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Sami Al-Arian

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Sami Amin Al-Arian was born on January 14, 1958 in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees. He has lived in the United States since 1975 and was a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida until he was fired and jailed without bail while awaiting trial for alleged ties to Terrorist groups. He is being held at Coleman Federal Correction Complex

He was placed on involuntary leave from his job after appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, and later terminated from his tenured position after being formally charged with heading the North American operations of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating Al-Arian's connections to Islamic terror groups in the early 1990s, establishing its first wiretaps on Al-Arian in 1993. In 1995, the FBI began requesting information on Al-Arian and two other professors from USF campus police, while refraining from giving the local authorities any details on the investigation. In 1996, USF officials received more information on the investigation, leading university president Betty Castor to suspend Al-Arian. Recordings and other information gathered for intelligence purposes were not shared with the criminal staff of the FBI in the late 1990s, and the university's internal report by Tampa lawyer William Reece Smith did not suggest grounds for USF to dismiss him.

Following the first investigation, Al-Arian became politically active in the United States. He campaigned heavily for George W. Bush during the 2000 election, and was photographed with Bush that year in Plant City, Florida. The following year, Al-Arian's son, Abdullah, became a congressional intern, but was kicked out of a White House meeting because of suspected terrorist connections, sparking a walkout by twenty other Muslims in attendance. However, Bush soon apologized to the Al-Arian family for the incident, and by June 20, 2001, Sami Al-Arian's record was clean enough to allow him entry to the Eisenhower Office Building for a briefing, led by Karl Rove, with 160 other Muslim leaders.

Al-Arian appeared on the popular polemical television show The O'Reilly Factor on September 26, shortly after the September 11th attacks. On the program, host Bill O'Reilly resurrected 15 year old charges that accused Al-Arian of using a now-defunct university affiliated Islamic think tank that he headed as a front for Palestinian terrorist organizations. Though Al-Arian denied all links to terrorists, O'Reilly made it clear that he believed Al-Arian has terrorist connections.

Following the program's airing, USF received several death threats for Al-Arian. University president Judy Genshaft placed Dr. Al-Arian on paid leave and barred him from the campus on September 27, ostensibly for his own safety and the safety of others at the university.

On December 19, 2001, Genshaft initiated proceedings to revoke Al-Arian's tenure and terminate his employment at the university. Genshaft refused to speak publicly about the Al-Arian case; a spokesman indicated that Genshaft was attempting to fire Al-Arian for supporting terrorism and damaging the university's reputation.

The University filed a lawsuit seeking a pre-emptive judgement that firing Dr. Al-Arian would not violate his First Amendment rights in August of 2002. The suit was summarily dismissed on December 15, 2002, with the judge indicating that such a ruling is not within the scope of the court's function.

The American Association of University Professors indicated that it would formally censure USF if Al-Arian was fired, a move that would have likely dissuaded many top professors from teaching at USF. On January 6, 2003, the United Faculty of Florida, the union representing Al-Arian and other USF professors, filed a formal grievance against Genshaft, alleging that continuing to bar Al-Arian from the campus was tantamount to continued disciplinary action without due process, that the disciplinary actions were a violation of Al-Arian's academic freedoms, and that the university had discriminated against Al-Arian due to his ethnic background.

Arrest

On February 20, 2003, the FBI arrested Dr. Al-Arian after indicting him and seven others on 50 terrorism-related charges. United States Attorney General John Ashcroft alleged at a press conference that Dr. Al-Arian was the North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the secretary of the PIJ's international organization. On February 26, Genshaft announced that Al-Arian had been fired on the basis that his nonacademic activities created a conflict of interest with USF. Allegations from his indictment were also cited. The AAUP indicated that they did not feel due process had been followed in Al-Arian's case, but chose to condemn, rather than formally censure, USF at their 2003 annual meeting.

His trial is set for January 2005. Al-Arian's lawyers have stated that the delay between arrest and trial constitutes a violation of Al-Arian's right under the United States Constitution to a speedy trial. In response, Judge James Moody cited what he believed to be the complexity and uniqueness of the case for setting the trial in 2005.

Role in 2004 Senate election

Betty Castor, the USF president who had suspended Al-Arian in 1996, later became a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate election, 2004. In June of that year, the American Democracy Project, a 527 group founded by attorney Bernie Friedman (a friend of Castor's rival, Congressman Peter Deutsch), launched attacks on Castor in Floridian print media, charging that Castor had not moved quickly enough to react to the Al-Arian problem. In response, the Castor campaign stated that no information provided by the FBI was sufficient to allow Castor to fire Al-Arian.

ADP launched a website in July, castortruth.com, with documents allegedly proving Castor's indifference toward Al-Arian. The Castor campaign launched castorfacts.com on the same day in an attempt to debunk these claims. Castor won the Democratic primary despite the ADP's efforts, and the organization ceased its operations shortly afterward.

Castor's Republican rival, former HUD Secretary Mel Martinez, brought the issue into the general election by producing television ads that attacked Castor's handling of Al-Arian.

SITE Institute Fact Sheet on Sami Al-Arian

Sami Al-Arian is a Computer Science professor at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa currently on leave due to his alleged support of terrorism. Al-Arian, of Palestinian heritage, came to the United States in 1975 to begin his university studies. In 1986, he began teaching at the University of South Florida in Tampa and became a tenured professor in 1992.

Al-Arian served as one of the original founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist organization. PIJ, according to the State Department, is “committed to…the destruction of Israel through holy war.” PIJ has been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, resulting in the deaths of civilians.

In the late 1980s, Al-Arian establishing two think tanks, the Islamic Concern Project (also know as the Islamic Committee for Palestine) and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). Several terrorism experts and government officials have alleged that ICP and WISE served as financial and strategic conduits for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist organization.

How did ICP and WISE Support Terrorism?

ICP, also known as the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), sponsored several conferences in the late 1980s and early 1990s where known terrorists attended and lectured. At these conferences, posters of PIJ and its emblem were prominently displayed onstage. ICP’s most infamous featured speaker at a conference was Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in the U.S. for organizing a failed attempt to destroy several New York City landmarks. Other speakers included Sheikh Abdel Aziz Odeh, the spiritual leader of PIJ. ICP also invited several speakers who could not attend the conferences, including Fathi Shikaki, at the time the leader of PIJ, and Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s ideological mentor and founder of al-Qaeda. Al-Arian stated of Azzam at a conference, “Azzam also sends his salutations to the conference, and he has not been able to be with us due to the political conditions in Afghanistan.”

WISE functioned as ICP’s sister organization, releasing a magazine that reproduced speeches at ICP conferences. Through both ICP and WISE’s pretense of legitimacy, Al-Arian was able to secure visas for several individuals seeking to gain entry into the United States. Among those whom Al-Arian obtained a visa for was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who served as WISE’s Director of Administration. Shockingly, Shallah left WISE in 1995 to head the terrorist group PIJ after its previous leader, Fathi Shikaki was assassinated. Additionally, Al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, worked at WISE. Al-Najjar was deported from the United States for visa violations and ties to terrorism.

Shallah’s promotion in PIJ resulted in a federal investigation into ICP and WISE. William West of the INS wrote an affidavit in late 1995 to receive judicial approval to execute a search warrant against ICP, WISE, and the residence and office of Al-Arian. In the affidavit, West details the alleged offenses of Al-Arian, stating “I have probable cause to believe that ICP and WISE were utilized by Sami al-Arian and Ramadan Abdallah Shallah as ‘fronts’ in order to enable individuals to enter the United States, in an apparent lawful fashion, despite the fact that these individuals were international terrorists.”

WISE and ICP were funded by the “SAAR Network,” which was the target of U.S. federal raids in Herndon, Virginia, on March 20 and 21, 2002, for suspicion of funding terrorism. The network is a complex web of over one hundred organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, with overlapping officers and addresses. The SAAR Foundation, which was the hub of the network, is a non-profit organization founded by wealthy Saudi investors in the early 1980s.

What has Sami Al-Arian Said or Done to Support Terrorism?

Sami Al-Arian has actively fundraised for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 1995 raid on Al-Arian’s residence, the FBI found a letter written by Al-Arian shortly after a PIJ suicide bombing that left 18 people dead in Israel. The letter solicits funding for “the jihad effort in Palestine.” Al-Arian, according to an FBI translation of the Arabic letter, praised the terrorist attack, writing, “The latest operation carried out by the two mujahidin (warriors), who were martyred for the sake of God, is the best evidence of what the believing few can do in the face of Arab and Islamic collapse before the Zionist enemy and of the still-burning firebrand of faith, steadfastness and challenge.”

On a videotape of a 1991 conference in Cleveland, Ohio, seized by FBI agents, al-Arian is introduced as “the president of the Islamic Committee for Palestine, and a short briefing about the Islamic Committee for Palestine, it is the active arm of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine, and we like to call it the Islamic Committee for Palestine here for security reasons.” After being introduced, Al-Arian stated, “Let us continue the protests. Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death.”

In another seized videotape, Al-Arian delivered an impassioned speech before a rapt audience at a high school in Chicago in 1991. Al-Arian referred to Jews as “monkeys and pigs” and stated, “Mohammad is leader. The Qu’ran is our constitution. Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution! Revolution! Until Victory! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem.”

In addition to his role with the Islamic Jihad, Al-Arian also co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine in 1981. Since its founding, this organization has grown into the primary political propaganda wing for the Hamas terrorist organization in the United States. Its daughter organization, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which shares several of its directors with IAP, is a designated terrorist entity. InfoCom Corporation, another organization affiliated with IAP, had its offices raided by the U.S. government and all its officers indicted for their terrorist activities.



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