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04/16/2006:

"Ex-Professor in Terror Case to Be Deported"

Federal authorities have decided to deport a former Florida professor and longtime Palestinian rights activist after failing to convict him on charges he helped finance terrorist attacks in Israel.

Sami Al-Arian, who had met with U.S. presidents and other political leaders before his terrorism indictment in 2003, reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser charge and be deported, two lawyers familiar with the case said Friday. The arrangement requires the approval of a judge.

It was not clear where Al-Arian would be sent.

...The case against Al-Arian was once hailed by authorities as a triumph of the anti-terror Patriot Act, which allowed secret wiretaps and other information gathered by intelligence agents to be used in criminal prosecutions.

Al-Arian and three co-defendants were charged with running a North American cell of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian had been under FBI surveillance at least since the mid-1990s.

But at the end of a five-month trial, jurors said the mountain of intercepted phone calls and other materials did not directly link Al-Arian and the others to violent acts, specifically a terrorist attack in 1995 that killed seven Israelis and American Alisa Flatow.

A Palestinian who was born in Kuwait, Al-Arian has lived in the United States for 30 years and holds permanent residency status. He was raised mostly in Egypt.

He had been a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida but was fired after his indictment. He has been held without bail for more than three years.
sfgate.com