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MEG LAUGHLINThe prosecution is expected to rest its case against the former University of South Florida professor this week.
TAMPA - On a muggy day in early June, the trial of former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian began in a courthouse ringed with 4-foot security barricades, federal agents and local police.
The trial had been highly anticipated since Al-Arian's arrest more than two years ago, and his indictment with three others for conspiring to further the terrorist activity of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Israel.
Federal prosecutor Terry Furr, in his opening statement, described "a small group of intellectual elitists . . . dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, through the killing and maiming of its inhabitants."
The defendants were part of "the PIJ terror cycle," he said. "A murder occurs. They'll announce they did it . . . (then say) give us money so we can do it some more."
After almost five months, the prosecution is expected to rest this week, raising the question: Does the evidence support what Furr said?
The case is largely circumstantial, built upon bank records, statements made at rallies, wiretapped conversations and intercepted faxes. Notably:
TV Videos in 1990 and 1991 of Al-Arian speaking at U.S. fundraising conferences in favor of "armed struggle" against Israel.
Bank records from 1993 of money Al-Arian sent to the families of four PIJ members who killed three Israeli soldiers in 1992 and money sent to PIJ-related charities.
FBI wiretaps from 1994 of Al-Arian's phone conversations and faxes with PIJ leaders, which show his intimate working relationship with them.
A 1995 letter Al-Arian wrote to a Kuwaiti legislator after a suicide bombing in Israel in which he asked for contributions for the killers' poverty-stricken families so "operations such as these can continue."
Born in Kuwait of Palestinian heritage, Al-Arian was a computer engineering professor well-known for his Palestinian activism locally. Suspicion about his links to terrorists arose in 1994, after he was questioned in a TV documentary called Jihad in America.
That suspicion intensified in late 1995 after a man he hired to run a Tampa think tank left the country and became the new head of the PIJ.
When the U.S. Patriot Act and a court ruling cleared the way for greater sharing of information between intelligence agencies and law enforcement, he was arrested on a 53-count federal conspiracy indictment.
Explaining the indictment, Furr told jurors,"What you'll see repeatedly is fundraising events to try to get money for the family of some guy that's going to blow himself up and murder a bunch of people. . . . It's how they buy loyalty."
Contrary to what Furr said, there has been no evidence to show that Al-Arian or any of the defendants sent money to anyone about to commit a suicide bombing. Nor is there evidence that money raised by the defendants and earmarked for charity eventually went for killing. But there is repeated, undisputed evidence that defendants raised money for what defense attorneys call "the charitable arm of the PIJ."
How jurors view this aid is at the heart of the case. At issue: Does money Al-Arian sent to needy families of killers after the fact, and money sent to the charitable arm of the PIJ, mean he encouraged future terrorism?
Prosecutor Cherie Krigsman told the court that "money is fungible" and could finance terrorism, even though it appears to be for charity. And presiding U.S. District Court Judge James S. Moody told attorneys that defendants "could write on a check "for baby clothes' but it could be for anything."
But an expert in suicide terrorism, who is not part of this case, sees the money connection differently.
"It doesn't work the way people think," said Robert Pape, director of the well-respected Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, which studies what motivates suicide bombers, including those in the occupied territories of Israel.
"It's not that these (PIJ) charities fund the lethal activities. If prosecutors are trying to prove that, it just isn't there," says Pape.
"But there is an indirect link," he says.
A University of Chicago political science professor who wrote the 335-page book Dying to Win, the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Pape says extensive research shows that PIJ suicide operations in Israel "are very cheap - usually costing under $100," and don't require fundraising in the United States.
The killers drive an old car or ride a bike. The cost of explosives are nominal. Often, says Pape, they pay for their own transportation and materials, and aren't dependent on money from elsewhere.
Suicide killings are not motivated by money to the killers' families or the promise that their relatives will be cared for, Pape says, despite a misguided belief in the United States. The killings come out of "inspiration and spontaneity that is motivated by a strong sense of belonging to a community of oppressed and subjugated people" who need your sacrifice, he says.
And yet, the money to these families, as well as the money to PIJ social, cultural and charitable activities, does serve a deeper purpose, Pape says."It gives the PIJ a benevolent face in the community, which breeds a sense of duty to it that, in an indirect way, can contribute to suicide killing."
It is far more intricate than a simple payoff.
"The money really does go to schools and families, not to killing," says Pape. "It goes for a good purpose, but (the PIJ's) embedding in the community in this charitable way can also help motivate people to kill out of a sense of loyalty to the group and the community."
Which raises the question: Will this complicated, meandering connection between fundraising and killing convince jurors that Al-Arian and his co-defendants conspired to commit terrorism?
"The indirect connection fits in a sociological, academic framework, but doesn't lend itself to a legal framework," says Pape.
Former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber disagrees. Now a state legislator from Miami Beach, he previously helped prosecute numerous cases involving intelligence gathering and conspiracy.
"No, prosecutors can't show that $100 of the defendants' money went for shrapnel in a bomb. But they can show a mosaic of money and support which created an atmosphere that aided and advanced crime," says Gelber.
The charitable contributions raised by defendants were "not going to the Red Cross," he says. They went to a group with a military wing that killed people, making the charitable aid "a faux benevolent presence that pulled in suicide killers."
Summing up, Gelber says: "If the evidence is reliable that Al-Arian supported the community that created the atmosphere, then it is not unreasonable to say he was aiding and abetting terrorism." Prosecutors must prove Al-Arian "knew there would be violence and participated in the furtherance of it . . . with the specific intent to commit unlawful acts," according to federal Judge Moody.
The 1990 and 1991 videos, say prosecutors, show that Al-Arian knew there would be PIJ violence. In these videos, he is introduced and speaks at three conferences of the Islamic Committee for Palestine, a group he established.
At the 1990 ICP conference in St. Louis, Al-Arian told about 200 people that there must be "true armed jihad against the enemy in Israel." In Cleveland in 1991, a local imam introduced him as "the head of the Islamic Committee for Palestine . . . the active arm of the Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement in America."
At the 1991 Cleveland conference, Al-Arian told the audience: "Your brothers in Palestine are struggling with their beings, so let us struggle here with our money . . . We will not cede one meter or span to the enemies of God (the Israelis)."
At yet another ICP conference in 1991 in Chicago, where money was raised, Al-Arian concluded: "Advance, advance until Jerusalem! Victory is to Islam!"
When the videos were played in July, Moody told jurors Al-Arian had a legal right to say whatever he wanted, but the videos were being played to show possible knowledge of violence. For that knowledge to matter, though, the judge said prosecutors must show that Al-Arian acted in furtherance of it.
The closest prosecutors come to connecting Al-Arian to PIJ violence, despite a round-robin of hundreds of thousands of dollars being transferred in and out of his accounts between 1990 and 1994, is bank records from June 1993 showing he sent about $8,000 - $2,000 each - to the families of four PIJ killers imprisoned for murdering three Israeli soldiers a year and a half before. The four men were arrested in 1992, and Al-Arian sent money in 1993.
Again, former prosecutor Gelber: "The key here is bad intent. Can prosecutors show that Al-Arian believed that sending money to these families advanced terrorist activity?"
Al-Arian's own thoughts on the subject appear in a February 1995 letter he wrote to a Kuwaiti legislator.
FBI agents seized the letter from Al-Arian's home. In it, he referred to a double suicide bombing at Beit Lid, Israel, about two weeks before, and wrote: "These (suicide bombers) were martyred while owing debt and having big families . . . I call upon you to try to extend true support of the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue."
The timing is significant. Al-Arian wrote the letter several weeks after a January 1995 U.S. executive order declaring it a crime to "provide financial, material or technological support for . . . or in support of PIJ acts of violence." Prosecutors say the letter shows his intent to get money for terrorism after that order was in place.
Defense attorneys point to an FBI report that says the recipient never received the letter. It remained in Al-Arian's house, and thus it shows nothing, they say. "A crime of thought is not a crime," says Bill Moffitt, Al-Arian's attorney.
Gelber disagrees: "It doesn't have to be sent to show intent," he says.
Also of importance to the prosecution's case are 1994 excerpts of Al-Arian's phone conversations and faxes, secretly recorded by the FBI. In dozens of communications, Al-Arian talked with PIJ leaders about revamping PIJ spending on nonviolent activities.
A January 1994 fax Al-Arian sent to PIJ leaders proposes founding "a front inside (the occupied territories) that has a religious and social orientation . . . that would operate separately from other movement elements." He discussed this in faxes to Faithi Shikaki, the leader of the PIJ at the time, and signed several letters "The Secretary."
Throughout 1994, Al-Arian received dozens of faxed reports with the PIJ logo on them. Often, they announced suicide bombings.
Prosecutors say his dozens and dozens of phone conversations and faxes in 1994 show his knowledge of PIJ violence and closeness to the leadership.
The evidence highlighted here is among the strongest in the mosaic, and appears to show that prosecutors have taken two of the three steps necessary for conviction - showing knowledge of violence and intent. But what about the third step - that he acted to further violence? Where is the actual participation?
For this, prosecutors will probably point to the money he sent to the four families of the killers in 1993, as well as other money sent to PIJ-related charities. And this raises the question at the heart of the case: Can charitable donations, which indirectly contribute to the kind of community loyalty that inspires suicide killers, be viewed as "participating in the furtherance of terrorism?"
Robert Pape: "The charities didn't commit the acts, nor did the families. What these Islamic Jihad charities did, it can be argued, has the best interest of the people at heart. Prosecutors are going down a difficult road if they try to convince jurors that money sent to these charities is a clear link to terrorism."
Gelber agrees with Pape that it is a difficult road, but not an "unreasonable" one. Gelber concludes: "The jury will have to decide if subtle means less criminal."
Staff writer Meg Laughlin can be reached at 813 226-3365 or mlaughlin@sptimes.com