Feb 21, 2005
St. Petersburg Times
By Anthony McCartney
TAMPA – Singing protest songs and reading poetry written by Sami Al-Arian, about 60 people on Sunday commemorated the former professor’s two-year anniversary in jail.

The group held a candlelight vigil outside the Orient Road Jail, where Al-Arian is being housed while awaiting trial…

The trial is scheduled to begin in April and last from six months to a year.

Al-Arian’s defense attorneys have said that he and eight others indicted are being punished for advocating an unpopular cause, the plight of the Palestinian people.

Many of the speakers decried Al-Arian’s imprisonment and what they said were heavy-handed tactics by the U.S. government.

“The American People will not stand for this injustice,” University of South Florida professor Peter Erlinder said. “We will not allow people at the top to tell us who we can associate with and who we cannot.”

Al-Arian’s wife, Nahla, thanked the group for their support and read a passage from the Koran.

She said after the vigil that once people learn the truth about her husband, “they will be angry at the government for how they treated him.”

The event was sponsored by Friends of Human Rights.

The vigil lasted nearly a half- hour and featured prayer, songs including “We Shall Overcome,” and poems written by Al-Arian since his arrest on Feb. 20, 2003.

Al-Arian, a former USF engineering professor, was moved to the Orient Road Jail in January in preparation for his trial.

Supporters will hold a forum at USF in the Chemistry Building tonight at 7 p.m. titled “Civil Rights in a Second Bush Term.” Erlinder and Al-Arian’s attorney Linda Moreno are scheduled speakers.