Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Home Front: WoT

Robert Spencer: Indiana University Hosts Deported Jihad Mastermind as Featured Speaker, History of Moslem Art Prof Fired for Showing Students Moslem Art

2023-01-03

[PJMedia] In yet another sign of the thoroughgoing corruption of American academia, Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and its Moslem Philanthropy Initiative recently co-sponsored a conference with a man who admitted to being a key member of a jihad terror group and was accordingly deported from the United States. According to an Investigative Project on Terrorism report Tuesday, and to his great credit (although he was acting after a barrage of complaints), Amir Pasic, dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, apologized for the university’s role in showcasing this terror leader, Sami al-Arian. Pasic did explain, however, that the university had hosted al-Arian because he had done such great work combating "Islamophobia

...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do...
." As "Islamophobia" is a manipulative propaganda term designed to inhibit criticism of jihad violence and Sharia oppression, this is hardly reassuring.

Sami al-Arian pleaded guilty back in 2006 to a charge of "conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds to or for the benefit of Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
, a Specially Designated Terrorist" organization. He was then deported from the United States, but he remains a darling of American academia. Back in 2021, according to JNS, al-Arian organized a conference that was co-sponsored by the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School for International Studies. Conference speakers denounced Israel as the "apartheid Jewish Zionist colonial state" and called for its eradication. The program, JNS reported, was "replete with Paleostinian propaganda, revisionist history, and blatant anti-Semitism and anti-Israel vitriol."

At that conference, Paleostinian Islamic Jihad’s al-Arian denounced Israel in the hysterically false terms that are now becoming familiar in America thanks to the likes of Reps. Ilhan Omar
...Somali-American Dem representative from Minnesota. She was apparently married to her brother and may be her own grandmaw on her mother's side...
(D-Mogadishu) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah): "There is no doubt we are talking about a settler, colonialist movement. What we see here today is an attempt to depopulate the indigenous people, and bring in as many Jews from around the world and try to bring a system that is properly being identified now as apartheid. There is no doubt about this."

Israel, al-Arian thundered, was a "racist movement," a "Zionist onslaught" that was directed toward replacing the "indigenous people." The solution? Israel’s total destruction: "the essence of the struggle should be to dismantle this structure."

Neither Indiana University nor the University of Denver can plausibly claim that they didn’t know what they were getting into. al-Arian has been quite clear about his views for decades. Back in 1991, during a speech in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
, al-Arian screamed: "The Koran is our constitution. Jihad is our path ... Victory to Islam... Death to Israel... Revolution... revolution till the victory."

Showing he hadn’t changed, in mid-December 2020, al-Arian spoke via Zoom at the Fourth International Conference on the Moslem Ummah. There al-Arian also called for "defeating and dismantling the Zionist project," adding: "We cannot pursue an ummah project without actually attaining our real independence. We cannot attain our real independence without dealing with the problem of Israel....As long as Israel exists, the ummah will stay weak and fragmented, and disunited and divided and dependent and under control."

Numerous American academics and other Leftists have counted al-Arian as a friend for years and were anxious to portray him as a victim of "Islamophobia." Before al-Arian pleaded guilty, he was dismissed from his post at the University of South Florida, whereupon Georgetown professor John Esposito claimed that al-Arian was merely falling victim to "anti-Arab and anti-Moslem bigotry."

Al-Arian himself pushed all the right buttons as well, declaring: "I’m a minority. I’m an Arab, I’m Paleostinian. I’m a Moslem. That’s not a popular thing to be these days. Do I have rights, or don’t I have rights?" In March 2002, Nicholas Kristof went to bat for the professor in the New York Times

... which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
: "The point is not whether one agrees with Professor al-Arian, a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries) — but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang ’God Bless America.’ No, the larger point is that a university, even a country, becomes sterile when people are too intimidated to say things out of the mainstream."

Re-painting History: University Fires Professor for Sharing Image of Muhammed in Islamic Arts Class

[PJMedia] Try to figure this one out: A professor was fired for Islamophobia

...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do...
after he shared a Moslem image of Islam’s most important religious figure in a class on Islamic art. If that doesn’t make sense to you, a Minnesota university would like to reeducate you.

In the earlier days of Islam, depictions of humans, including the Prophet Muhammed, were not taboo. Later, Islam turned iconoclastic and images of Muhammed — particularly his face — were condemned. This would not seem to have any application to a professor teaching American students about Islam and using a medieval image of the Moslem prophet to do so. But St. Paul, Minnesota’s Hamline University fired its Islamic arts instructor for showing his students an image of Mohammed from pre-iconoclast times, according to both The Siasat Daily and Jihad Watch.

For daring to show Islamic art in his Islamic art class, the unnamed instructor was reportedly accused by Hamline administrators of being "hateful, intolerant and Islamophobic" and hurting "the feeling of the Moslems" because of the ban on representations of Muhammed within modern Islam.

When I took a college class on Islamic art, my instructor showed us more than one depiction of Muhammed. To leave them out would be to erase an entire era of Islamic art — and not being Moslems, we were not required to rewrite (or re-paint) history. But Hamline’s student newspaper The Oracle called out the university’s instructor in a November issue, Siasat said, reporting the episode under "incidents of hate and discrimination." The university’s "associate vice president of inclusive excellence" — whatever that means — called sharing the image in class "undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic."

Siasat explained, "The artwork that landed the instructor into trouble depicts Prophet Muhammad receiving his first Koranic revelation. It is alleged that the painting of Prophet Muhammad is usually part of the Islamic art history classes in many universities across the world." I can testify to that from my own experience.

I guess Hamline, a private liberal arts institution founded in 1824, is more interested in woke pandering to authoritarian Sharia law than in educating their students.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Qassem Soleimani provided Gaza with ‘all classic weapons and long-range missiles’: PIJ leader

2021-01-03

[AlMasdar] The Secretary-General of the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
, Ziyad al-Nakhalah,

...also spelt Ziad al-Nakhala, in 2018 he succeeded Ramadan Abdullah Shallah (also in the Rantburg archives as Ramadan Shallah, Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, and Abu Abdullah) following that gentleman's stroke. Mr. Shallah was a PhD economist who was on the FBI most wanted list until he died in 2020, possibly in Florida. Back in 2003 Mr. Shallah was indicted in absentia of running a PIJ jihadi cell in Florida connected to PIJ Majlis Shura (governing council) secretary and U of S. Florida computer engineering professor Sami al Arian...

said on Friday, in an interview carried by RT Arabic, that Major General Qassem Soleimani

, who was assassinated in Baghdad, had provided Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
with "all classic weapons and long-range missiles."

He explained that Soleimani sent 10 ships loaded with weapons to Gaza,

...we seem to have missed that report, unless by ships he means rowboats ...

in addition to transferring missile technology to the PIJ and Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, fighters in Gaza after they were trained on it in Iran
Iran

...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
until it achieved self-sufficiency, as the two movements now have their experts. They themselves are now training Paleostinian engineers and technicians locally, Nakhalah said.

Nakhalah asserted that the accumulation of Paleostinian experience in this field has reached the point of innovation, as "our fighters in Gaza and the manufacturing units make progress in the arms industry every day."

During his visit to the Iranian capital, on Friday, in a ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the liquidation of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, Nakhalah reiterated his assertion that "Qassem Soleimani sent us missiles that struck the capital of the Zionist entity, and these missiles are still doing their work" and that this Iranian leader was present. On all the battlefronts and in the Paleostine front in particular."

He explained, "Qassem Soleimani was assassinated because he was an obstacle to the United States and Israel in their efforts to reform the region."

Commenting on the recent Paleostinian military maneuvers in Gaza, Nakhalah told al-Mayadeen TV that it was "conducted with live weapons" from beginning to end, and that it was a message to Tel Aviv, despite its attempt to minimize it to reassure the Israelis, explaining that "long-range missiles have been tested. Its range exceeded approximately 100 km in the maneuver."

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

PIJ leader: Gaza terror groups have military presence in West Bank

2020-09-17

[Jerusalem Post] The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, Ziyad Al-Nakhalah,

...also spelt Ziad al-Nakhala, he was successor as of 2018 to Ramadan Abdullah Shallah (also in the Rantburg archives as Ramadan Shallah and Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah) following that gentleman's stroke. Mr. Shallah was a PhD economist who was on the FBI most wanted list until he died ~~possibly in Florida~~ in Lebanon in June. Back in 2003 he was indicted in absentia of running a PIJ jihadi cell in Florida connected to Sami al Arian...

stated that Palestinian terror groups have military presence in the West Bank in an interview with Al-Mayadeen on Wednesday, warning that there are "no redlines" if war breaks out with Israel.

The IDF internet division has no doubt long since traced the connections to his cell phone and laptop...

Referring to a recent decision to establish a joint leadership of the Palestinian terrorist organizations, the PIJ leader stated that "important changes" will take place in the Palestinian territories, "especially in the West Bank." Nakhalah added that military structures which belong to the terrorist groups are present there.

"Soon we will develop new equations that may reach joint military action," said Nakhalah, stressing that there is "no binding truce" for the terrorist groups in Gaza and that they are in a "continuous war and conflict at the borders of the Strip."

We knew that, but useful of him to admit it.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Abbas eulogizes jihad terrorist on FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List who once lived in Tampa

2020-06-13

[JihadWatch] Ramadan Shallah

...on the FBI’s Most Wanted list as Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah

was "a colleague at [convicted jihad terror leader] Sami al-Arian’s Paleostinian think tank in Tampa who later emerged as the head of the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
in the Middle East."

How did a man like that get into the United States in the first place? By taking advantage of the fact that no one would have dreamed of asking him about his religious views; to have done so would have been "Islamophobic."

"Paleostinian Leader Eulogizes Monster on FBI’s ’Most Wanted Terrorist’ List," United With Israel, June 7, 2020 (thanks to the Geller Report):

Paleostinian Authority (PA) President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas

...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
eulogized the leader of the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad terror group, who died on Saturday night two years after he was struck by a powerful stroke.

Abbas referred to Ramadan Abdullah Shallah as "a great national figure," TPS reported, in comments delivered to the arch-terrorist’s family.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Muslim Brotherhood Working to Influence Republican Party

2010-04-10

Republican Senate candidate in California Tom Campbell is the frontrunner in the nomination fight and his ties to radical Muslims, specifically Sami al-Arian, have become an issue, but the story is bigger. Campbell has surrounded himself with people tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, who recruited him for their political agenda in a campaign that ultimately reached the Bush White House.

In November 2001, a Brotherhood document called "The Project" from 1982 was found by Swiss police raiding the home of Youssef Nada, a Brotherhood leader thought to be financing terrorism. It detailed a sophisticated plan to incrementally bring Sharia Law to the world, including deep political influence operations in the democratic institutions of the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has been diligently following this plan ever since.

The story of the infiltration of the Republican Party should start with Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor now convicted of being a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and admitted Muslim Brotherhood member. In 1997, his brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, was held without bail based on classified evidence connecting him to terrorism after he appealed his deportation. Al-Arian began using his political connections to try to free his brother-in-law, arguing that his civil liberties were being violated. This effort ultimately failed, and al-Najjar was deported in 2002.

One of al-Arian's political allies was Suhail Khan, the Director of Policy and Press Secretary of Congressman Tom Campbell of California. Campbell introduced legislation to ban the use of secret evidence in immigration court, which would free al-Najjar. This was not merely a consequence of Campbell's legislation, it was the intent. Campbell wrote a letter defending the man and visited him in jail in May 2000.

Khan's father served as vice president of the Muslim Students Association and was in the leadership of the Islamic Society of North America, two Brotherhood-created groups. The mosque his father founded was later visited after he moved by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where he preached violent jihad. In 1983, his father founded the Muslim Community Association, which was used by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to fundraise twice, including one appearance by Ayman al-Zawahiri. His mother served on the board of the mosque and was also on the board of the California branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose founders are now known to be secret members of the Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee."

Lots more at the link, all of it chock full of useful details and connections.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Pandering to the Islamic Conference

2010-02-18

By Claudia Rosett

Controversy is swirling around President Barack Obama's choice of a young American Muslim lawyer, Rashad Hussain, to serve as his special envoy to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Behind this fracas looms the even larger question of whether the U.S. should be sending the OIC any special envoy at all.

The tussle over Hussain has so far come down mainly to a he-said/she-said dispute over an article published in 2004 by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. The reporter, Shereen Kandil, quoted Hussain as saying that Sami al-Arian--a man who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a terrorist group--was the victim of politically motivated persecutions." Somehow that quote later disappeared from the online article. Fox News reports that Kandil stands by her original account. A White House official, defending Hussain, told Fox this week that the quote came not from Hussain but from al-Arian's daughter.

There may be no way to prove who said what in 2004. But while we wait to learn more about Rashad Hussain, it's also worth taking a look at the outfit with which he will be engaging. The OIC is headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It is dedicated in its documents to spreading Islamic law, or sharia. Its Web site says it has the singular honor to galvanize the Ummah into a unified body"--and it defines the Ummah as all Muslims of the world.

This campaign has been reflected at the United Nations, where the OIC's 56 members plus the Palestinian observer form one of the biggest and most influential lobbying blocs in the UN's 192-member General Assembly. The OIC itself holds an observer seat as well, which gives it a prime spot for getting involved in UN debates and resolutions. This amounts to a bonanza for the OIC, which on the financial front hitches a ride effectively subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. While the U.S. alone pays 22% of the UN's $2.3 billion annual core budget and gets one vote on how the money is used, all the 57 OIC members put together pay less than 5% and get 56 votes. On top of that the U.S. contributes many billions more for such UN ventures as peacekeeping, food aid, refugee relief and so forth. The OIC doesn't come close.

But the OIC does have its passions. The OIC has been a big backer of a campaign at the UN for anti-blasphemy" rules that would effectively gag free speech and muffle any real debate about the nature and direction of Islam. The OIC is also one of the big reasons the UN has not been able to come up with a viable definition of terrorism. The point of disagreement is that the OIC, while condemning terrorism, has a record of then qualifying that by redefining terrorism to exclude the exercise of legitimate right of peoples to resist foreign occupation." The OIC has also backed some disturbing candidates for important UN posts. Recent examples include Libya's Ali Treki, now serving as the 2009-10 president of the UN General Assembly, as well as backing Sudan, Syria and Iran for important posts overseeing the UN's cultural organization, UNESCO.

Iran has at times played an interesting role in the OIC, such as its co-chairing of a July 2008 meeting of the UN and OIC in Geneva. At that meeting, which included plans for the UN to explore ways of spreading Islamic law, the OIC was represented by one of Iran's former ambassadors to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi. This is the same Salehi who was appointed last year by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as chief of Iran's nuclear program.

It's the kind of thing that lies behind the polished façade of the OIC. There's a strong case to be made that this organization should not be dignified by the attentions of any American special envoy. The post was created by President George Bush, who first appointed a special envoy to the OIC in 2008 and that may well have been a mistake from the start. If contact with the OIC is wanted, the U.S. Mission to the UN in New York already has easy access. And Obama already has a special envoy to Muslim communities.

But given that Obama is following Bush's lead and sending a special envoy to the OIC, it's a strange priority that one of Hussain's prime credentials listed by Obama is his total recall of the Koran. That would make more sense as a core credential for a special envoy from the OIC. The real question is whether Rashad Hussain will vigorously represent and defend the interests, values and constitution of the U.S. If not, far better to have no special envoy to the OIC at all.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Obama's New OIC Envoy Defended Activist Who Aided Terrorist Group

2010-02-15

Via Jihad Watch
President Obama's newly appointed envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference was quoted in 2004 as saying an American who aided a Palestinian terrorist group was the victim of politically motivated persecutions' who was being used to squash dissent.'

Rashad Hussain was quoted as telling a Muslim students' event in Chicago that if U.S. Muslims did not speak out against the injustices taking place in America, then everyone's rights would be in jeopardy.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) cited Hussain as making the remarks in connection with Sami al-Arian, a university professor and activist sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison (including time already spent in custody) after he had pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Sounds like Hussain will fit right in.

Link

Great White North

Two alleged Islamist radicals arrested in Windsor

2009-11-01

That was quick, Well done to all involved!

Police have arrested two Ontario men wanted by the FBI for their alleged involvement with a radical Islamic group in Michigan.

According to the RCMP, officers arrested Mohammad Al-Sahli, 33, and Yassir Ali Kahn, 30, at residences in Windsor early Saturday morning. It is unclear if the men were arrested in their own homes.

Might they have been arrested at the ~~weapons center~~ mosque?

The men were apprehended two days after Mujahid Carswell, 30, was also arrested in Windsor.

Al-Sahli and Kahn were the last of 11 men listed in an FBI criminal complaint that says the group's aim was to commit violent acts against the United States. The two men both face a single charge of conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

Also named in the complaint is Carswell's father, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, an imam at a Detroit mosque. Abdullah was killed in Dearborn, Mich., on Wednesday when he resisted arrest and fired his gun at federal agents. Authorities say Abdullah was the leader of Ummah, a black Muslim group that endorsed violence and hoped to establish a Sharia-law state within the United States.

And has thirty congregations around the country. But as the local FBI honcho kept insisting, this group is an outlier, abnormal, unrecognizable to pius Sunni Muslims in America... never mind that they were closely tied to mainline Muslim leadership councils, and even to erstwhile Florida professor Sami al-Arian.

edit: According to the Washington Times, there are forty to fifty mosques, not thirty. The Ummah is the third largest of the black Muslim varieties of Islam in the United States -- first is traditional Sunni, second is Nation of Islam. Interesting that Muslims choose to segregate themselves within a religion that is supposed to view all as equal in the eyes of Allah.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Contempt Charges Will Stand In al-Arian Case

2009-01-17

A federal judge in Alexandria ruled yesterday that she would not throw out contempt-of-court charges against former professor Sami al-Arian, who has refused to cooperate with a terrorism investigation, and set his case for trial on March 9.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said that Arian can use the defense that he was relying on the advice of his attorneys when he declined to testify before grand juries investigating whether Muslim groups in Herndon were financing terrorism in the Middle East. "We are very gratified by Judge Brinkema's rulings with regard to the trial," said Jonathan Turley, one of Arian's attorneys. "We look forward to putting Dr. al-Arian's case in front of the jury."

Arian, 50, declined to comment. In the courtroom was a crowd of Arian's supporters, including nearly two dozen people from Tampa, where Arian taught computer engineering at the University of South Florida before his first arrest in 2004.

Arian was charged then with raising money and otherwise assisting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group the U.S. government declared a terrorist organization in 1995. At trial in 2005, he was acquitted on eight of 17 counts, and the jury deadlocked on the other counts. Rather than face a retrial, Arian pleaded guilty in May 2006 to one count of conspiring to assist the terrorist group and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, most of which he had served while awaiting trial. In his plea agreement, Arian did not agree to cooperate with subsequent investigations, as most federal plea agreements require.

Within days of Arian's plea and sentencing, prosecutors in Alexandria subpoenaed him to testify in the investigation of a group of Herndon organizations suspected of funneling money to terror groups, although no one has been charged. Arian refused, both in 2006 and 2007, and was jailed for civil contempt of court for nearly all of 2007. "I refuse to testify," Arian told the grand jury in 2007, "based on my prior plea agreement with the government that I'm not required to testify and cooperate in this or any other investigation. I refuse, therefore, to make any further statements."

Last year, Alexandria prosecutors subpoenaed him for the third time and again offered him immunity from prosecution for his testimony. But the immunity order crafted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg contained additional language not usually found in such orders, saying that Arian could still be prosecuted for obstructing justice or for actions occurring after his testimony. Arian's attorneys protested, and Brinkema said in August, "I think it's real scary and not wise for a prosecutor to provide an order to the court that does not track the explicit language of the statute."

After Arian's third refusal to testify, prosecutors obtained indictments in June charging him with two counts of criminal contempt of court. Brinkema postponed the trial while Arian appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined to consider the case.

Turley sought to have Brinkema dismiss the case, but the judge said, "There is nothing in the record that would indicate that the U.S. attorney in this district is barred, by the plea agreement in Florida, from bringing this action." Brinkema said Kromberg's immunity orders "did not materially change the scope of protection given to the defendant." Kromberg then asked whether the defense would be able to use the theory that Arian refused to testify based on the advice of his attorneys. Brinkema said yes, that a jury could consider it. That issue could become crucial to a jury trying to determine why Arian defied orders to testify.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Jailed former professor ends hunger strike in Va. jail

2008-05-02

A blast from the past...
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) A former professor who pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a Palestinian terrorist group but has refused to testify in a related investigation has ended a nearly two-month hunger strike, his supporters said Wednesday.
Oh, good. I was so worried. Actually, I didn't even know. Which kinda defeats the purpose...
Sami al-Arian, 50, suspended his fast Tuesday after 57 days. The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace says family and friends urged the former University of South Florida computer science professor to resume eating after he collapsed last week in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail because of low blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

Attorneys for al-Arian also encouraged him to resume eating so federal authorities could not cite the hunger strike as a reason to further delay his deportation."He had lost almost 40 pounds and was experiencing serious physical consequences from the hunger strike," al-Arian's lawyer, Jonathan Turley, said in a telephone interview. "The government indicated that it would not be able to deport him in his current chronic medical condition."
Good planning, Sami...
Al-Arian could be deported either to the Middle East or to one of a few countries that have expressed interest, including Norway and Germany, Turley said.
Enjoy him...
Al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody because of his refusal to testify before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses. Turley said that al-Arian should have been deported a year ago, but that the government "stopped the clock with a series of contempt citations." The last contempt citation was lifted in December. Turley said that he is negotiating for al-Arian deportation, but that the government "continues to insist it will seek further sanctions and perhaps a criminal indictment if he does not testify before the grand jury."
Screw em, Sami. You can do infinity standing on your head.
Jim Rybicki, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, said al-Arian has been transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He declined to comment further.

The government's prosecution of al-Arian has drawn international attention since he was taken into federal custody in 2003. Prosecutors alleged that al-Arian was a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the United States calls a terrorist organization, but his 2005 trial ended in acquittal on some charges and a hung jury on others. Prosecutors decided to retry him, and he entered a plea bargain on lesser charges. He was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison with credit for time served. Government critics have said the case against al-Arian reflected overzealous prosecution of Muslim Americans in the war on terror.
Hmmmmm. Must be why he pled guilty...
In his plea agreement, al-Arian admitted helping a family member with links to the terrorist group obtain immigration benefits and lying to a reporter about another person's ties to the group. Al-Arian says terms of the deal exempt him from testifying before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses, but two judges have rejected that claim.
Nice lawyers ya got there, Sami...

Link

Home Front: WoT

Refusal to testify keeps terror convict in prison

2008-03-22

Former university professor Sami al-Arian wants to finish serving his prison sentence for a terrorism-related crime next month so that he can be deported to the Palestinian territories. But the Bush administration is threatening to keep him behind bars until he does something he has steadfastly refused to do: testify before a grand jury investigating allegations that Muslim charities aided terrorism organizations.

Arian, who taught computer engineering at the University of South Florida, said he is declining to testify against the charities because he thinks they were falsely charged, "and he doesn't want them to be persecuted the way he was," said Jonathan Turley, his attorney. As a result, Arian is to be held at the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va., on civil contempt charges. Arian started a hunger strike early this month to protest his subpoena, and he was recently transferred to a prison medical center in North Carolina after losing six pounds in 36 hours. He went on a previous hunger strike that lasted months.

Arian was at the center of one of the nation's highest profile terrorism cases, accused of conspiracy to commit racketeering and murder and to aid a terrorist group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in 2003. Two years later, a jury acquitted him of eight counts and deadlocked on others, but Arian pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to "make or receive funds . . . for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad" and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, which included time already served. As part of a plea agreement with U.S. attorneys in Tampa, he said he would serve an additional 12 months, with the understanding that the government would not seek his testimony in future terrorism cases, his lawyers said.

Arian's lawyers at the time said the deal was discussed but was excluded from the official agreement because it was mutually understood. Now the Justice Department says that the deal does not bar them from requesting Arian's testimony. Turley said his client's sentence should have ended a year ago. But a judge extended a civil contempt citation against Arian for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the charities. "The Al-Arian case constitutes one of the most disturbing abuses of the grand jury system in decades," Turley said. "You have a great injustice being perpetrated by the Justice Department. They've daisy-chained three grand jury investigations to prolong his incarceration."

But Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said immunity for Arian was not a part of the agreement. "The plea agreement is clear, unambiguous and does not grant Al-Arian immunity from future grand jury subpoena," he said. "Therefore, we hold that the government did not break the plea agreement by issuing a subpoena commanding Al-Arian to testify before a grand jury."

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed with the Justice Department, ruling that Arian could not rely on a complicit understanding that was not directly mentioned in the plea agreement. The department issued its third subpoena later that month. "It is certainly not uncommon for the government to expect a defendant to testify in the wake of a plea agreement," said Robert Chesney, an associate law professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "In this instance, the agreement is silent on the question, and the court of appeals agrees with the government that this leaves the door open to subpoena his testimony."

Turley said the government and courts have laid a trap from which Arian cannot escape. "The government has called Dr. Al-Arian manipulative, and have made it clear that they don't trust a word he says," Turley said. "They're setting a perjury trap. They intend to secure a conviction . . . by hook or by crook. He just wants to be leave prison and be deported."

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Home Front: WoT

Al-Arian subpoenaed again in VA

2008-03-04

A former University of South Florida professor is being subpoenaed for a third time in a case investigating Muslim charities and businesses. That's according to his lawyer, Jonathan Turley, who wrote about the development on his blog. Turley says the subpoena puts Sami al-Arian at risk for another contempt of court sanction that threatens to extend his jail time yet again.

Prosecutors alleged that al-Arian was a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But his 2005 trial ended in an acquittal on some counts and a hung jury on others. He eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Since then, prosecutors in Alexandria have sought his testimony for a related investigation. But al-Arian has for nearly two years refused to testify despite a grant of immunity. His prison time would have already expired if not for the contempt of court violations.

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