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Soon Sami will bid us goodbye, and will no doubt resurface in Ramallah or Damascus as a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Rumpled Academic Update: "Sentencing Expected Today in Terror Case of Former Fla. Professor," from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
TAMPA, April 30 -- The long terrorism conspiracy case of Sami al-Arian is drawing to a close, and the former Tampa college professor could soon walk out of his jail cell and into the hands of immigration officers to be deported.Al-Arian, 48, a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida, is expected to be sentenced Monday morning after pleading guilty April 14 to supporting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group responsible for hundreds of deaths in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Although a jury did not convict al-Arian of any of the 17 charges against him after five months on trial last year, he took the plea deal, family members said, to get out of jail and end their suffering....
Sure. And the plea agreement explicitly says that he is not pleading guilty for any reason other than that he is guilty, and knows that the feds can make their case. And that he is doing it freely, without coercion.
So if none of that is true, as AP implies here, he should now be tried for perjury.
As part of the plea agreement, al-Arian admitted to being associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the late 1980s and providing "services" for the group, which included filing for immigration benefits for key members, hiding the identities of those men and lying about his involvement.Those men included Ramadan Shallah, a colleague at al-Arian's Palestinian think tank in Tampa who later emerged as the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Middle East.
Salvage attempt alert:
Al-Arian admitted to considerably less guilt than prosecutors tried to prove at trial. They described al-Arian as the leader of a North American cell of the Palestinian group, raising money for suicide bombings and spreading the word in what was described as a "cycle of terror."...
And, because AP can't resist trying yet again to give the story what for them is a positive spin, it concludes with one last attempt to portray what they consider a defeat -- the deportation of Al-Arian -- as a victory. They do this by again referring to his acquittal, which is now irrelevant in light of his guilty plea:
The failure to convict al-Arian was a stinging rebuke for the federal government. His case was once hailed by authorities as a triumph of the USA Patriot Act, which allowed secret wiretaps and other information gathered by intelligence agents to be used in criminal prosecutions.
UPDATE: The Rumpled One got four years and nine months, minus time served, and then deportation.
Posted by Robert at May 1, 2006 9:34 AM
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Big update and good news:
Prof. Gets 18 Months More in Terror Case
Posted by: Shy Guy![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 1, 2006 10:28 AM
TAMPA, Fla. - A judge sentenced former professor Sami Al-Arian on Monday to another year and a half in prison before he will be deported in his terrorism conspiracy case.
Al-Arian, 48, was sentenced to four years and nine months, but he will get credit for the three years and three months he already has served while being held before and after his trial.
His lawyer, Linda Moreno, asked the judge to release her client now, but the judge refused and called Al-Arian "a master manipulator."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060501/ap_on_re_us/attacks_professor
Posted by: DP111 at May 1, 2006 10:46 AM
Beat you by 18 minutes, enough time to bake matzas for Passover.
Posted by: Shy Guy at May 1, 2006 11:11 AM
Shy Guy
Yup. It comes from dawdling over the post.
This manipulating terrorist is now going to be deported, and he will be the talk of Al Jazeera - maybe he will even get a plum job as a presenter of Al Jazeera and thus get even better acccess to the West.
Deportation though the best antidote to Jihad in most cases, is really not suitable in this case. I'm sure there is still evidence that has not been presented to the courts, and can form the basis of a new prosecution on a different set of charges. He needs to be incarcerated for a long while as he poses a significant threat.
Posted by: DP111 at May 1, 2006 11:22 AM
DP111
He has to serve 19 months before he gets deported.
Problem: his 5 children are all US citizens, and since the oldest 3 are adults, they get to stay. Can you say "anchor babies"? The time has come to change the laws so that Muslims born in Infidel countries don't get citizenship of those lands - not by virtue of their birth, or anything else. Lest one thinks that's harsh, consider that in the Arab countries, a family can live several generations in a country, but still not get citizenship.
Does his wife and 2 minor children get deported right away?
Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 1, 2006 1:01 PM
Deport him now.
Enough mooching on my hummus.
And humus.
Why pay another dime for this thin wedge edge?
(Unless it takes a year or more to feed him a diet that will turn his body into a bio-GPS postioning device... then, take all the time you need...)
at May 1, 2006 3:25 PM
So we now have to endure the costs of housing, clothing, and feeding this wart for another 18 months? He should be on a plane out of the country today.
at May 1, 2006 5:03 PM
"The three oldest children are adults and are expected to stay in the United States."
-- from the article excerpted above
Those who obtained permission to remain in this country through fraud, or through the fraud of their relatives, should be stripped of their citizenship. The "fraud" is that of pretending to be loyal, either through the swearing of an oath, or what is, or should be, implied by the application to obtain permanent residency.
If this is not clear, it should be made clear, very quickly, by legislation. Repetition of this case, where children of an al-Arian can continue to live in this country, and reap the benefits of, even exploit to their own advantage, the Infidel laws, customs, manners, and achievments in order to pursue Jihad, whether it is the Lesser Jihad against Israel, or the Greater Jihad against all Infidels, of which that Lesser Jihad forms a part.
It is intolerable to think that his children will be allowed to live, and possibly to thrive, in this country. Surely one aspect of keeping would-be supporters of Jihad in check is to make sure that they realize that not just they, but their entire family, will lose the right to live in what they secretly recgnize as an altogether preferable place, even if they continue to work to undo exactly what makes it preferable, for they cannot quite make the connection between Islam and what is wrong with Islamic societies and countries. Ordinarily the sins of the father should not be visited on the sons. But in cases where what causes the fathers to be a danger in the first place are the views that emerge naturally from the texts of Islam, the attitudes of Islam, the atmospherics of Islam, and where the children have given no sign of abandoning those texts or those teachings or those attitudes, Infidels are justified in assuming that the child of a supporter of terrorism will be no different in his views. A good reason for not treating these cases merely as criminal matters, but rather as matters involving enemies in wartime. In wartime, sterner measures are applied, not to individuals but collectively, to those who are either enemy aliens or are deemed supporters of an enemy, and hence treasonous. These categories cannot be applied unless and until the full menace and scope of Jihad is understood. It is not, at present -- but it will be. Those who may have achieved citizenship, largely through the deceit of a relative (Sami al-Arian managed to obtain permanent residency through deceit about where his loyalties lay), should have their capacity for loyalty to this country, and to the Constitution, examined -- and not merely be a thing of oaths sworn but not necessarily meant. Those whose loyalty cannot but be feigned, given their other loyalties that flatly contradict every principle of the Constitution, should have their citizenship challenged and stripped. Successful examples of this will do much to limit and inhibit Muslim behavior, if not real Muslim beliefs, here and elsewhere in the Infidel lands.
Posted by: Hugh at May 1, 2006 5:12 PM
Shy Guy--
18 minutes and not a minute more!
***
From Ynet news:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3246225,00.html
"Ten years ago [Ramadan] Shalah was appointed head of the Islamic Jihad Damascus offices after predecessor Fathi Shkaki was murdered in Malta, prompting
the FBI to begin tracking Al-Arian. Israel continuously sent the Americans information according to which Al-Arian set up in the university Islamic Jihad headquarters that transferred information from Damascus to the territories and funneled money for terror activity. But it was only after 9/11 that the public campaign for Al-Arian’s dismissal from the university was launched.
The government alleged that Al-Arian and the other defendants were part of a Tampa terrorist cell that took the lead in determining the structure and goals of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the State Department has listed as a terrorist group.
Prosecutors said Al-Arian and other members of the terrorist organization used the University of South Florida to give them cover as teachers and students, and held meetings under the guise of academic conferences.
The case was built on hundreds of pages of transcripts of wiretapped phone calls and faxes, records of money moving through accounts, documents seized from the defendants' homes and offices, and their own words on video. At times, the participants appeared to speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried out homicide attacks."
If the place the prosecution fell was in not being able to prove convincingly to an American jury that the money was used for terrorist activity, then the tracking of funds disbursed by islamic "charitable" groups to countires harboring terrorists needs to be tightened considerably and archived for long time periods.
Hugh:
"Those whose loyalty cannot but be feigned, given their other loyalties that flatly contradict every principle of the Constitution, should have their citizenship challenged and stripped."
Immigrants who provide aid to or actively support groups or countries that kill American citizens or plot to or commit terrorist acts on American soil or American installations overseas or subvert the American government or violate major American laws should be deported. This country isn't "the Wild West" any more. Close relatives of deportees in terrorist scenarios, if not actively involved, and if not leaving as well, should be surveilled for establsihed time periods. Communications from the deportee should be restricted and monitored. This should be made part of the Immigration laws. People have to know this upfront when they come to the United States.
Posted by: HaMalach at May 2, 2006 12:10 AM
As America has always been a prime source of funds for Israel, it seems surprising that Professor Al-Arian's terrorist cell would only have provided support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I was wondering if anyone knew whether or not his cell also gave support to suicide terrorists who preferred to end their days flying?
Posted by: Skytale at May 6, 2006 3:44 AM
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