TAMPA - Senate Democrats urged Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday to cut off payments to a school co-founded by a professor accused of being the North American leader of a worldwide terrorist group.
The school received $350,000 last year through a state program that pays private school tuition for some students.
A February grand jury indictment against Sami Al-Arian, the alleged leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and seven others says the school was used as a base of support for the organization.
The indictment said the purpose of the organization was "to assist its engagement in, and promotion of, violent attacks designed to thwart the Middle East Peace Process." It said the group is responsible for 100 murders in Israel and its territories.
Al-Arian, who denies any links to terrorism, co-founded the school and served as its director.
Al-Arian allegedly encouraged people who wanted to send money to Palestinians to write checks to their school, according to the federal indictment.
Last year, the 300-student Islamic Academy of Florida received more than 50 percent of its revenue from the state program, Florida PRIDE, which uses corporate donations to pay for poor students to attend private schools.
"The disclosures that more than $300,000 of this money went last year to a school suspected of terrorist ties raises the frightening specter that Florida's taxpayers may be unwittingly funding extremist organizations intent on the destruction of our nation and its allies," Senate Democratic Leader Ron Klein of Boca Raton and Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-West Palm Beach, wrote in their letter to Bush.
Denise Lasher, spokeswoman for Florida PRIDE, said officials conducted an independent audit of the school after the indictment was released and found no misuse of funds and no connection between the money and terrorist activity.
She said the school received more than $300,000 in federal grants for computers and its free and reduced-price school lunch program.
"It was unfortunate that there was someone at the school accused of doing something illegal, but that doesn't mean the school has done something illegal," she said Thursday.
