TAMPA, Fla. – The most significant terrorism trial since the September 11, 2001, attacks is set to open this morning in federal court here as a jury begins hearing the case of four men accused of running the American wing of a deadly terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The most prominent of the defendants is a former computer science professor at the University of South Florida, Sami Al-Arian. Despite long-standing suspicions about his ties to terrorism, the Kuwaiti-born Palestinian Arab enjoyed entree with top American politicians. Mr. Al-Arian, 47, has been in jail since the 53-count indictment was returned in February 2003.

Standing trial alongside Mr. Al-Arian are three other Muslim activists: Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Fariz, and Ghassan Ballut. All are charged with racketeering, conspiracy, and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Defense attorneys are bracing for prosecutors to kick off their case with a torrent of gory photographs, videos, and live testimony about Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacks that killed more than 100 people in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, including five Americans.

“They are going to spend the first couple of weeks trying to shock this jury. It’s going to be shock and awe,” said Stephen Crawford, a lawyer for Mr. Hammoudeh, a former University of South Florida graduate student who was born in the West Bank.

In preparation for the trial, prosecutors have reportedly flown in from Israel dozens of victims of the terror group’s violence.

“It’s going to be bloody. It’s going to be horrible. It’s going to scare the hell out of this jury,” Mr. Crawford said.

Among the more dramatic images likely to be shown to the jury is a prosecution-arranged video shot in the Florida Everglades that depicts the reenactment of two suicide bombings of passenger buses carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Government lawyers will not comment publicly on the case, but their witness list includes Stephen Flatow, the father of an American woman killed in a 1995 bomb attack on a bus in Gaza. “These people, they have no respect for life,” Mr. Flatow told the Associated Press. “If someone is going to provide the means to commit a crime, you are just as guilty as the person who pulled the plunger. If anything, these guys are cowards.”

The trial is seen by legal experts as a test of the government’s ability to prosecute individuals who lay the financial and logistical groundwork for terrorism while avoiding involvement in planning for specific attacks.

While not officially in the dock, the governments of Iran and Syria may also come under fire for their support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A court filing Friday indicated that a former FBI terrorism analyst who is expected to be one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, Matthew Levitt, will testify about the group’s ties to Tehran and Damascus. “Tehran began paying Islamic Jihad millions of dollars in cash bonuses for each attack against Israel in the context of the second intifada that began in September 2000,” Mr. Levitt wrote in a summary of his planned testimony. “On top of funding the activities of the Tampa cell, the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Syria plays a direct operational role in financing and facilitating acts of terrorism targeting Israelis and Jews.”

Defense attorneys have asked the judge in the case, James Moody Jr., to block much of Mr. Levitt’s testimony on a variety of grounds, including that he does not have first-hand knowledge about the terrorist group’s activities.

In response to government motions, Judge Moody has already told defense lawyers that they will not be able to argue that Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s attacks were justified by Israeli military actions. The judge has also rejected arguments that the defendants could be considered “lawful combatants” under international law because some Palestinian Islamic Jihad operations target Israeli military personnel in the occupied territories.

While the limits on the defense have been made public in court documents, the judge also recently imposed restrictions on prosecutors that remain largely secret.

Mr. Crawford said the defense prefers that the issues that are off-limits for prosecutors remain under wraps, because they are tangential to the case and could prejudice the jury.

“It would defeat the purpose if we laid them out in open court,” he said. “It gets in the media and then the jury gets them.”

Critical links in the prosecution’s case are expected to be drawn from a trove of more than 20,000 hours of wiretap recordings the government made of Mr. Al-Arian, the other defendants, and alleged terrorists overseas. The recordings were made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice Department officials have said that the anti-terrorism law passed in 2001, the Patriot Act, helped expedite the prosecution by rescinding a policy that usually kept such wiretaps from prosecutors and investigators.

The unusual 25-month delay between the first charges in the case and the trial was due in large part to the sheer volume of the surveillance and the difficulties defense attorneys faced in sorting through the transcripts and tapes, many of which are in Arabic.

As the case progresses, defense lawyers are also expected to poke at the timeline the government had laid out. Some of the money-transfers the defendants are accused of orchestrating to the Middle East took place before financial dealings with Palestinian Islamic Jihad were banned in America in 1997. The government is also seeking to tell the jury about terrorist attacks the group carried out long after Mr. Al-Arian was jailed in 2003.

Mr. Al-Arian’s public profile has grown steadily since a 1994 PBS documentary alleged that two organizations he founded, the Islamic Concern Project and the World & Islamic Enterprise, had a close connection to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A series in the Tampa Tribune the next year roiled the Florida campus where Mr. Al-Arian taught.

Mr. Al-Arian came to national prominence in late September 2001, when Bill O’Reilly confronted him on Fox News with a 1991 speech in which he said: “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel.” The interview led to death threats against the Florida professor and prompted his suspension.