Right wing bloggers and radio types are fretting about the acquittal today of former university professor Sami Al-Arian on eight of 17 terrorism charges in his Tampa trial. I for one am not surprised, at least not now. Had Al-Arian been tried a year ago, or even before the 2004 election, he would have surely been found guilty. But the climate in the U.S. has changed, and that means prosecutors have to rely on evidence -- not fear or John Ashcroft-style hype -- to win terror convictions. Think the government doesn't get that? Why do you think they are fighting so hard not to try Jose Padilla in open court?
Back to Al-Arian. Many on the left fondly remember this picture:
 ... which shows Al-Arian communing with a politician he once supported and got face-time with: George W. Bush. (The associated article describes how many Muslims, after enthusiastically supporting the Bush family and voting for Dubya, soured on him as he cozied up to Israel's Arial Sharon...)
 Al-Arian was accused of being essentially the leader of an American wing of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- an anti-Israeli political terror group based in the West Bank. The evidence against him consisted mostly of wiretaps and other supposedly "coded" conversations with his three co-defendents (also acquitted on most counts, with some deadlocks) about staging terror attacks against targets unknown. The Tampa jury didn't buy the federal government's case, however, acquitting Al-Arian of the following counts:
- Conspiracy to commit racketeering
- Conspiracy to murder and maim people abroad
- 2 counts of conspiracy to support a foreign terrorist organization2 counts of mail fraud
- 2 counts of obstruction of justice
...and deadlocking on the other counts. After he was indicted, Al-Arian was fired from his job as a computer science professor at the University of South Florida, and his case became an issue in last year's Florida Senate race, with Republican Mel Martinez accusing former USF president Betty Castor of not acting on the Al-Arian "menace." Today, the university issued this statement: "The university will have no further comment today beyond the following statement. USF President Judy Genshaft is out of the country and will not be available for comment."The University of South Florida is watching the recent legal developments. USF ended Sami Al-Arian's employment nearly three years ago, and we do not expect anything to change that." ...no way to tell what happens next, whether Al-Arian will be released or retried, and whether he is even eligible to get his job back (or will he be deported...) Al-Arian is undoubtedly pro-Palestinian (and not a fan of Israel.) The question is, does being for the Palestinian cause necessarily make you a terrorist? The logical answer, it seems, is no. And the jury seems to have simply come to this logical conclusion. As an aside, I participated in the coverage of this case at my former job at a network affiliate and personally, found the case to be more hype than substance (ditto the Padilla case and others touted by John Ashcroft when he was our head of War on Terror Publicity ... I mean our attorney general... the prosecution was so haphazard, at one point federal clerks inadvertently destroyed the search warrant used to secure a raid on the professor's home... and Ashcroft's record on actually convicting people of terrorism? Well ... it kinda sucked...) I'm not the only skeptic (apparently the jury was dubious too...) Salon's Eric Boehlert in 2002: The prime-time smearing of Sami Al-Arian
By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life.
Editor's note: This story is anthologized in the Salon book "Afterwords: Stories and Reports From 9/11 and Beyond." To buy the book, click here.
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By Eric Boehlert
Jan. 19, 2002 It may not provide him much comfort, but tenured University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, recently fired after his appearance on a conservative talk show revived discredited, years-old allegations of ties to anti-Israel terrorists, may be the first computer science professor ever mugged by four of the nation's most influential news organizations.
USF administrators fired the Kuwaiti-born professor after he appeared on national television for five minutes of punditry last fall. His crime? Not telling viewers that his views did not necessarily reflect those of the school. It was a tortured rationale that all but guaranteed future litigation. ...
...In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, all four media giants, eagerly tapping into the country's mood of vengeance and fear, latched onto the Al-Arian story, fudging the facts and ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers here at home.
The story went national when Al-Arian was invited on the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" show back on Sept. 26. Host Bill O'Reilly revived inflammatory charges against Al-Arian dating back, in some cases, 15 years. Those charges were that a now-defunct Islamic think tank Al-Arian founded and ran in conjunction with USF operated as a sort of home away from home for radical Palestinians and terrorists. The charges had been thoroughly investigated and rejected by USF, and an immigration judge; the FBI has been looking for years and has never filed any charges.
Not even his harshest critics suggest Al-Arian has done anything in the last five years that could be even remotely construed as aiding terrorist organizations. The entire controversy sprang from the fact that viewers became enraged after old allegations were re-aired, albeit often in mangled form, by O'Reilly.
O'Reilly's accusatory and hectoring interrogation of Al-Arian, filled with false statements and McCarthy-like smears, climaxed in a chilling parting shot in which the host repeatedly told his stammering guest that if he were with the CIA, "I'd follow you wherever you went" -- clearly implying that he believed Al-Arian was a terrorist. Not surprisingly in the fearful and hysterical climate after Sept. 11, the show resulted in a torrent of angry calls, including death threats against al-Arian, to USF.
Before firing him, USF placed Al-Arian on paid leave, saying his presence made the campus unsafe and pointing to an avalanche of hate mail and death threats.
But the Gulf Coast hysteria was entirely created by the media. Without the Tampa Tribune, which undertook a dubious seven-year crusade against al-Arian, there would have been no story to begin with. Without "The O'Reilly Factor" -- a showcase for noisy right-wing ranting whose producers apparently didn't even know that Al-Arian had been cleared of charges before they handed him over to their equally ignorant hanging-judge host -- the controversy would never have been revived. Without incendiary, know-nothing Clear Channel radio jocks, led by a gentleman named Bubba the Love Sponge, there would almost certainly have been far fewer USF death threats. And without NBC's sloppy work on "Dateline" there would probably have been no firing. ... The bottom line in the case is that there wasn't much of a case -- it was more of a ratings grabber for Fox than it ever was a solid prosecution in the "war on terror" (Chris Short of the Jawa Report concludes the verdict is no WOT setback, as do I, but probably for very different reasons...) Chad Evans, In the Bullpen, concludes the prosecution failed because of undisclosable classified evidence (sorry, pal, but I think the prosecution had exactly what they showed the jury -- evidence of Al-Arian's pro-Palestinian fervor and anti-Israeli statements, and little else...)
More on Al-Arian from Wikipedia and from the St. Pete Times which has done much coverage of the Al-Arian case... Plus some news links courtesy of Michelle Malkin (What? No "curse that 9/10 thinking rant???)
Tags: News, Al-Arian, War on terror, Terrorism, Ashcroft |
