Newspaper: Israel ties Tampa university professor to Jihad

Newspaper: Israel ties Tampa university professor to Jihad

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

Associated Press

TAMPA - A professor who has been under investigation for providing financial support to terrorists is a founding member of the governing council of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Tampa Tribune is reporting.

In a story in Sunday's edition, the newspaper cited unnamed current and former Israeli intelligence officials interviewed in Tel Aviv who said Sami Al-Arian as a founding member of the Majlis Shura.

The panel functions like a Jihad board of directors and appears to have been formed in the early 1990s, about 10 years after the Jihad's birth.

Al-Arian, currently on paid suspension from his duties at the University of South Florida, denied Monday in an interview with The Associated Press that he is a part of the panel. Al-Arian has been notified by the university it intends to fire him for being a security risk and for not making it clear he was not speaking for USF as a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.

"I hope the American people will read between the lines and see through this campaign," Al-Arian said. "It's a campaign of lies and destruction orchestrated through a foreign intelligence service through its supporters in the United States for personal reasons and interest, and I might add, for personal gain for some."

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa said Monday its investigation into Al-Arian remains an open case and declined comment on the report.

Al-Arian and his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, are the founders of an Islamic academic think tank and charity based in Tampa that U.S. agents have accused of being fund-raising fronts for terrorists.

In 1995, the former director of Al-Arian's think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprise, became the Islamic Jihad's new leader. Al-Arian has denied knowing Ramadan Abdullah Shallah left the think tank to head the terrorist group.

Al-Arian has never been charged with a crime. The charity and the think tank were shut down after an FBI raid in the mid-1990s.

Al-Arian said he is being targeted by Israel because his of his efforts to educate Americans about the plight of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Al-Arian was successful in raising issues about the use of secret evidence, which has been the subject of Congressional hearings and was mentioned during a 2000 presidential debate.

Al-Najjar, who spent more than 3 1/2 years in jail on secret evidence linking him to terrorists, only to be released in December 2000, has been in solitary confinement since November 2001 awaiting deportation.

A seven-member delegation of prosecutors and investigators from Tampa traveled to Israel in the fall of 2000 for briefings by the Israelis, the Tribune reported.

Then-U.S. Attorney Donna Bucella, now in private practice in Miami, said Monday she could not confirm the trip occurred nor comment on the report.

As recently as 1994, suspects arrested in connection with terrorist attacks in Israel have had slips of paper with Al-Najjar's home telephone number in Tampa written on them, the Israeli intelligence agents told the newspaper.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who represents Al-Najjar, cautioned against accepting foreign intelligence at face value and said the agents' job is to take rumors and innuendo into consideration.

The Israelis have not released any documentation to support their allegations against Al-Arian and Al-Najjar.

FYI, here's the Tampa Tribune article:

Jun 23, 2002

Israel Ties Al-Arian To Jihad Board

By MICHAEL FECHTER
mfechter@tampatrib.com

TEL AVIV - Sami Al-Arian, the professor being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged ties to Middle East terrorists, helped found the governing council of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and then served on it, current and former senior Israeli intelligence officials say.

The panel is called the Majlis Shura and functions like a Jihad board of directors. It has an unknown number of members and offers advice on such matters as money and organization. It appears to have been formed in the early 1990s, about 10 years after the Jihad's birth.

In addition, the officials say, Al-Arian delivered computer equipment to the Jihad's leader en route to a 1994 meeting of the council in Tehran.

Their revelations for the first time lift the veil on the protracted and secretive investigation into Al-Arian and Tampa's ties to the violence in the Middle East.

Al-Arian denies any involvement with the Jihad, but the officials say they believe his role was in political ideology and fundraising - not in Jihad operations.

Israeli intelligence has provided this and other information tying Al-Arian to the Jihad to federal agents in Tampa, who have been investigating Al-Arian for the past seven years, the officials said. Israeli security agents have briefed U.S. officials on the material in Tampa, and a seven- member delegation of prosecutors and investigators from Tampa traveled to Israel in the fall of 2000 for briefings by the Israelis.

The Israelis say they are frustrated U.S. authorities have not indicted Al-Arian, who is a tenured computer science professor at the University of South Florida but has been suspended from teaching there since Sept. 28.

Al-Arian and his brother-in- law, Mazen Al-Najjar, have long been suspected by U.S. agents of running front organizations for the Jihad - in part through a think tank affiliated with USF that Al-Arian launched in 1991 called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, or WISE. Federal agents raided WISE's offices and Al-Arian's home in November 1995 after a former WISE director emerged at Jihad headquarters in Damascus, Syria, as the Jihad's commander.

``This is pure nonsense,'' Al- Arian said of the Israeli allegations in comments made through his attorney, Robert McKee of Tampa.

Al-Arian said he was not in Tehran or Damascus in 1994, nor did he deliver any computer for the Jihad. He said he did travel to Saudi Arabia that year for the Hajj, a pilgrimage Muslims must make to Mecca at least once in their lives if they can afford it.

In February, then-interim U.S. Attorney Mac Cauley issued a statement saying Al-Arian remains the subject of ``an active and ongoing investigation.'' Cauley didn't elaborate, but the Israelis say its focus appears to be whether Al-Arian has violated federal racketeering laws.

The trip by U.S. authorities to Israel in the fall of 2000 included then-U.S. Attorney Donna Bucella. They returned with information about the Jihad's governing board and financial transactions involving the Jihad, the Israelis say.

``If these files were ever opened to the public, if they will do that, there are a lot of Americans who will be very, very disappointed in how the FBI behaved in this case,'' a senior intelligence official said.

Enough For A Conviction?

U.S. law enforcement officials disagree. The threshold for convicting people in terrorism-related cases is far higher here than in Israel, they say, and - while they understand the Israelis' frustration - this case may dwell in a legal gray area.

Such disagreement is fairly common when investigations in the United States require help from other countries, said Robert Blitzer, the FBI's former chief of domestic terrorism investigations.

``They can do more with less,'' Blitzer said of the Israelis. ``They have a tendency to read an awful lot into a piece of information to the degree that they view it as enough to do something. But we know here it's not enough to get a conviction.''

Al-Arian ``is a representative of the Islamic Jihad, a known terrorist organization, here in the United States doing his thing in support of that organization, trying to radicalize and bring into the organizational fold more and more Muslims,'' Blitzer continued.

But that doesn't necessarily mean he's broken U.S. law, Blitzer said.

``They are a part of a support infrastructure for the organization,'' he said. ``That's what this is all about. This is about supporting the political goals of the organization and to collect money and to propagate the organization through proselytizing.''

The investigation centers on whether money raised by Al- Arian in the United States was used to finance Jihad terrorism in Israel - in particular an April 1995 bombing attack on a bus that killed eight people in the Gaza Strip, the Israelis say. One of the victims was an American college student, Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old from West Orange, N.J., who was in Israel studying at a seminary.

Flatow's father, Stephen, said he testified about Alisa's death before a federal grand jury in Tampa in December.

Among other things, racketeering statutes allow prosecutors more flexibility linking criminals acts together even when they're widely separated by time or geography, according to Tampa defense lawyer Todd Foster, who previously served as major crimes chief at the U.S. attorney's office.

Analyzing Foreign Intelligence

Israel also claims Al-Najjar, who has been in federal prison since November pending a final order of deportation, served as a communications conduit between Jihad terrorists in the Israeli Occupied Territories and Jihad headquarters in Damascus.

As recently as 1994, an Israeli intelligence official said, suspects arrested in connection with terrorist attacks in Israel have had slips of paper with Al- Najjar's home telephone number in Tampa written on them.

The suspects said during subsequent interrogations they had been instructed to call the number to report on an attack, the official said. Before Al-Najjar was a contact, the Israelis say, the Jihad used Basheer Nafi, a former WISE director deported by the United States in 1996. Nafi has repeatedly denied any involvement with the Jihad.

It isn't clear whether this allegation is part of a package of secret evidence that was used by immigration officials to jail Al-Najjar as a national security threat in 1997. That evidence alleged an association between Al-Najjar and the Jihad. He spent 3 1/2 years in an immigration detention center in Bradenton.

An immigration judge ordered his release in December 2000 after a U.S. district judge ruled that using secret evidence to keep Al-Najjar behind bars violated his due process rights. His attorneys successfully argued he couldn't defend himself against evidence he couldn't see.

Agents rearrested Al-Najjar in November after the INS issued a final deportation order. His attorneys have sued for his release, arguing immigration law does not allow unlimited detention but gives the government six months to find a country willing to accept the detainee. As a stateless Palestinian, Al-Najjar says he has been unable to find a country willing to accept him.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who represents Al-Najjar, cautioned against accepting foreign intelligence at face value.

``Intelligence agencies try to gather up as much possible information as they can. They will take rumors and innuendos. Part of their job is to determine which are the more credible pieces of information,'' Cole said.

Undocumented intelligence information isn't good enough for American courts, Cole said.

``What we have been fighting since Day One in this is you have to have a forum where claims can be tested. When we had a forum where these claims could be tested, we convinced a Republican judge there was nothing here. It was a very lengthy rejection of every claim that the government made.''

Immigration Judge R. Kevin McHugh ruled that the government failed to present evidence showing Al-Najjar aided terrorists or that WISE, and a related charity called the Islamic Committee for Palestine, were fronts for the Islamic Jihad.

``There is evidence in the record to support the conclusion that WISE was a reputable and scholarly research center and the ICP was highly regarded,'' McHugh wrote.

Al-Najjar never served in any capacity with the Jihad, Al-Arian said through his attorney. These are old allegations that were refuted by McHugh's ruling, McKee quoted Al-Arian as saying.

``People just don't want to accept that,'' Al-Arian said.

Turnover, Ignorance Hinder Probe

Israeli officials also said the U.S. investigation has been hampered by interagency squabbling, turnover among case agents and a general ignorance about the Middle East conflict and its players.

One of the Israelis complained about a change in case agents that came shortly after the autumn 2000 trip. The case was progressing well, the official said, but bogged down as new players brought themselves up to speed.

``They knew nothing about the'' Jihad, the Israeli said. ``I sat with them for about four hours, and I had to review with them all the history that I told to the [previous investigators]. Every time they changed the team, they started from the beginning. They know nothing. They know nothing about the Middle East reality.''

At the request of U.S. investigators, the Israelis assembled a package of additional financial records that the Americans planned to come back for, the Israelis said. But the Americans postponed their return trip due to security concerns - first in December, then in March - and the package still awaits pickup. The Israelis said they wonder why the FBI hasn't sent one of its agents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to retrieve the material.

``It could be very useful,'' one of the Israelis said.

The Israelis have not released any documentation to support their allegations against Al-Arian and Al-Najjar. However, the roles the Israelis ascribe to Al-Arian and Al-Najjar are detailed in a Jihad document agents seized in their 1995 raid on WISE's office. The paper diagrams the structure of the organization, but does not name anyone. The Israelis say this document - which according to an FBI translation was titled ``Internal Manifest'' - had never before been published and they weren't aware of it until its discovery in Tampa.

Prosecuting and convicting Al-Arian won't stem the violence between Palestinians and Israelis, said Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Radical Islam in Haifa. Most of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's money comes from Iran, and its active core is in the occupied territories. Whatever has happened in Tampa was more about ideology and politics than directing operations, Paz said.

``Israel is confronting real terrorism and didn't pay attention to the political activity,'' Paz said. ``If they wanted, the Palestinian Authority could eliminate the whole group in one day. It wouldn't create such noise in the Palestinian population like the closure of even one social structure of Hamas,'' which runs schools, clinics and mosques in addition to orchestrating terrorist attacks.

Reporter Michael Fechter can be reached at (813) 259-7621.

This story can be found HERE.

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