The Daily Star

Beirut, Lebanon

Inside America
December 17, 2005
Ron Chepesiuk

Can an Arab and anti-Israel activist get a fair trial in post 9-11 America, especially when its government has the unprecedented power of the Patriot Act to pursue investigations, while much of the media abandons its independent role and becomes a cheerleader for the prosecution?

The answer came last December 6 in a Tampa, Florida courtroom when a jury acquitted 47-year Palestinian Sami al Arian of eight of the 17 charges against him. The big charge that al Arian beatthe US government accused the defendant of aiding Islamic Jihad, a group it has designed a terrorist organization, largely because of the suicide bombings it has committed against Israel.

The jury deadlocked on the other nine charges. Two other defendants, Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Ballut, were acquitted of all charges, while a fourth defendant, Hatim Fariz, was acquitted of 25 charges.

It was a stunning and unexpected verdict, given the staggering amount of “evidence” the government said it had on the al Arian-Islamic Jihad connection. In all, the US government accumulated 400,000 intercepted wiretaps and an impressive amount of records relating to thousands of money transfers. Moreover, it presented 70 witnesses at the trial.

It didn’t look good for the professor. Questions were raised as to whether al Arian could get a fair trial, given that in the decade preceding the trial, the media, especially the conservative blogs on the Internet, had played on the growing anti-Arab hysteria by vilifying al Arian. Critics of the al Arian prosecution, who worried about America’s vanishing civil liberties in the Age of Terrorism, viewed al Arian as the victim of a political witch hunt whose free speech rights had been abrogated.

Ironically, Sami al Arian’s life story might have served as model for how to achieve the American Dream, if he had not been arrested and prosecuted for allegedly aiding and abetting terrorism. A Palestinian and native of Kuwait, al Arian arrived in the US in 1975 as a student. He earned a Ph.d in computer science and became a tenured professor at the University of South Florida (USF). There, he earned a reputation as an excellent computer engineering teacher, becoming in 1994 the first USF professor to win a $5,000 bonus as its outstanding undergraduate instructor.

But 1994 was the year that al Arian’s life began to turn into the American nightmare. As a passionate defender of Palestinian rights, al Arian organized a fund raising group for the Palestinian cause called the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP). Noted terrorist Steven Emerson produced a TV documentary that year in which he identified the ICP as “the primary support group in the United States for Islamic Jihad.” The federal authorities began to investigate al-Arian.

Three years before, the professor had started the World and Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank designed to bridge the gap between Islam and the West. Law enforcement officials raided WISE’s offices on November 20, 1995, hauling away all of its files.

From 1975 to 1994, al-Arian had worked in the US as a permanent resident, a status he obtained through his academic job. When he applied for US citizenship in 1994, however, his application was denied. Al Arian sued, but the US Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that he had improperly registered to vote and dismissed the suit.

Still, subsequent investigations seemed to clear al Arian. USF investigated its relationship with WISE, and in 1996, William Reece Smith, a former interim USF president and head of the American Bar Association, who headed the investigation, concluded that, “It’s not established that anybody was supportive or engaged in unlawful or terrorist activity.”

In 2000, a federal immigration judge ruled that “there is evidence in the record to support the conclusion that WISE was a reputable and scholarly research center and (that) the ICP was highly regarded.”

But in September 2001, the press kept the al Arian story alive when Bill

O’Reilly, a broadcaster who airs a popular right wing program on the pro-Bush administration Fox TV channel, portrayed al-Arian as an agent of

Islamic terrorism. The program aired a few weeks after 9-11, and it helped to put enormous pressure on USF, which suspended al Arian.

The university cited “security concerns” but critics of the move said that the university was more worried about the effect of future funding than it was about justice. The USF president stated her intention to fire al Arian, but he still continued to collect his $67, 526 annual salary while on suspension.

Fortunately for al Arian, he had academic tenure, a form of job security for university professors that seeks to ensure academic freedom, as well as the support of the university’s faculty union. Meanwhile, The American Association of University Professors viewed al Arian case as one involving academic freedom, not terrorism. In other words, al Arian’s views may be controversial, but he had a right to express themas well as pursue his teaching, writing and speaking-without fear of political reprisal.

In its 2003 indictment of al Arian, federal prosecutors charged that when they searched WISE’s offices and al-Arian’s home, they found a letter that the professor wrote to Kuwait in February 1995, 10 days after an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing killed 19 Israelis. Al Arian allegedly wrote that he sought “support to the Jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue.”

They also found a video of a rally in which al Arian is introduced as president of “the active arm of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine.” This was part of the evidence introduced at al-Arian’s trial, and it looked from the outside that al-Arian’s conviction would be a slam dunk.

So why wasn’t there a conviction? The jury believed that al Arian no doubt was heavily involved with Islamic Jihad, but they examined the evidence and concluded his association wasn’t enough to convict him of any crimes.

Al Arian and his fellow defendants may have celebrated Islamic Jihad attacks on Israel, but it wasn’t the same thing as proving they knew abut the violence ahead of time. America may at war with terrorism, but the 12 jurors had not shirked their responsibility to come to a fair verdict based on the evidence.

Dr. Agha Saeed, chairman of the American Muslim Taskforce for Civil Rights and Elections, a coalition of 11 major Muslim organizations, hailed the verdict as possibly having “a global impact on the winning the hearts and mind of Muslims by demonstrating that America is a nation in which the jury can be independent of political pressures.”

That conclusion might be premature and even an overstatement, given the mess that George Bush, Jr. has made in the post 9-11 period. But on at least one day in an American courtroom American Muslims could conclude that justice was served. As for al Arian, he remains in jail as the Federal government decides whether to re-try him on the deadlocked charges.

Daily Star columnist Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and Research Associate at the National Defense College.