Date Posted: Wednesday, December 07, 2005

A federal jury in Florida found former professor Sami al-Arian not guilty on several charges related to terrorism.

MIAMI, Dec 7 (MASNET & News Agencies) - A federal jury in Florida acquitted former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian on terrorism charges, though he could be retried on other, less serious, charges on which the panel remained deadlocked.

Al-Arian, 47, was found not guilty of eight of the 17 counts against him, including conspiring to murder people outside the United States, several counts of providing material support to a terrorist group, obstruction of justice, and of supporting a "terrorist organization", the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, court officials in Florida said.

The group was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 1997, reports Reuters news agency.

But the 12 jurors deadlocked on the other counts, and officials did not rule out a retrial for al-Arian, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The jury failed to reach a decision on some of the key counts against al-Arian, including racketeering conspiracy, money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support, and conspiracy to make and receive contributions of funds, goods or services to terrorists, reports Reuters.

"We'll have to review that and decide how to proceed," said Steve Cole, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa, where the trial was held.

The verdicts were welcomed by some two dozen al-Arian supporters who cheered and hugged each other outside the Tampa, Florida, courthouse. "I thank the jury so much. My heart is about to stop. I am so happy," said al-Arian's wife, Nahla, reports Reuters.

"I'm ecstatic," she said. "My husband is an outspoken Palestinian activist who loved this country, believed in the system, and the system did not fail him."

Al-Arian, who has been in custody since his arrest nearly three years ago, wept after the verdicts were read, and his attorney, Linda Moreno, hugged him. He will return to jail until prosecutors decide whether to retry him on the deadlocked charges, reports the Associated Press (AP).

"While we respect the jury's verdict, we stand by the evidence we presented in court against Sami al-Arian and his co-defendants," said Tasia Scolinos, public affairs director for the Justice Department.

"Discussions are ongoing as to whether the government will seek to retry defendants al-Arian and Hatem Fariz on the outstanding charges."

Moreno said she hoped prosecutors would take into account the "overwhelming number of not-guilty verdicts" against the defendants in deciding whether to try Al-Arian again. She planned to ask the court soon to release her client from jail, reports the AP.

Al-Arian, along with three co-defendants, was accused of raising money and providing support for Islamic Jihad, whom the U.S. government blames for killing more than 100 people in Israel, including three Americans, reports Reuters.

Co-defendant Naji Fariz, a former manager of a Florida clinic, was acquitted of 25 counts against him, while university student Sameeh Hammudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, a Chicago shopkeeper, were found not guilty on all charges.

The four were arrested in 2003. The men could have faced life in prison if convicted of all the charges.

The case was one of Washington's most prominent towards an anti-terrorism prosecution since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, reports Reuters.

When al-Arian was arrested, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the case as a triumph of the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism measure enacted after the attacks, saying al-Arian, then a computer sciences professor at the University of South Florida, was Islamic Jihad's North American leader, the news agency reports.

The defendants denied the charges and said any money they sent to the group was for charitable activities, reports Reuters.

Five others indicted in the case, including Al-Arian's brother-in-law, have not been arrested. The brother-in-law was deported in 2002, and the others also are out of the country, reports the AP.

The case was considered a key test of the government's surveillance powers, strengthened by the Patriot Act. The prosecutors' case was based mostly on thousands of hours of wiretapped telephone calls, intercepted e-mails and faxes and bank records gathered over a decade, reports Reuters.

The Act gave the government greatly expanded powers and broke down the wall between foreign intelligence investigations and domestic law enforcement. In the al-Arian case, officials said, it allowed separate FBI investigations - one of them a years-long secret foreign intelligence probe of the professor's activities - to be combined and all the evidence used against him, reports the AP.

A U.S. resident, al-Arian was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. He has lived in the United States since 1975. He was granted permanent-resident status in 1989 and denied U.S. citizenship in 1996, reports Reuters.

Prosecutors said al-Arian and other members of the terrorist organization used the university to give them cover as teachers and students, and held meetings under the guise of academic conferences, reports the AP.

Al-Arian was one of the founders of a think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, and a charity, the Islamic Committee for Palestine, formed in the 1990s to support an independent Palestinian state, the news agency reports.

He was fired from USF, where he was a computer engineering professor, shortly after being indicted, and USF President Judy Genshaft said Tuesday that the school would not rehire him even if he was cleared on all charges, reports the AP.

"USF ended Sami Al-Arian's employment nearly three years ago, and we do not expect anything to change that," she said in a statement.

Al-Arian said he was being persecuted for his beliefs, reports Reuters.