Politicians Who Courted Al-Arian Dodge Embarrassment at His Trial

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The New York Sun

Politicians who courted a Florida college professor charged with leading a Palestinian Arab terrorist group largely escaped embarrassment during the ex-professor’s criminal trial, which is expected to enter its final stage today as the jury begins deliberations.


In the years leading up to his arrest in February 2003, Sami Al-Arian presented himself as a leader in the Arab-American community and met regularly with such political luminaries as Presidents Bush and Clinton, Senator Clinton, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert.


During opening arguments in June, Mr. Al-Arian’s attorney, William Moffitt, said he intended to use the former professor’s high-level political contacts to cast doubt on the claim that while he was hobnobbing with the political elite he was also serving as a top leader in Palestinian Islamic Jihad,a group responsible for the deaths of about 200 people in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.


Mr. Moffitt said that in 2000 Mr. Al-Arian became a key power broker as the presidential candidates jockeyed to win the support of the Arab-American community, particularly in swing states such as Michigan. “The question became, which way was the Arab vote going to go?” the defense lawyer said in June. He also said that with the assistance of a Washington lobbyist, Grover Norquist, Mr. Al-Arian helped persuade the Republican candidate, then governor George Bush, to pledge publicly to repudiate the use of so-called secret evidence in immigration proceedings.


Mr. Moffitt also said that to dramatize the connection he might show jurors a photograph of Mr. Al-Arian and his family with Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, taken at a local fair in 2000.


However, as the trial wore on at the federal court in Tampa, Fla., there was little discussion of politics. Late last month, when Mr. Al-Arian was offered the opportunity to call witnesses in his defense, his legal team passed it up.


In an editorial, the Tampa Tribune, called the decision “stunning” and lamented the fact that an opportunity to explore the political courtship of Mr. Al-Arian had been lost.


Mr. Moffitt did not offer a detailed explanation for the decision not to mount a defense, but said he did not believe the prosecution showed Mr. Al-Arian had committed any crimes. “The government has not proven Dr. Al-Arian did anything but speak,” the defense attorney said. The reprieve for the politicians who could have been entangled in the trial may also be the result of decisions by Judge James Moody, who barred the defense from making certain arguments to the jury. Some of the limits he imposed on evidence and witnesses remain under seal.


One of the rare references to politics last week came from the prosecution, which showed the jury a wiretapped conversation from 1995 in which Mr. Al-Arian, who was born in Kuwait and was denied American citizenship, laid out his disillusionment with the Clinton Administration and raged against “Zionists.”


“They are controlling the White House and the State Department. They are in control in the era of the Democrats. They are in control in a way they have never been before, definitely not,” Mr.Al-Arian said. “In the past they used to have people who worked for them, but now they, themselves, are in charge. So whatever they want, they do.”


A former federal prosecutor, Andrew McCarthy, said the defense was correct to suggest that Mr. Al-Arian, who was first wiretapped in 1994, should not have been allowed to meet with top politicians while he was under investigation for possible terrorist ties. “It’s a legitimate point,” said the prosecutor, who handled cases stemming from the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.


Mr. McCarthy attributed the lack of coordination to restrictions in place at the time on the sharing of foreign intelligence-related wiretaps with investigators pursuing violations of American law. “This is appalling that for ‘X’ number of years the right hand didn’t know what left hand was doing,” he said.


Others, including Mr. Al-Arian’s lawyers, have pointed out that indications of Mr. Al-Arian’s possible connections to Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been public for more than a decade. In November 1994, PBS broadcast a documentary that suggested such a link and showed extremists at conferences Mr. Al-Arian organized, chanting, “Death to Israel.”


Mr. Al-Arian’s defense team conceded last week that he “had an affiliation” with the terrorist group, but they argued that he supported a nonviolent wing of the organization.


The New York Sun

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