Free Republic

A terrorism case that went awry By Maureen O'HaganSeattle Times staff reporter, Monday, November 22, 2004 Sami al-Hussayen, a Saudi Arabian, faced terrorism charges in Idaho. John Ashcroft called Sami al-Hussayen part of "a terrorist threat to Americans that is fanatical, and it is fierce." Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said al-Hussayen is proof that terrorists are hiding in the heartland. Yet al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho, didn't exactly fit the profile when he was arrested in February 2003 and likened in court documents to Osama bin Laden. Instead, al-Hussayen's alleged crimes occurred at his...

The Saudi Hate Machine By Erick Stakelbeck InTheNationalInterest.com | December 19, 2003 In October, at a counter-terrorism conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute in London, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Great Britain, announced that Saudi security forces had recently “re-educated” 3,500 radical preachers. While Al-Faisal’s claim was impressive, he failed to address the specifics of this apparently sweeping program, leaving one to wonder whether the Kingdom’s two most notorious clerics, Safar Al-Hawali and Salman Al-‘Auda, were targeted. Known as the “Awakening Sheikhs” due to their powerful influence on young Arab Muslims, Al-Hawali and Al-‘Auda have spent...

<p>SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- A former University of Idaho football player has been arrested as a material witness in an investigation of Islamic charities with possible links to terrorism, FBI agents said Tuesday.</p> <p>Abdullah Al-Kidd, 30, was arrested Sunday at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., according to two FBI agents who separately spoke on condition of anonymity. He was carrying a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia, court documents show.</p>

BELLEVUE -- A former University of Idaho football player said he is not tied to terrorists and is shocked at the way he's been treated by federal agents the past two weeks. Abdullah Al-Kidd was arrested as he prepared to board a jetliner at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. He is jailed in Boise, Idaho, as a material witness in an investigation of an alleged terrorist group with links to the university. "Basically, don't believe the hype," Al-Kidd told the King County Journal during a jailhouse interview on Sunday night. "I'm not a terrorist. I'm as American as apple...

Judge rules Saudi student could be deported 04/25/2003 Associated Press BOISE - An immigration judge in Boise decided today that University of Idaho graduate student Sami Omar Al-Hussayen could be deported. But the Saudi Arabian national allegedly linked to Islamic radicals will remain in the Canyon County Jail as his case moves along two legal tracks. Immigration Court Judge Anna Ho decided Al-Hussayen was "removable," meaning he could be deported for violating the terms of his student visa into the United States by being paid for creating Internet pages for groups including the Islamic Assembly of North America. But...