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Al-Arian's wife, 2 children will move to Egypt

By MEG LAUGHLIN
Published June 21, 2007

Laila Al-Arian (left) and her mother Nahla Al-Arian leave the Federal Courthouse in Tampa after Dr. Sami Al-Arian received the maximum sentence for his role in a terrorism conpiracy.
	[Times photo: Ken Helle]

Nahla Al-Arian, wife of Sami Al-Arian, plans to move to Egypt in July with her two youngest children.

Nahla and the couple's five children -- three of them adults who will remain in the United States -- will spend two weeks visiting Al-Arian in a Virginia jail, where he is being held on federal contempt charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Then, Nahla and the two youngest children, Lama, 13, and Ali, 16, will leave the country in mid July.

"I love Egypt, but America is my home," said Nahla, who has family in Egypt. "I cry every time I think about how much I'll miss my friends."

"But living here is unsettling for Ali and Lama," she said. "They need to put some distance between themselves and the trauma and pain of the past few years."

In February 2003, Sami Al-Arian, who was a University of South Florida computer engineering professor, was arrested in Tampa and charged with aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

In late 2005, after a six-month trial, a jury acquitted him on eight charges and deadlocked on nine others. In May 2006, Al-Arian accepted a plea deal for aiding the terrorist group in nonviolent ways.

He was due to be released from prison and deported in mid April 2007, but the contempt charges in the Eastern District of Virginia prolonged his jail time.

Wednesday, federal Judge Gerald Lee said he would review the contempt charges against Al-Arian in October to decide if Al-Arian should be released and deported or held in jail.

"This is good," said Nahla Al-Arian. "It gives us hope that we may be together as a family before another year passes."

Times staff writer Carrie Weimar contributed to this report.

[Last modified June 20, 2007, 23:44:47]