Dec. 7, 2005
St. Petersburg Times
“I’m absolutely delighted. They had 10 years to investigate this guy, thousands of hours of wiretaps. They had the CIA, the FBI and Israeli intelligence gathering evidence. After all that, they couldn’t get 12 people to agree on one count guilty. I think that sends a message: Let this man get on with his life.” – Bob McKee, Al-Arian’s former attorney

“When I first saw the indictment of Al-Arian, I called it a work of fiction. The jury’s verdict bears that out. I knew from the beginning that the government’s transcripts were flawed. … The verdict is a stinging rebuke on this government’s war on terrorism that has become the government’s war on free speech.” – Nicholas Matassini, former Al-Arian attorney

“They never connected Sami Al-Arian to a single illegal act, here or abroad. … When you fight the war on terror, you need to focus on terrorists, not on people whose political associations you find distasteful.” -David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who represented Al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, in an earlier deportation case during the 1990s

“I think it (the verdict) was rather stunning. Given the fact the federal government has been investigating him off and on for eight or 10 years, and given the magnitude of evidence it said it had, the result raises two consequences – either it was massive incompetence on the part of the federal government, for which there should be accountability, or that they simply did not have the evidence (the government) needed.”
– John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, who attended conferences at Al-Arian’s WISE institute

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