USF trustees to hear report on Al-Arian

The meeting will review an attorney's "assessment of the legal issues'' surrounding the controversial suspended professor.

By BARRY KLEIN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 19, 2001

TAMPA -- A private attorney hired by the University of South Florida to assess possible action against suspended professor Sami Al-Arian will brief USF's board of trustees in an emergency meeting this morning.

USF president Judy Genshaft reviewed a draft of the report Tuesday, which she discussed with board chairman Dick Beard. He decided to call the emergency meeting.

USF spokesman Michael Reich said the report by Tampa attorney Thomas Gonzalez includes "an assessment of the legal issues regarding Al-Arian's future with USF." It also looks at whether his presence on campus constitutes a security risk.

Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor once linked to suspected terrorists, has been banned from USF since late September.

He said he was not notified of the meeting and has no idea what it is about.

"No one told me anything so I can't comment," said Al-Arian, who was put on paid leave by Genshaft after his appearance on the Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor prompted angry phone calls to USF and at least a dozen threats of violence.

He said he won't attend the meeting since he is not allowed on USF property.

Genshaft would have to approve any further action against Al-Arian, who is a tenured professor being paid $66,175. She is expected to address the board at the meeting, as is Gonzalez.

Al-Arian has been a controversial figure at USF since he helped found the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, an Islamic think tank that was based at USF until 1995. It was closed after it was raided by the FBI.

While he has never been detained or charged with a crime, Al-Arian was the focus of a federal investigation in the mid-1990s, when agents suspected his think tank was operating as a front for Middle Eastern terrorists.

A former head of the organization, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, left it in 1995. He resurfaced soon after as the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization.

But Al-Arian was in the news before that. In the late 1980s, he spoke in support of young Palestinians who rose up against Israeli occupation.

Al-Arian spent two years on paid leave from USF while the FBI investigated allegations against WISE. His current troubles with USF began on Sept. 26, when he appeared on O'Reilly's show.

O'Reilly grilled Al-Arian about Shallah and asked about his relationship with Tarik Hamid, a former Tampa man who helped ABC News gain an interview with Osama bin Laden three years ago.

O'Reilly also asked about Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar of Tampa, who was jailed for three years on secret evidence alleging ties to terrorists. Al-Najjar was freed last year when a judge ruled the evidence was not sufficient to continue holding him. But he was arrested again in November for overstaying his visa. He is being held in maximum security at a federal prison.

In a speech 10 days ago to the Tampa Bay branch of Amnesty International, Al-Arian accused the U.S. government of helping terrorists by rounding up Arab-Americans without evidence.

"By persecuting Arab-Americans and Muslims, those who perpetrated the attacks have won," he said.

He also referred to Attorney General John Ashcroft as "J. Edgar Ashcroft."

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