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Terror Indictments
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 22, 2003
TAMPA -- By any measure, Sami Al-Arian's attorneys face a monumental task.
The 121-page federal indictment released Thursday gives a sweeping and highly detailed account of Al-Arian's alleged activities as an organizer of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
A defense of the University of South Florida professor will be expensive, logistically complex and played out in largely uncharted legal terrain.
The government's case rests largely on a series of intercepted telephone calls and faxes, sent and received by Al-Arian, in which he allegedly conducts the business of terrorism with confederates overseas.
Thanks to the Patriot Act of 2001, the federal government now is allowed to use evidence gathered by the nation's intelligence agencies in criminal prosecutions.
Defense lawyers likely will fight to suppress the intercepted communications, prompting a battle about the constitutionality of the Patriot Act.
"The most important thing is to get ahold of wiretaps and then determine what grounds there are to contest them," said Tampa lawyer Bill Jung, a former federal prosecutor who described it as "a front-edge case."
Other likely chores for the defense: hiring an Arabic translator to listen to the surveillance tapes. Hiring investigators. Digging up witnesses in the Middle East. Getting the Israeli government's permission to conduct interviews on their soil.
"It's real tough for one lawyer to handle these issues," said George Tragos, a Tampa defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. "If I were to guess, I don't know how you could defend this case for less than a million dollars."
Legal experts say the government likely will try to withhold some evidence against Al-Arian for national security reasons, compounding the difficulties for Al-Arian's attorneys.
If the government continued to withhold evidence, said Pinellas defense attorney Maura Kiefer, "I would move to compel the government to either produce the information or drop the charges."
As strong as an indictment might sound at the beginning of a case, she said, it is only the government's outline.
Mike Schwartzberg, a St. Petersburg defense attorney, said Al-Arian's legal team must try to stop the bleeding in the court of public opinion.
The legal work alone is daunting without having to worry about finding an unbiased jury, he said. The task is made harder when a defendant such as Al-Arian has been outspoken about U.S. Middle East policy in a post-Sept. 11 world.
"How do you give a man accused of terrorism remotely a fair trial in the United States?" he asked. "It's one thing to represent a man who's committed a murder, but that's not based on a hatred against a whole nation or a whole way of life."
One plus for Al-Arian is that federal judges are appointed for life and won't be as susceptible to political pressures as a state judge might be, Schwartzberg said.
-- Christopher Goffard can be reached at 813-226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com .