Via Michael Totten, via LGF, Byron York notes in today's New York Post ("'MAINSTREAM' USEFUL IDIOTS") that recently arrested, accused terrorist Sami Al-Arian is former president of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, a group associated with anti-war group Not in Our Name. York writes:
Until recently, the group's president was Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer-science professor who has been suspended for alleged ties to terrorism. (He is still a member of the coalition's board.) According to a New York Times report last year, Al-Arian is accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised by another charity he runs, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times also reported that FBI investigators "suspected Mr. Al-Arian operated 'a fund-raising front' for the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine from the late 1980s to 1995." Al-Arian also brought a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah to the University of South Florida to raise money for one of Al-Arian's foundations - a job Shallah held until he later became the head of Islamic Jihad.
Here's the Tampa Tribune on Al-Arian's arrest ("The Scorching Indictment of Sami Al-Arian"):
The arrest Thursday of Sami Al-Arian, accused along with seven others of conspiring to aid and abet terrorism, including killings abroad by suicide bombers, ends a decade-long investigation into the nefarious activities of the University of South Florida professor.In that time, Al-Arian has become the consummate manipulator, willing to take advantage of the freedoms here - to use the United States as a safe haven - to wreak havoc elsewhere.
and
The indictment is damning, bringing to light intercepted reports and recordings of telephone conversations over the years between Al-Arian and other defendants and known terrorists and terror organizations.Many of Al-Arian's activities have already been detailed by the Tribune's Michael Fechter, who deserves credit for yeoman service to this newspaper and community. He first raised the issue of Al-Arian's terrorist ties in 1995 - a moment, the indictment reveals, of great concern to the cell the professor is accused of establishing at USF.
Among his dubious and well-known achievements, Al-Arian was introduced at a 1991 Cleveland rally as head of ``the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.'' At the same rally, a speaker exhorted attendees to lend their support ``for the Intifadah, for the Islamic Jihad, I say it frankly, for the Islamic Jihad.''
The Islamic Committee for Palestine was a ``charitable'' organization run by Al-Arian that sponsored conferences around the country at which a number of Middle East radicals appeared, including Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who was convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing.
Here's an October 2001 "Special Report" on the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom. Some excerpts:
The coalition, with members from some 35 diverse political, legal and ethnic organizations—such as the National Lawyers Guild, Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, Irish Northern Aid Committee, the American Muslim Council, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee—was formed in 1997 in reaction to the passage of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, the bill gained momentum and passed. The government has increased its use of secret evidence in detaining people who have visa problems. Prior to (and since) that legislation, the federal government had used case law to deport and detain non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having connections to “terrorist” organizations.Immediately upon the implementation of that law, immigration lawyers and First Amendment activists knew that trouble was brewing, and they began joining forces to battle the consequences of the act. It wasn’t long before their predictions proved correct, as people increasingly were arrested and incarcerated with evidence that neither they nor their lawyers were allowed to see. Indeed, said NCPFF president Sami Al-Arian, by the time the group was formed in 1997, cases of intimidation and arrests had increased in the wake of the anti-terrorism act.
Almost ironically, one month before the coalition’s June 1997 inception, Mazen Al-Najjar, a Florida university professor—and Al-Arian’s brother-in-law—was arrested for suspected “terrorist” ties. Al-Najjar was held for 43 months.
and
Despite the fact that no new secret evidence cases have been brought since 1998, last spring a Dallas, Texas immigration lawyer found herself facing the possibility that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was going to add secret evidence to a deportation case she was handling. Four Palestinian men are being targeted for expulsion because of their connection to two Islamic organizations—the Holy Land Foundation and the Islamic Association for Palestine—that long have been under scrutiny by the U.S. government.
and
At their July conference, Gage said in the telephone interview, coalition members agreed on the need to focus on another Anti-Terrorism Act provision—material support for terrorism—that the government seems to be invoking now. “Instead of going after criminal activity, [the federal government] is going after organizations, [and] going after the First Amendment,” she said. “They are criminalizing diapers going to an orphanage, if that orphanage happens to be controlled by Hamas.”Gage was alluding to a list of 30 groups that are on the government’s list of “terrorist” organizations. Hamas, an Islamic organization that, in addition to its military wing, also provides humanitarian and educational services, is on that list. Under the material support for terrorism provision, a person can be arrested for giving humanitarian aid to any group on the government’s list.
One of the most recent additions to the list is the Real IRA, which, according to the State Department, has two alias groups, one of which collects support for the families of Irish political prisoners. Material support charges help to “shut down people whose politics you don’t like,” Gage said. This new trend in targeting certain communities has broad ramifications, according to Gage. Merely attending a meeting at which a member of one of the listed “terrorist” organizations was in attendance could result in charges of material support for terrorism. Gage likened the broad interpretation of the law to the poisonous suspicions of the McCarthy era.
Of course, International A.N.S.W.E.R. condemns the arrest:
Dr. Al-Arian has helped to establish several organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, est. 1981) and many affiliated organizations. In 1990, he co-founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a research and academic institution. In 1997, Dr. Al-Arian helped to found the Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, which has fought against the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar; and in the same year co-founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, which he was elected the president of in 2000. Dr. Al-Najjar is Dr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, who in 2002 was deported after being held in U.S. jails without charges for nearly five years using "secret evidence."The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition joins the organizations and individuals worldwide who are condemning Bush's and Ashcroft's political targeting of Dr. Al-Arian.
And here's Mr. Al-Arian, describing his "persecution" by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News:
This is terrorism perpetuated by journalists against innocent civilians and public institutions.
Ah, irony.
Posted by oscarjr at February 23, 2003 04:27 PM | TrackBack