Posted on 02/21/2003 4:54:00 AM PST by Stultis
Feb 21, 2003
It was early 1994. The debate about how to resolve the crisis flowed through fax machines and international telephone lines from Syria to England and to the United States.
The balding, bespectacled man who would resolve the conflict and restore the terrorist group's finances was University of South Florida computer scientist Sami Al-Arian, says a federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
What Al-Arian didn't know as he was brokering the truce was that federal agents were listening to his telephone calls and intercepting his faxes.
Al-Arian's proposal was put to a vote of the group's leaders. It passed 8-2. The deal kept the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from falling apart, the indictment says.
Al-Arian's Islamic Jihad role did not stop there. He helped move money, defined ideology, and reached out to the Islamic Jihad's rival Palestinian movement, Hamas, the indictment says.
He allegedly was Islamic Jihad's U.S. leader, secretary of its Shura, or international governing council, and head of an Islamic Jihad cell in Tampa.
Islamic Jihad attacks launched after the 1994 peace he brokered killed scores of people in Israel, including at least two Americans, the indictment says. It does not accuse Al-Arian of actually planning any of these attacks.
The indictment caps an eight-year investigation and outlines a 50-count case against Al-Arian and seven accomplices.
Four of them were arrested Thursday.
Federal agents led Al-Arian in handcuffs from his apartment in The Preserve off Fletcher Avenue in Temple Terrace before dawn.
The three others in custody were identified as Sameeh Hammoudeh, who came to USF as a graduate student and teaches Arabic there; Ghassan Zayed Ballut, allegedly an Islamic Jihad member living near Chicago; and Hatim Naji Fariz, who managed a medical clinic and lived with his family in Spring Hill.
The remaining four named in the indictment live abroad. U.S. officials are moving to have them arrested, too.
They include Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, Islamic Jihad's general secretary and once an Al-Arian colleague; Abd Al Aziz Awda, once the Islamic Jihad's spiritual leader; alleged Islamic Jihad co-founder Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Al-Khatib, allegedly Islamic Jihad's treasurer.
All eight face charges of plotting to commit racketeering, extortion and money laundering, and materially supporting terrorism and murder outside the United States.
The men could face life in prison if convicted, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Washington.
``We make no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance, manage or supervise terrorist organizations,'' Ashcroft said. As he spoke, federal agents raided six locations in the case, including Al-Arian's mosque near USF.
Inquiries About Chemical
Al-Arian was led past a crowd of reporters and news photographers when he arrived at the FBI office downtown about an hour after his arrest.
``It's all about politics,'' he said of the charges against him. The indictment suggests otherwise.
Communications, money, even the wills of suicide bombers were routed through the Islamic Jihad's offices in Tampa, the indictment says.
It also accuses Al-Arian of sending faxes to a Saudi company in 1996 inquiring about buying 50-kilogram packages or urea, a chemical used to make explosives. And it accuses him of trying to recruit someone into the Islamic Jihad as early as 1988.
That happened at a conference in St. Louis, the indictment says. It was the first put together by an organization Al- Arian founded called the Islamic Committee for Palestine.
The committee was supposed to have been a charity supporting widows and orphans in the occupied territories.
That was a front, the indictment says.
In addition, Al-Arian created the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a think tank supposedly devoted to Islamic thought and politics.
It was a front, too, the indictment says.
Home Raided In '95
Al-Arian and his colleagues used USF, the indictment says, ``as an institution where some of their members could receive cover as teachers or students.''
``Additionally, USF was utilized by PIJ as the instrumentality through which the co- conspirators could bring other PIJ members and associates into the United States under the guise of academic conferences and meetings,'' the indictment adds.
Al-Arian allegedly assumed a lower profile in the organization in 1995 after Shallah left Tampa and emerged six months later in Syria as Islamic Jihad's commander.
Three weeks afterward, federal agents raided Al-Arian's home and offices.
That surely put Al-Arian on notice he was being watched closely. But he continued to advise the Islamic Jihad, even editing its charter in 2000, the indictment says. And he relied on Hammoudeh, Ballut and Fariz for fundraising and money transfers overseas.
Al-Arian and the others spoke and wrote often in code, the indictment says. It cites a number of telephone and other communication intercepts by intelligence agents.
Evidence gleaned from intelligence surveillance was considered off limits to prosecutors until recently, when a secret review court ruled that it was fair game even when criminal activity surfaces.
Patriot Act Provided Tools
That ruling has not been challenged in federal criminal courts. If defense attorneys can challenge use of the intercepts, much of the government's case could be jeopardized, said Rita Katz, director of the Washington-based SITE Institute, which researches terrorist movements.
Ashcroft has expanded the use of secret surveillance in cases such as this one. The Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has made that easier.
``If it weren't for the Patriot Act, he would not be here,'' Nahla Al-Arian said before her husband's initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Mark Pizzo Thursday afternoon.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter E. Furr III, who said a trial may take as long as a year, asked that Al-Arian, Ballut and Fariz be held without bail.
Al-Arian's attorney, Nicholas Matassini, asked for time to respond.
``I've received a copy of this work of fiction called an indictment and have not had able to get anywhere near through it,'' Matassini told Pizzo.
Pizzo scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
Fariz was granted a court- appointed lawyer.
Little is known about Fariz. He does not appear in previously released documents. He apparently moved to Spring Hill from the Chicago area, where he worked with the Chicago Islamic Center, founded by Ballut.
`Political Prisoner'
Al-Arian ``loves this country,'' Matassini said later.
``He believes, in America, people have a right to have political views'' that differ from the government. ``He's a political prisoner right now as we speak.''
Al-Arian is on a hunger strike to protest his situation, Matassini said. He fasts frequently as a religious practice and has been doing so more often during the past year, friends say.
``He does it more than what is required by Islamic practice,'' said the Rev. Warren Clark, pastor of the First United Church of Tampa and a member with Al-Arian of an activist group called HOPE.
Overseas, Shallah - Islamic Jihad's leader and Al-Arian's former colleague at the World and Islam Studies Enterprise - denied Thursday that Al-Arian has a role in Islamic Jihad.
``These are fabrications woven by the Zionist lobby to serve Israel's interest in fighting the Arabs,'' Shallah told Al- Jazeera, a Qatar-based cable TV news channel.
The indictment also sheds new light on the government's long fight to deport his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar.
It ended with Al-Najjar's expulsion last year.
As the case played itself out, Al-Najjar was jailed for 3 1/2 years on secret evidence as a national security threat.
At one point in court, government attorneys offered records showing wire transfers between Al-Najjar and Al-Khatib, one of the men indicted Thursday who lives abroad.
They never explained why the transfers were important.
Al-Najjar said at the time that he was just holding the money for Al-Khatib, who also is a brother-in-law, and that he later returned it.
The indictment says Al-Khatib is Islamic Jihad's treasurer.
The indictment also recounts a Sept. 24, 2002, conversation Al-Najjar's wife, Fedaa, had with Fariz, of Spring Hill, in which she blamed her husband's ordeal on his Palestinian ethnicity.
``Fariz said that was one reason; however, the main reason was [Al-Najjar's] association with terrorist organizations,'' the indictment says, adding:
``Fariz said the government does not know the extent of [Al-Najjar's] association with these groups. [Fariz] explained that they will continue to claim other reasons for their treatment, mainly being Palestinians, Muslims.''
Information from reporters John W. Allman, Monica Scandlen, Elaine Silvestrini and Gil Klein was used in this report; researchers Angie Holan, Buddy Jaudon and Michael Messano contributed as well. Reporter Michael Fechter can be reached at (813) 259-7621.
This story can be found at: http://www.tampatribune.com/MGANMQSQFCD.html
Perhaps the best endorsement of the Patriot Act I have seen yet.
Can we fry this POS?
I say boil him in a vat of pig fat. Slowly. And toss his lawyer in there for having the exceedingly bad taste to defend him and lie for him (loves America indeed).
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