Jury told ex-professor a terror ringleader (Sami Al-Arian)

TAMPA, Fla. - A fired college professor acted as a "crime boss" for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a murderous gang that operated like the Mafia, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday.

Although Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants are not charged with killing anyone, they conspired to bring about attacks and are just as guilty under the law as the suicide bombers who carried them out, prosecutor Cherie Krigsman said in closing arguments.

"The men of the PIJ you got to know in this case, they didn't strap bombs to their body," she said. "They leave that to somebody else."

Al-Arian, 47, and his co-defendants are accused of using Palestinian charities and educational entities as fundraising fronts for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to help bombings that killed hundreds.

The men deny they supported violence and say they are being persecuted for views that are unpopular in the United States.

Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering teacher who was fired after he was indicted, "was a professor by day and a terrorist by night," Krigsman said.

Prosecutors built their case around hundreds of pages of transcripts of wiretapped phone calls and faxes intercepted by the FBI from the mid-1990s to about 2003, including discussions about the direction and financing of the PIJ. The participants at times appear to celebrate suicide attacks that killed Israelis and speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried them out.

Prosecutors said Al-Arian and co-defendants Sameeh Hammoudeh, Ghassan Zayed Ballut and Hatem Naji Fariz used a think tank and a Palestinian charity in Tampa as fundraising fronts. The men claim the money they raised went to Palestinian charities.

Al-Arian's attorney, William Moffitt, rested Oct. 27 without calling a single witness. He said that prosecutors failed to prove Al-Arian did "anything but speak."

Krigsman was to complete her closing arguments Tuesday and be followed by Moffitt.

When I still read the papers, including the Tampa Tribune, I followed the Sami Al-Arian story. Here's a sample of what one of his associates has said.

"In addition, the affidavit recounts remarks made at a 1992 conference by Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, a man then associated with Al-Arian's Tampa think tank who in 1995 unexpectedly became the PIJ's head. The think tank issued a statement at the time expressing shock over Shallah's elevation and denying knowledge of his political affiliations."

"In his 1992 comments, Shallah defined jihad as a holy war that aims to kill Islam's enemies, including ``the New World Order symbolized by the United States,'' the affidavit says. People should not be defensive when accused of terrorism, Shallah allegedly said, ``because jihad required them to terrorize, devastate, humiliate and degrade their enemies."

tbo.com/

World Islam Study Enterprise (WISE)

"Ramadan Abdullah Shallah was a founding member - along with Sami Al-Arian, Mazen al Najjar, and Khalil Shikaki - of the World Islam Study Enterprise (WISE). WISE was an Islamic think tank that sponsored events around the United States featuring speakers like Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who was later convicted for his role as the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. WISE was shut down in 1995 after some of its founders were arrested for ties to terrorism or were deported."

"When Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shaqaqi was assassinated by an Israeli agent in 1995, Shallah was named as his replacement."

discoverthenetwork.org/

I recall writing a story about this when at AIA a couple of years ago. Some details of what evidence al-Arian is facing:

With the release of the 121-page federal indictment, the amount of evidence indicating Al-Arian's guilt grew substantially. The document reveals detailed evidence, including information from a large body of “now-declassified national security wiretaps.”

A series of intercepted phone calls, faxes and bank transactions demonstrate that Al-Arian used WISE and ICP bank accounts as surreptitious conduits for money transfers. These transactions involved the PIJ, the Iranian and Syrian governments, HAMAS [another federally designated terrorist organization] and ‘sources’ in the Sudan. Al-Arian was also recorded on several occasions advising how to dupe unsuspecting donors into providing funds for specifically outlawed terrorist groups.
Phone calls and faxes documented Al-Arian facilitating PIJ tactical coordination with HAMAS. Agreement was reached and a deadly bus bombing in Israel subsequently occurred, utilizing a PIJ “boy” who deployed a HAMAS car loaded with HAMAS explosives.
An intercepted phone conversation between Al-Arian and a prospective donor recorded the professor gloating over a January 22, 1995 double suicide attack in Beit Lid, Israel that killed 21 and injured 59. More such bloodshed was promised for money.
Bank records, faxes and phone conversations showed Al-Arian’s direct participation in long-term financial support for the families of past suicide bombers as well as budgeting for future ones.
Phone and fax records spanning several years demonstrated Al-Arian arranging false documentation for known terrorists entering the US. He then counseled them on circumventing federal scrutiny and using university affiliation as cover.
In exchanges of intercepted faxes, Al-Arian edited a PIJ manifesto that Ashcroft says, “refers to the United States as ‘the Great-Satan America’ and indicates that the only purpose of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to destroy Israel and to end all Western influence in the region.”

Having read your about page, I regret having to differ, but here is why. I grew up in the area, knew both reporters and management of both papers, and based my post on those data.

Who pays the Piper does call the tune - in most cases. The Poynter Institute has been left wing since its inception. And Poynter owns controlling stock in the St. Pete Times.

While Poynter will happily cover corporate abuses because this is part of the Critical Theory approach, their coverage of agency abuses is conspicuously different.

Agency abuse is often based upon powers derived from the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Endangered Species Act. As science has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, the Indigenous fire managed North America since the Quaternary Extinctions. Such anthropogenic fires rendered the Wilderness Act's definition of "wilderness" as "an area of the earth and it's community of life that is untrammelled by the presence of man" rather a moot point, wouldn't you agree?

Knowing this, The Times/Poynter has continued to relentlessly beat the drums for the enviro-socialist agenda. Such editorial agenda-driven management is why I criticized the Times.

Another reason is that to advocate giving land to government to "preserve the land" is a historically proven way to degrade land. As proof consider the lamentable condition of the old USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea and our National Park system.

Yet the Times has never met a government land acquisition it opposed. As an old girl friend's professor Mom said "I can't hear what they are saying for what they are doing." If the Times talks enviro-socialism, supports enviro-socialism, it can be said to have an enviro-socialist agenda.

Arguably, this is the proximate cause for the inarguable fact that the Times has not covered the multitudinous abuses of both Unalienable Rights and property rights which in any significant manner while the pro enviro-socialist agenda de jury was voluminously covered.

While I can (and would enjoy) discussing the voluminous evidence of enviro-socialism's widespread dominance of lamestream media management minds (term used loosely), I do have to return to the interior of the Everglades where my research facility suffered the multiple visits of embedded tornadoes in te southern eye wall of Wilma.

In closing, since you saw fit to refer to my post as "pure bovine scatology" I will take a moment to point out that as scatology is the study of feces, a more accurate phrase would have been "pure bovine exhaust (byproduct, etc.).

I also find that your defense of the Times/Poynter agenda might just be motivated by the fact that the Times/Poynter bias against corporate/capitalism serves your firm and litigation interests.

Which is not to say that I disagree in anyway with the dangers of massive corporations and the unavoidable abuses that size and bureaucratization bring to such huge enterprises.

Best of luck in your attempts to bring "justice" to the citizen. Having been present in the court room when the most egregious abuses of clients were carried out by some of America's and certainly FloriDUH's most prestigious law firms, do forgive me if i am unimpressed with FloriDUH's courts and the Times/Poynter agendas.

FloriDUH has degenerate courts and newspapers to match. The Tampa Tribune is somewhat of an exception and the demographics are represented by the paper's different editorial perspectives.

Gotta crank up the Rangie and run.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.