| Ratz. Double plus un-good. |
federal jury on Tuesday found a former Florida professor not guilty of funding a banned Islamist group in a verdict likely to be seen as a stiff blow to the U.S. government in its attempts to prosecute terror suspects.
The jury in Tampa, Florida, took 13 days to deliver its verdict against Sami al-Arian, who along with three co-defendants was accused of raising money for Palestinian group Islamic Jihad.
The panel, delivering verdicts six months to the day after the trial started, found al-Arian not guilty of conspiracy to murder, providing material support to a terrorist group and obstruction of justice.
The other men, Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatem Fariz and Ghassan Ballut, were also cleared of most of the charges against them.
The jury was deadlocked on several other charges and U.S. District Judge James Moody declared a mistrial on those counts.
Prosecutors will have to decide whether to retry the men on the undecided charges.
The four were arrested in February 2003 and accused of providing money and support to Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.
The U.S. government blames Islamic Jihad for killing more than 100 people in Israel, including three Americans.
When the defendants were arrested, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said al-Arian was Islamic Jihad's North American leader. The defendants denied the charges and said any money they sent to the group was for charitable activities.
The prosecutors' case during the five-month trial in Tampa was based mostly on thousands of hours of wiretapped telephone calls, intercepted e-mails and faxes and bank records gathered over a decade. |