Federal agents arrested University of South Florida (USF) professor Sami Al-Arian early on Feb. 20 at his home in a Tampa, Florida suburb. In a 50-count indictment unsealed later that day, a federal grand jury in Tampa charged Al-Arian and seven others with running a criminal racketeering enterprise that supported, financed and relayed messages for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The indictment accuses Al-Arian of being the US leader of the PIJ, described as a terrorist group. Three of the others charged were arrested in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sweeps in South Florida and Illinois; the other four live outside the US.

Al-Arian is a Palestinian who was born in Kuwait; he has lived in the US since 1975 and is a legal permanent resident. He has been under investigation since at least 1995, when the FBI raided the World and Islam Studies Enterprises (WISE), founded by Al-Arian and his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar. Al-Arian has denied any support for violence; "It's all about politics," he told reporters as he was led into the FBI building in Tampa.
[St. Petersburg Times 2/20/03; BBC News 2/20/03; New York Times 2/20/03 from AP, 2/21/03, 2/22/03; Boston Globe 2/21/03; Chicago Sun-Times 2/21/03; Tampa Tribune 2/22/03]

Abdullah Ramadan Shallah, who taught at USF from 1991 to 1995 and headed WISE before it was raided, was among those indicted. In 1995 Shallah moved to Damascus, Syria, where he heads the PIJ. He told Associated Press that Al-Arian has no connection to the PIJ, which is "a movement resisting Israeli occupation."
[Haaretz (Israel) 2/21/03]

The St. Petersburg Times reports that the indictment against Al- Arian repeatedly refers to his brother-in-law Al-Najjar--without naming him--as "Unindicted Co-conspirator Twelve." [SPT 2/21/03] Al-Najjar, a stateless Palestinian, was jailed by the INS in May 1997 on the basis of secret evidence. He was released on Dec. 15, 2000, after immigration judge Kevin McHugh ruled there was no evidence that WISE was a front for the PIJ. [SPT 12/16/00; Washington Post 12/16/00] On Nov. 24, 2001, the INS rearrested Al-Najjar [see INB 1/18/02]; he was held in solitary confinement until Aug. 22, 2002, when the INS deported him to Beirut. Lebanese officials, angry that the US "illegally dumped" Al- Najjar there, expelled him a few weeks later [see INB 8/24/02, 8/30/02, 9/27/02]. Al-Arian said on Feb. 5 that his brother-in- law had finally been admitted to an undisclosed "US-friendly Arab country" where he was reunited with his wife and three daughters on Feb. 5.
[SPT 2/6/03; Palm Beach Post 2/21/03]

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