Florida: Jihadist prof. gets additional 18 months in jail

U.S. officials say Professor Sami Al-Arian, the leading Islamic Jihad member who was put on trial for aiding terror organization, will serve another year and a half in prison before being deported
Yitzhak Benhorin

Florida – Professor Sami Al-Arian, the leading Islamic Jihad member who was put on trial in the U.S. for aiding a terror organization, will serve another year and a half in prison before he will be deported in his terrorism conspiracy case, officials said on Monday.

Al-Arian, 48, has been jailed since February 2003. After the indictment was filed against him, former Attorney General John Ashcroft said Al-Arian served as Islamic Jihad’s senior operative in the U.S. and worked as a fundraiser for the terror group. According to Ashcroft, Al-Arian provided funds used to carry out terror attacks in Israel.

After a five-month trial and 13 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight of the 17 counts against him, including a key charge of conspiring to maim and murder people overseas.

Al-Arian signed a plea agreement April 14 in which he admitted providing support to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a State Department-designated terrorist group responsible for hundreds of deaths in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Brought senior Jihad members to Tampa Bay

As part of the plea agreement, Al-Arian admitted to being associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the late 1980s and providing "services" for the group, which included filing for immigration benefits for key members, hiding the identities of those men and lying about his involvement.

Al-Arian, the son of Palestinian parents, was born in Kuwait and raised in Cairo. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1975, and began his computer engineering studies in 1986 at the University of South Florida. At the same time he established a Muslim organization and research institute near campus, bringing senior Jihad members to Tampa Bay, including Ramadan Shalah.

Tampa terrorist cell

Ten years ago Shalah was appointed head of the Islamic Jihad Damascus offices after predecessor Fathi Shkaki was murdered in Malta, prompting the FBI to begin tracking Al-Arian. Israel continuously sent the Americans information according to which Al-Arian set up in the university Islamic Jihad headquarters that transferred information from Damascus to the territories and funneled money for terror activity. But it was only after 9/11 that the public campaign for Al-Arian’s dismissal from the university was launched.

The government alleged that Al-Arian and the other defendants were part of a Tampa terrorist cell that took the lead in determining the structure and goals of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the State Department has listed as a terrorist group.

Prosecutors said Al-Arian and other members of the terrorist organization used the University of South Florida to give them cover as teachers and students, and held meetings under the guise of academic conferences.

The case was built on hundreds of pages of transcripts of wiretapped phone calls and faxes, records of money moving through accounts, documents seized from the defendants' homes and offices, and their own words on video. At times, the participants appeared to speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried out homicide attacks.