Al-Najjar hearing focuses on relative

But the brother-in-law of the man suspected of being a national threat answers only three of 102 questions.

By SUSAN ASCHOFF

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 30, 2000

BRADENTON -- The federal government Tuesday finally put on the witness stand the man many believe has been the focus of its five-year investigation of Tampa ties to Middle East terrorists.

Not Mazen Al-Najjar, jailed three years on secret evidence in the case, and in court again this week to seek his release on bail.

The government called Sami Al-Arian, Al-Najjar's brother-in-law and a tenured USF professor.

Al-Arian has always believed he, not Al-Najjar, is the focus of the government's digging. He founded a political think tank in the late 1980s. The government says it was a front for Middle East terrorists.

On Tuesday, the attorneys asked Al-Arian 102 questions.

He answered only three.

On the advice of his attorney, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to reply. The investigation is ongoing, and he doesn't want to help the government with a case he says is purely political.

Al-Arian's testimony came on the first day of a hearing into whether his brother-in-law, Al-Najjar, can be released on bail.

FBI and INS agents say Al-Arian and Al-Najjar supported the Palestinian Islamic Jihad philosophically and financially through the think tank, known as WISE, and another Tampa-based organization called the Islamic Concern Project. The Damascus-based Jihad is on the State Department's list of designated terrorist organizations.

"Isn't it true you support freedom for Islam through violence?" asked Daniel Vara, Immigration and Naturalization Service attorney, in one of the first questions he put to Al-Arian.

"Have you ever engaged in fundraising for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad?" he asked.

"Isn't it true at a conference that you made the statement, "Death to Israel'?"

Al-Arian answered only questions about whether he supports the U.S. Constitution and if he would bear arms -- both requirements of legal residents, such as himself, when they apply to become U.S. citizens. In response to another question, he said he did not attend college in Egypt.

In the interrogation of Al-Arian, and in almost a dozen enlarged photographs of other people at conferences of the Islamic Concern Project, the government attempted to prove that Al-Najjar is dangerous because of whom he knows.

The photographs were pulled from videotapes seized in searches of Al-Arian's home and offices in November 1995. The tapes were given or sold to colleges, professors and others interested in Middle East politics.

Vara asked INS agent William West to identify people in the photographs. They included Sheik Abdul Aziz Odeh, a founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, current head of the group and a former employee at the Tampa think tank.

Al-Najjar's attorneys objected to West's testimony as hearsay. They said he should not talk about what's on the 11 tapes, which are largely in Arabic. Instead, they said, the government should simply submit the tapes as evidence, and provide translations.

Debate over the tapes is likely to surface again during the weeklong hearing.

For all the legal maneuvering, virtually all of Tuesday's testimony was about Sami Al-Arian, not Al-Najjar.

"We object to the questioning," said attorney David Cole, a Georgetown University professor leading a national team of attorneys representing Al-Najjar.

"Apparently the government doesn't think (Al-Arian) is a threat to national security because he's sitting here," said Cole. So how does it expect to show Al-Najjar -- who is much less politically active -- should remain in jail? he asked.

The 43-year-old Palestinian has been detained since May 1997 on secret evidence. He is appealing his deportation for overstaying a student visa.

The hearing before immigration judge R. Kevin McHugh is expected to take a week.

McHugh denied Al-Najjar bail in May 1997 after finding him to be a threat. But a federal judge in May ordered a rehearing, saying Al-Najjar's right to due process had been violated because the government did not give him enough of its evidence to defend himself.

USF spokesman Harry Battson said Tuesday night that the college would have no comment on the hearing.

Al-Arian was suspended with pay for two years when the investigation into the think tank and its connection to USF became public in 1995. He has returned to his computer engineering classes.

USF's own investigation into the allegations in 1996 found only glitches in some employee paperwork.

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