In a major defeat for federal law enforcement officials, a jury in Florida declined to return guilty verdicts Tuesday on any of 51 criminal counts against a former Florida professor and three co-defendants accused of operating a North American front for Palestinian terrorists.
The former professor, Sami Al-Arian, a fiery advocate for Palestinian causes who became a lightning rod for criticism nationwide over his vocal anti-Israeli stances, was found not guilty on eight criminal counts related to terrorist support, perjury and immigration violations. The jury deadlocked on the remaining nine counts against him after deliberating for 13 days, and it did not return any guilty verdicts against the three other defendants in the case.
“This was a political prosecution from the start, and I think the jury realized that,” Linda Moreno, one of Al-Arian’s defense lawyers, said in a telephone interview. “They looked over at Sami Arian, they saw a man who had taken unpopular positions on issues thousands of miles away, but they realized he wasn’t a terrorist. The truth is a powerful thing.”
The right to disagree with your government, to dissent, is worth preserving. It is, after all, part of the history of the United States’ leadership in freedom — that some are willing to give up.
It sounds like Sami Al-Arian is more patriotic than our president.
These guys are like the Keystone Kops, but without the happy ending. They had thousands of hours of tapes of the guy, the most expensive prosecutors that money can buy (hmm), and the monumentally stupid “duh the government says it’s true, so it must be” american public to convince. The best they could do was to get a hung jury on less than half the charges.
And this is the government that is keeping hundreds of people in Guantanamo Bay without evidence or trial, which is kidnapping and torturing people around the world because, well, they just know they’re terrorists.
Sheesh.
Hopefully they can still deport him on the immigration violations.
If you think this guy is some sort of patriot then you’re more diluted than I thought.
AB CD – So revenge is still in order, and something needs to be done to this guy because he disagrees with you, even though he has been shown to be unjustly charged, found innocent, exhonerated, etc. So much for justice. Prosecute those with different views, and find some way to punish them. Hmmmm… you sound very much like the kind of person that the current war is fighting. Saddam would be a good Prez for us under your perspective.
James – I assume you meant ‘deluded’. You sound just like our Prez.
AB CD — you had to go and tell him. I’ve been Googling for 10 minutes, trying to come up with an appropriate [non-titration] pun for “diluted”.
I wouldn’t call it just a disagreement. From the article: Al-Arian was heard raising money for Palestinian causes, hailing recently completed attacks against Israel with associates overseas, calling suicide bombers “martyrs,”
It may not be enough to get him deported, but it certainly isn’t a reason to keep him here. If you can get him on immigration violations, then do it. It’s not as bad as I thought. He was teaching computer science, so he presumably wasn’t one of these professors teaching foreign students on F1 visas from Muslim countries additional jihad cliches.
Eideard – I’m sorry I ruined your possible pun on ‘diluted’… but think of it this way… being told that he sound like the Prez should be painful enough.
It’s funny reading Eideard and co making fun of the administration/Dubya and being so arrogant about it; let’s see if the next prez witl be as bad as Clinton was for America.
Peace
It’s his fundraising activities that were at issue, not free speech. If the prosecution muddied the waters by presenting his hate speech (and fundraising acts before they were illegal) as evidence, then it seems to have backfired.
Is preaching violence and hate illegal in this country? It seems odd that we get on the Saudis and Euros cases about allowing hateful imams to preach jihad in their mosques. But then they have no qualms about asserting control over churchs in their country, while we do.
If the same happend here — and wasn’t quashed by the mosque’s members — what would the US do?
Is it better to shut them up, or spy on them to prevent illegal and terrorist acts? The generation of ’68 will have to decide, because doing nothing (i.e. pre-Patriot Act) is no longer an option.
A jury also decided that Al Qaeda was less than 1/3 responsible for the World Trade Center bombing, finding the Port Authority 68 percent responsible. Hundreds of millions in damages to be paid by taxpayers in short order.
Awake,
He was NOT found innocent, but found not guilty. There actually is a big difference.
SB – yeah he was so bad – biggest boom the country has seen, the Bosinian conflect settled, and oh yeah welfare reform.
You must be rich and making money from the government handouts.
Ethan Bearman – You say not guilty is not equal to innocent. That is pure BS.
It’s that little petty semantic BS that people that are trying to decieve other people always end up using when they are shown to be full of sh#t.
Clinton used it in the sex scandal, and now our whole government is using it concerning the so called ‘War’ in Iraq. Prime example: We don’t torture.
Just what does it take to declare a person ‘innocent’ of a charge under your rules? If a not-guilty veredict in a trial doesn’t do it… what does? Who do I go to to be declared ‘innocent’ after a jury finds me not-guilty?
Then you consider OJ innocent? Oliver North?
I guess some nut could out and kill 10 people and some sharp lawyer gets a not guilty because of insanity – so I guess he is innocent.
rob