Prosecutors say Al-Arian reacted with pride after attack
They cite the former USF professor's response to news of a 1994 suicide bombing in Gaza as evidence of what he knew.
By MEG LAUGHLIN
Published August 5, 2005
TAMPA - Sami Al-Arian responded with self-described "pride" when he learned of a terrorist attack in 1994 by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded several people, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
On Nov. 12, 1994, Al-Arian received a fax from the PIJ office in Damascus, Syria, announcing a suicide bombing the day before, prosecutors said.
The PIJ communique said that a 21-year-old university student rode his bike to an Israeli checkpoint at the Netzarim junction in Gaza and detonated explosives he had packed in his vest, killing himself and others.
"The attack resulted in the death of three Zionist officers and the affliction of fifteen others with critical major and minor injuries," said the announcement.
Al-Arian sent a congratulatory fax back to PIJ headquarters.
"Pride and glory overwhelmed us," he wrote. "May God bless your efforts and accept our martyrs."
Al-Arian's knowledge of terrorist activities in Israel and his attitude toward them are two elements prosecutors hope to show in his federal conspiracy trial. On Thursday, they cited his written response as evidence of what he knew.
Another PIJ killing occurred two months before, but Al-Arian, hard at work on a proposal to merge PIJ and Hamas, didn't talk or write about it - at least not in conversations or faxes secretly recorded by the FBI in Tampa.
Instead, the University of South Florida professor was focused on how to convince the PIJ leadership to back his plan for a merger with Hamas, according to FBI recordings.
In his unification proposal, which he faxed to PIJ headquarters in Syria, he suggested "an Islamic political and social party ... to oppose the plan of settlement ... and normalization and dealings with the enemy."
"The party's work will be political, social, and educational and totally removed from any military-oriented action," he wrote in his unification plan.
But after receiving several months of PIJ communiques complaining about searches and arrrests of Palestinians by Palestinian Authority police, as well as Israeli police, Al-Arian applauded the Nov. 12 PIJ announcement of the suicide attack. He concluded his faxed response with a warning to PIJ leaders: "Please be cautious and on the alert."
Al-Arian and co-defendants Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatem Fariz and Ghassan Ballut are accused of using Islamic charities as fronts in a conspiracy to finance terrorist attacks by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for killing more than 100 people in Israel and the occupied territories.
U.S. District Judge James S. Moody has repeatedly said that the opinions or reactions of any of the defendants to terrorist activities in the occupied territories are not, by themselves, illegal. But if prosecutors show that defendants did more than react - that they actually conspired to raise money for terrorist acts, then knowledge and verbal support of the acts can be considered part of the conspiracy.
For the past two weeks, FBI agent Kerry Myers has been on the witness stand explaining FBI wiretaps of defendants' communications to jurors. He will continue testifying for about two more weeks. Then, defense attorneys will cross-examine him on his interpretation and overview of more than seven years of FBI wiretaps.
Late Thursday, Myers told jurors about a double suicide bombing on Jan. 22, 1995, that killed 22 Israeli soldiers in Beit Lid, Israel.
In a magazine interview obtained by an FBI wiretap as it was faxed to the headquarters of World and Islam Studies Enterprise, an Islamic think tank founded by Al-Arian, then-PIJ leader Fathi Shikaki said that the Beit Lid killings were "the most important operation of the Islamic Jihad Movement."
Apparently, President Bill Clinton agreed, because two days later he issued an executive order officially declaring the PIJ, Hamas and Fathi Shikaki as "specially designated terrorist ... entities" for committing "acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of disrupting the Middle East peace process."
On Jan. 24, 1995, with this order, it became illegal for anyone in the United States "to assist in, sponsor, or provide financial, material, or technological support for, or services in support of, such acts of violence."
Which raises the question at the crux of this case: Did Al-Arian and the three co-defendants provide financial, material, technological support or services that enabled PIJ violence?
Two weeks after the executive order was issued, FBI agents recorded a phone conversation Al-Arian had with a friend. Al-Arian told him about "what Clinton did last week."
"He put many organizations on the black list," said Al-Arian. "My brother, it is a war, a war waged by the Zionists. They are controlling the White House and State Department; they are in control in the era of the Democrats."
Seven years later, a Republican administration would pass the Patriot Act which allowed federal prosecutors to use Al-Arian's words as evidence in a criminal proceeding against him.
Times researcher Catherine Wos contributed to this report.
