willing conduit for propaganda from a nest of far-right Likudnik political operatives in the United States, fronted by ersatz terrorism “expert” Steve Emerson.

The government’s case will come down to scaring the jury and claiming Al-Arian is guilty because of what he believes and says, and who he associated with. That he likely committed no crime is, to the prosecutors, “irrelevant.”

What the lawmen also will surely deride as irrelevant is the Justice Department’s miserable record in catching real terrorists. After 9/11, more than 5,000 people were rounded up as suspected terrorists. Not one was convicted of a terrorist offense. What few convictions the Justice Department has scored have almost all been for minor, non-terrorism offenses. The median sentence for cases labeled “terrorist” is 14 days.

Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, did not respond to my questions for this article about the Al-Arian case.