Posted on 02/22/2003 10:53:35 AM PST by Sabertooth
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Eight people, including four U.S. residents, were charged in a 50-count indictment with supporting, financing and relaying messages for a violent Palestinian terrorist group blamed for the deaths of more than 100 people in and around Israel.
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| The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Fla., was unsealed Thursday. It charges that the men are members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. Among them are a Palestinian professor at the University of South Florida, 45-year-old Sami Amin Al-Arian, who is described as the group's U.S. leader and secretary of its worldwide council. In Florida, Al-Arian was seen being led in handcuffs to FBI headquarters in Tampa after the arrest. "It's all about politics," Al-Arian told reporters as agents led him inside. Al-Arian is a supporter of former Congressman David Bonior and once donated $3,200 to Bonior's political campaigns. Al-Arian, long suspected of terrorist ties, gave $2,200 to Bonior in 1999 and another $1,000 in 2000. Those contributions became a major controversy in Bonior's bid for governor last year when they came to light in January 2002. The Mount Clemens Democrat refused to return the contributions from Al-Arian and another Muslim activist, saying that Al-Arian had never been charged with a crime. Al-Arian was first targeted by a federal probe in 1995 when a USF think tank he founded was raided by federal agents and accused of being a front group for terrorism. Al-Arian has vehemently denied any ties to terrorists, but after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, USF placed the computer engineering professor on forced leave and banned him from campus, located in Tampa, for outspoken, inflammatory support for Palestinian causes. In 1999, Bonior became a champion of Arab-American rights at USF and in the Tampa area after Al-Arian's brother, Mazen Al-Najjar, was held by federal authorities on "secret evidence" though he was never charged with a crime. Al-Najjar was also suspected of terrorist connections. Bonior hired Al-Arian's son, Abdullah, in 2001 as an intern in his Capitol Hill office. The USF, which is trying to dismiss Al-Arian, has claimed the professor raised money for terrorist groups, brought terrorists into the United States and founded organizations that support terrorism. In announcing Thursday's indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the eight supported numerous violent terrorist activities. "Our message to them and to others like them is clear: We make no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance, manage or supervise terrorist organizations," he said. The indictment charges the eight men with operating a criminal racketeering enterprise since 1984 that supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad and with conspiracy to kill and maim people abroad, conspiracy to provide material support to the group, extortion, perjury and other charges. Each defendant faces up to life in prison if convicted. Al-Arian and two others were arrested in Tampa and a fourth man was arrested in Chicago. The other four were living abroad and are not in custody, Ashcroft noted. The group is described in the indictment as rejecting peaceful solutions to the Palestinian quest for a homeland in the Middle East and with embracing "the Jihad solution and the martyrdom style as the only choice for liberation." The group's purpose, prosecutors allege, is to destroy Israel and end all U.S. and Western influence in the region. Among the 100 people whose killings are blamed on the organization in Israel and the territories are those of two U.S. citizens: Alisa Flatow, 20, and Shoshana Ben-Yishai, 16. The killings included suicide bombings, car bombs and drive-by shootings, most recently a June 5, 2002, suicide attack in Haifa, Israel, that killed 20 and injured 50. Alisa Flatow, then a junior at Brandeis University, died in a 1995 bus bombing in the Gaza Strip. Her father, Stephen Flatow of West Orange, N.J., said Thursday he "thought this would never happen ... This demonstrates the old saw about the wheels of justice -- they grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine." The defendants allegedly provided financial support through a number of U.S.-based entities, resolved internal conflicts, helped communicate claims of responsibility for terrorist actions and made false statements to immigration officials to help terrorists. Those arrested in the United States Thursday were described as setting up a terrorist cell at the University of South Florida. They are:
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©The Macomb Daily 2003
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"It's all about politics," Al-Arian told reporters as agents led him inside.
Al-Arian is a supporter of former Congressman David Bonior and once donated $3,200 to Bonior's political campaigns.
Al-Arian, long suspected of terrorist ties, gave $2,200 to Bonior in 1999 and another $1,000 in 2000. Those contributions became a major controversy in Bonior's bid for governor last year when they came to light in January 2002.
The Mount Clemens Democrat refused to return the contributions from Al-Arian and another Muslim activist, saying that Al-Arian had never been charged with a crime.< snip >
In 1999, Bonior became a champion of Arab-American rights at USF and in the Tampa area after Al-Arian's brother, Mazen Al-Najjar, was held by federal authorities on "secret evidence" though he was never charged with a crime. Al-Najjar was also suspected of terrorist connections.
intern = payoff or favor
Financing and helping terrorists to commit crimes in the destruction of Israel, as well as US influences, is advocating violence against others.
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