Sami Al-Arian

Sami Amin Al-Arian was born in Kuwait and immigrated to the United States as a college student. In February 2003, the Justice Department identified him as 45 years old and said he had lived in the country for more than 25 years.[1]

Al-Arian began teaching computer engineering at the University of South Florida in 1986.[2] He ultimately achieved tenure as a professor of computer science and engineering in the university's College of Engineering.[6][1]

During the same period, he became active in Muslim community organizations. A CAMERA report identifies him as a co-founder of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), established in Indiana on July 4, 1981, and states that he later admitted in deportation proceedings that he was a Muslim Brotherhood member when ISNA was founded.[7]

Beginning in the late 1980s, Al-Arian founded or co-founded several organizations. The Islamic Concern Project, also known as the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), was incorporated in 1988 for charitable, cultural, social, educational, and religious programs.[8] The World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), an Islamic research organization and think tank, was incorporated in Tampa in 1991.[9] It worked with a USF faculty group to organize seminars and share library resources.[6] Al-Arian also co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine.[10]

Federal investigators and counterterrorism researchers alleged that these organizations also supported PIJ activity. WISE provided cover and refuge in Tampa to Ramadan Shallah, identified by the Justice Department as the think tank's former executive director, who later became PIJ's secretary-general.[5][1] Al-Arian also helped arrange U.S. visas for PIJ Shura Council members Mazen al-Najjar and Basheer Nafi.[5] U.S. authorities had investigated Al-Arian since the early 1990s over alleged ties to terrorist organizations and suspected that WISE served as a cover for PIJ fundraising.[2]

The ICP hosted annual conferences and events from 1988 through 1992 featuring prominent PIJ and other radical-group figures.[5] At a 1991 Cleveland fundraiser, a local imam introduced the organization as "the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine" and said the ICP name had been chosen for security reasons.[11] A congressional hearing record attributed to Al-Arian the conclusion of a September 29, 1991, Chicago speech: "Yes for Jihad in the name of Allah, yes for Islam, yes for the Intifadah… Death to Israel."[9] Al-Arian later said that "Death to Israel" expressed opposition to Israeli occupation policy rather than support for violence.[2]

Following television appearances after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Al-Arian was questioned about recordings from the 1980s and 1990s in which he made those remarks in Arabic.[2] USF subsequently suspended him and barred him from campus. A senior faculty committee petitioned against those measures, arguing that they violated his contract, academic freedom, and the university's nondiscrimination policy.[2] Federal investigators also reported finding a 1995 handwritten letter in his home that solicited money for PIJ following a double-suicide bombing in Israel, although Al-Arian disputed having sent it.[5]

In 2008, a U.S. Circuit Court found the Islamic Association for Palestine liable for the murder of U.S. citizen David Boim by Hamas, attributing that civil liability to IAP's funding of Hamas.[10]

On February 20, 2003, FBI agents arrested Al-Arian and three other U.S.-based defendants in Florida and Illinois.[1][2] The indictment charged Al-Arian and seven co-defendants. Attorney General John Ashcroft described Al-Arian as the "North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," presenting that characterization as an allegation contained in the indictment.[1]

The Justice Department described a 50-count indictment against the eight defendants, alleging that they had operated a racketeering enterprise from 1984 onward, organized and funded PIJ activity in the United States, and provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization.[1] The listed charges included racketeering, conspiracy to kill or maim persons abroad, conspiracy to provide material support to PIJ, violations of emergency economic sanctions, extortion, perjury, obstruction of justice, and immigration fraud. Prosecutors also cited declassified national-security wiretaps described in the indictment.[1]

The indictment alleged that Al-Arian served as PIJ's North American leader and as secretary of its worldwide Shura Council, and that he directed audits of the organization's money and property. These were indictment allegations rather than findings established by the Justice Department's charging announcement.[1] PIJ publicly denied that the four men arrested in the United States were members or operatives, calling the accusations "completely baseless."[2]

A January 2000 congressional hearing record described Al-Arian as president of the ICP and incorporating chairman of WISE's board. The hearing presented the alleged links between the organizations and PIJ through witness testimony, investigative assertions, and affidavit claims rather than as adjudicated findings.[9]

Al-Arian's federal criminal trial ran from June 6 to November 14, 2005. The jury acquitted him on eight counts and failed to reach a verdict on nine others, including three of the four most serious conspiracy charges.[3][4] The government dropped the unresolved counts after Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty.[4]

In April 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to Count Four of the indictment: conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of PIJ.[3] He was 48 and had remained in custody since his February 20, 2003, arrest. The plea agreement recommended 46 to 57 months in prison under a five-year statutory maximum, and Al-Arian agreed to stipulate to deportation after completing his sentence.[3]

Al-Arian admitted that he and several co-conspirators had been associated with PIJ in the late 1980s and early-to-mid-1990s, and that he performed services for the organization in 1995 and afterward while serving as a USF professor. He admitted filing immigration paperwork for PIJ associate Bashir Nafi, concealing the terrorist associations of people connected with PIJ, and assisting Mazen al-Najjar in a federal court proceeding. He also acknowledged knowing that PIJ had been designated a terrorist organization and used violence to pursue its objectives.[3]

On May 1, 2006, Judge James S. Moody Jr. imposed a sentence of 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The court also entered a stipulated removal order requiring Al-Arian's deportation after imprisonment.[4] Moody called him "a master manipulator" and said: "You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie."[6] He further stated: "The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You were on the board of directors and an officer, the secretary. Directors control the actions of an organization, even the PIJ; and you were an active leader."[8] The judge also stated: "Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them."[7] Of the 57-month sentence, 38 months represented time already served.[6]

Al-Arian's deportation was delayed by a separate legal dispute after he was summoned to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia investigating terrorism financing connected to the International Institute of Islamic Thought. He refused to testify despite receiving immunity for truthful testimony and was held in contempt.[5]

In 2008, Al-Arian was charged with two counts of criminal contempt arising from his refusal to testify.[12] The litigation extended his detention and legal jeopardy beyond the conclusion of his original sentence. Prosecutors dropped the contempt case in June 2014, clearing the way for his removal from the United States.[5][12]

On February 4, 2015, Al-Arian was deported from the United States to Turkey under the removal condition in his 2006 plea agreement.[5][12] Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that he traveled on a commercial flight from Washington Dulles International Airport.[5] The deportation came nearly nine years after his sentencing, following the contempt proceedings that had delayed his departure.[5]

Following his arrival in Turkey, Al-Arian established and headed the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), a think tank based at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, where he was described as a Public Affairs Professor.[13][14]

In 2021, CIGA organized a weeklong conference titled "Challenging Apartheid in Palestine: Reclaiming the Narrative, Formulating a Vision." At the conference, Al-Arian described Israel as a "settler, colonialist movement" and a "racist movement," and said that "the essence of the struggle should be to dismantle this structure."[14]

In May 2024, Al-Arian appeared on a panel in Istanbul with Hamas member Jamal Issa at a conference titled "The Flood of the Free."[15] In October 2024, CIGA and the Kuala Lumpur Forum organized an Istanbul conference titled "Palestine—'Toufan Al-Aqsa' and Regional and International Orders—Impact, Implications, and Future Directions." Hamas official Osama Hamdan delivered opening remarks, and the event commended Hamas's October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.[16]

Al-Arian's prosecution received international attention as a test of the U.S. government's powers under the USA PATRIOT Act.[12] Its formal legal record was narrower than the original indictment: the jury returned eight acquittals and nine deadlocks, after which Al-Arian pleaded guilty to Count Four and received a 57-month sentence.[3][4] Separate grand-jury contempt proceedings then delayed the deportation required by his plea agreement until 2015.[5][12]

Al-Arian and his supporters maintained that the government's prosecution was politically motivated. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a 2014 statement that he had been "targeted by the government for his political activity for more than a decade."[17] The trial nevertheless produced a mixed legal outcome: eight acquittals, nine counts on which the jury could not reach a verdict, and a later guilty plea to a single conspiracy count.[4]

Al-Arian disputed having sent the 1995 handwritten letter soliciting funds for PIJ that investigators reported finding in his home.[5] PIJ denied that the men arrested in 2003 were members or operatives of the organization.[2] Al-Arian also denied that recordings in which he said "Death to Israel" expressed support for violence, characterizing the phrase as opposition to Israeli occupation policy.[2]

The established legal outcome was that Al-Arian pleaded guilty, received a 57-month prison sentence, agreed to deportation, and was removed from the United States in 2015. His plea included admissions that he performed services for PIJ while knowing it used violence and that he concealed the associations of PIJ-connected individuals.[3][4]