Sami Al-Arian: quick thoughts
Sometimes it seems there are an awful lot of "terrorists" but not a lot of convictions. Sami Al-Arian and his co-defendants join the ranks of the acquitted.
The basics of the case are these:
20,000 hours of conversations -- and not a single guilty verdict! It seems that the guy is not a terrorist.
The Times has also made the text of the indictment available (PDF), and I've been reading through it. The government makes many specific accusations against Al-Arian and his colleagues, but the broadest one is that he was the U.S. head of an organization called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which engaged in a conspiracy to support people committing acts of terrorism.
Over the course of the indictment, the government describes its version of what the PIJ was doing between 1991 and 2002. Interestingly, the longest indictment by far is a charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, not terrorism. This charge mostly reads like committee meeting minutes for what could be any small activist group, punctuated occasionally by references to suicide bombers overseas (notably: no specific references to any direct involvement in a bombing). And Counts 5-44 are "Travel in Interstate or Foreign Commerce or Use of the Mail in Any Facility in Foreign Commerce." The actual "material support for terrorism" indictments are relatively brief, though the government does claim significant evidence in each case.
For the government's case to fall through with this much evidence, there really must be substantial doubt about their basic version of what the PIJ was doing, who it was associated with, and when. Are they making it up?
Read it and see. Perhaps it all is, as Al-Arian's defense lawyer has said, "a work of fiction." But the indictment is specific enough to seem more than plausible to me.
The next question is, will he be deported? Will he try to get his job at the University of South Florida back?
The basics of the case are these:
The trial, lasting more than five months, hinged on the question of whether Mr. Arian's years of work in the Tampa area in support of Palestinian independence crossed the threshold from protected free speech and political advocacy to illegal support for terrorists.
Prosecutors, who had been building a case against Mr. Arian for 10 years, relied on some 20,000 hours of taped conversations culled from wiretaps on Mr. Arian and his associates. Officials said he had helped finance and direct terrorist attacks in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while using his faculty position teaching computer engineering at the University of South Florida as a cover for his terrorist activities.
20,000 hours of conversations -- and not a single guilty verdict! It seems that the guy is not a terrorist.
The Times has also made the text of the indictment available (PDF), and I've been reading through it. The government makes many specific accusations against Al-Arian and his colleagues, but the broadest one is that he was the U.S. head of an organization called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which engaged in a conspiracy to support people committing acts of terrorism.
Over the course of the indictment, the government describes its version of what the PIJ was doing between 1991 and 2002. Interestingly, the longest indictment by far is a charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, not terrorism. This charge mostly reads like committee meeting minutes for what could be any small activist group, punctuated occasionally by references to suicide bombers overseas (notably: no specific references to any direct involvement in a bombing). And Counts 5-44 are "Travel in Interstate or Foreign Commerce or Use of the Mail in Any Facility in Foreign Commerce." The actual "material support for terrorism" indictments are relatively brief, though the government does claim significant evidence in each case.
For the government's case to fall through with this much evidence, there really must be substantial doubt about their basic version of what the PIJ was doing, who it was associated with, and when. Are they making it up?
Read it and see. Perhaps it all is, as Al-Arian's defense lawyer has said, "a work of fiction." But the indictment is specific enough to seem more than plausible to me.
The next question is, will he be deported? Will he try to get his job at the University of South Florida back?
4 Comments:
If there was suspicion of terrorist activity, rational governments would take action promptly, rather than letting things carry on for 10 years.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of examples where governments have encouraged these so-called terrorist for their own ends, only to find later they have a 'monster' on their hands.
But why should they care, it's only our money they are squandring.
msingh
The defense didn't call a single witness!
Thanks, Sepoy. That is a good analysis by Eric Boelhert.
I'm stunned that there's been such a small amount of media coverage. Also stunned that the Dems aren't taking advantage of this at all: it reminds us yet again that the Patriot Act is not all it's cracked up to be, and the Bush Administration's priorities in the War on Terror (indeed, the concept of the War on Terror itself) are all out of whack.
I doubt they're going to re-try him on the deadlocked charges. My concern now is that they'll turn him over to USCIS to have him deported on immigration fraud.
In a way I hope he is not innocent after what has happened, because he is going to have to live with the indictment for the rest of his life. The other thing is that his prosecution case is probably not unique, and if he was actually guilty he got away due to the demands of political expediency. The whole thing stinks-he got into trouble after his palestinian sympathies made the news and after FOX news went after him. It is likely that sympathies are pretty much all he had, given that any serious financial transactions that he may have executed overseas would normally have been monitored by govt agencies, like the open contributions many others make and used to make to terrorist groups and sympathisers in India.
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