How a government frame up failed

One month before the U.S. launched its war on Iraq, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Feb. 20, 2003, personally announced that the government had filed charges against Dr. Sami Al-Arian, declaring him to be the "North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

Ashcroft said Al-Arian's arrest  was a "milestone in the war against terrorism" and credited the Patriot Act for facilitating the case against the Florida professor. His remarks were carried live on CNN as breaking news.

He insinuated that the public would be safer now that Al-Arian was behind bars, demagogically linking him with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration expected to be able to railroad the outspoken supporter of the Palestinian people. That plan was shattered on Dec. 6, when a Tampa, Fla., jury acquitted Al-Arian and his co-defendants of most of the charges lodged against them.

Al-Arian was found not guilty of eight of the 17 counts, including conspiracy to maim and murder and providing material support for Islamic Jihad. Two co-defendants, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted on all charges and Chicago business owner Hatem Fariz was found innocent of 25 of 33 charges. The jury deadlocked on the remaining counts, with the clear majority in favor of acquittal.

In the U.S. and around the world, newspaper articles all commented on what an embarrassing setback and stunning defeat the verdict was for the U.S. government in its moves to silence dissent in this country.

It was the relaxed provisions of the Patriot Act that had allowed federal investigators to present intelligence gained from foreign surveillance into a domestic criminal trial.

The government persecution and surveillance of Sami Al-Arian goes back more than 10 years.

Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, Al-Arian came to the U.S. as a student in 1975. An esteemed computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa since 1986, Al-Arian was a recognized leader in the Muslim community. He had founded a mosque, developed a school and initiated a research center. He was well-known for his active support of the Palestinian people and their struggle to end Israeli occupation, speaking at meetings and conferences across the country.

Ironically, during the closely contested 2000 presidential election in Florida, the well-spoken academic was courted by the Bush campaign to influence Arab and Muslim voters to vote Republican.

The FBI tapped his phone for more than nine years and twice raided his home and offices, seizing dozens of boxes of personal belongings.

In 1996, then-USF President Betty Casto placed him on paid personal leave after learning he was under investigation by the Justice Department.

Academic organizations came to his defense. Two years later, when the FBI admitted it had no grounds to charge him, Al-Arian was restored to his position as a tenured professor.

Almost immediately, the U.S. government detained his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najar, who worked at the university as well, and held him in prison without charges on "secret evidence" for three years.

Al-Arian worked passionately to win the release of Al-Najar. He was on the verge of getting Congress to consider legislation outlawing "secret evidence"  when 9/11 happened.

After the courts ruled that Al-Najar had to be released, he was deported in August of 2002.

Right-wing and pro-Israeli elements, including local reporters for the Tampa Tribune and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, undeterred by the lack of evidence, publicly tried to link Al-Arian to acts of terrorism--not only in the Middle East, but even in the Oklahoma City bombing--in an unrelenting campaign to vilify him.

For example, the Tampa Tribune has printed more than 700 stories about Al-Arian and his pro-Palestinian views--an average of one article every five days for 10 years.

Following his arrest in February 2003, Al-Arian and his co-defendant Hammoudeh were imprisoned in the maximum-security section of the federal penitentiary in Coleman, Fla. Kept in solitary confinement in a small cell that was constantly lit, he was denied regular contact with his family, restricted in the practice of his religion, and shackled hand and foot when allowed limited meetings with his defense team. Even getting pencils and paper to aid in his defense became a matter of litigation with federal officials.

10 years of surveillance

Although the government had been spying on him and monitoring his activities for close to 10 years, the Justice Department told the presiding judge in the trial, U.S. District Judge James Moody, that it needed at least two more years to prepare its case.

The much-hyped trial began on June 6, 2005, almost two and a half years after Al-Arian's early-morning arrest at his Florida home.

For six months, prosecutors from the Justice Department presented some 80 witnesses and introduced 400 pieces of evidence, mostly edited transcripts of the more than 20,000 hours of taped phone conversations. Many of the tapes had been recorded prior to 1995, when the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was first included on the "terrorist" list maintained by the government.

Israeli witnesses to bombings attributed to the PIJ were brought to Tampa to testify. Videos of exploded buses were shown to the jury, even though the prosecution agreed that the defendants had nothing to to with the planning or carrying out of these attacks.

Under cross-examination, the defense exposed the lack of any evidence tying the four men to any terrorist activity.

On Oct. 27, Al-Arian's lawyers shocked the courtroom. William Moffit told the jury that the defense would rest without calling a single witness or introducing any evidence.

"Because there is a document called the U.S. Constitution ... it protects Dr. Al-Arian's right to speak and the government has not proven that Dr. Al-Arian has done anything but speak... The fact that Dr. Al-Arian is a Palestinian deprives him of no civil rights."

Thirteen days later, the jury's decision shocked the Bush administration. As the four defendants stood in a packed courtroom of family and supporters, they heard "not guilty" over and over as the charges were read.

Jurors interviewed by St. Petersburg Times reporter Meg Laughlin all mentioned that they found no evidence of crime in the voluminous record presented by the government. Prosecution attorney Cherie Krisgman had urged the jury to "trust them" that evidence existed to show that the defendants belonged to a "terrorist" cell operating in the U.S.

One juror said, "We were a hair's breadth away from acquitting on four more Al-Arian charges when the judge stopped us."

Judge Moody said that a juror had sent him a note saying she was feeling "coerced" by the rest of the panel.

"It shocked us," said a Vietnamese-American woman juror.

Todd, a 40-year-old truck driver, added, "If we had stayed and worked ... we would have acquitted on everything but the immigration fraud charge."

Federal prosecutors are now considering retrying Al-Arian and Fariz on the deadlocked charges. Conviction on a racketeering conspiracy charge carries a possible 20-year prison sentence. They say there is no deadline for when they will announce their decision.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has said that it will proceed with deportation hearings if Al-Arian is released from jail on bail or if the Justice Department declines to retry the case.

Defense lawyer Moffit declared any effort to deport his client "totally vindictive," since he has not been convicted of any crime.

However, in these much-publicized "terrorism" cases, following the arrest of many thousands of Arab and Muslim men since 9/11, the overwhelming majority of defendants have been found guilty of no crime but were deported on the basis of immigration technicalities.

Yet, like Al-Arian, they suffered months and even years of imprisonment, public slander, separation from their families, loss of jobs and homes, denial of civil rights and deliberate mental and physical anguish at the hands of a clique of right-wing ideologues in pursuit of a political agenda.

The government counted on fear and racism to convict Al-Arian and his co-defendants, but the public distrust of the Bush administration's policies since the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina certainly gave the jurors a context in which to judge the political views of the Palestinian activists.

They ultimately agreed with Moffit's summation: "This case concerns Dr. Al-Arian's right to speak, our right to hear what he has to say and the attempt by the powerful to silence him."