This trial is going to be extremely interesting. It’s astonishing, really, if the prosecution’s claims are true, that Al-Arian was able to operate so easily and for so long in America. How many others like him are still at large? “Prosecutor: Al-Arian Key to ‘Terror Cycle,'” from AP, :
TAMPA, Fla. “” Sami Al-Arian emerged as a key figure in a “terror cycle” perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose members targeted Israelis in deadly bombings and bragged about them to raise money for more attacks, a prosecutor said Monday on the opening day of the fired college professor’s trial.
In fact, Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer science instructor, was at one time “the most powerful man in the world in the organization” blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, federal prosecutor Walter E. Furr III told jurors in his opening statement….
Prosecutors allege the men used an Islamic academic think tank and a Palestinian charity founded by Al-Arian in Tampa as fundraising fronts for the PIJ, which is on a State Department list of terrorist organizations. Furr described them as “an armed, criminal group of violent thugs” opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and committed to disrupting the peace process.