U.S. Accuses Former Professor of Terror Ties

The Justice Department accused a former Florida university professor of conspiracy to commit murder via suicide attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories, saying he has secretly been a top leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization for years.
In a 50-count indictment unsealed in Tampa, Sami al-Arian and seven other people, including three Muslim activists arrested Thursday in this country and several top officials of PIJ still at large abroad, also were charged with crimes ranging from racketeering to money laundering. Al-Arian was arrested at his suburban Tampa home.
Among those charged were Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, a close associate of al-Arian’s in Tampa during the 1990s who now heads Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) from Syria; and Abd Al Aziz Awda, a founder and spiritual leader of PIJ.
Federal agents have spent a decade developing a case against Al-Arian, who was relieved of his duties as a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa in 2001.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said that changes in U.S. law under the USA Patriot Act, anti-terror legislation enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, allowed authorities to make the criminal case against al-Arian. That law removed longstanding legal barriers to bringing information gathered in classified national security investigations into criminal courts.
Al-Arian’s lawyer, Nicholas Matassini, said, ”he’s a political prisoner right now as we speak,” calling the indictment ”a work of fiction.” Al-Arian and his supporters have protested his innocence for years, saying investigators were carrying out an anti-Islamic agenda that targetted a critic of U.S. policy in Israel. Al-Arian has denied any substantive tie to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government in 1995.