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'After The Mountain Of Hardship, Yes, I Am Free'

By CHRIS ECHEGARAY cechegaray@tampatrib.com

Published: Dec 8, 2005

TAMPA - Ghassan Zayed Ballut is not a defendant anymore.

He will board a plane this morning - allowing he remains off of the government's no-fly list - and return to his family and simple life in Chicago. For good.

"I'm going to hug my children and my wife," Ballut said Wednesday. "After the mountain of hardship, yes, I am free. I owe my wife a vacation. She suffered a lot."

Of four men tried in Tampa on terrorism-related charges, only Ballut, 43, and Sameeh Hammoudeh were completely acquitted. The other two, Hatim Fariz and Sami Al-Arian, were acquitted on some charges and no verdict was reached on the rest. The government must decide whether to retry them.

Ballut leaves all that behind when he arrives in Chicago at 9 this morning. The stinging cold will not bother him.

"It is cold, but what happened right now - it's really hot," Ballut said. "The whole country was watching."

It has been a harrowing experience for the four men, Ballut's attorney, Bruce Howie, said.

"This case is an example of the hysteria in which our leaders have attempted to address terrorism," he said. "Ghassan should have never had been on the indictment at all."

In the indictment, federal prosecutors said Ballut reserved a Chicago high school auditorium and spoke at a 1991 rally to memorialize a gunfight four years earlier between Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters and Israelis. That event was said to have ignited the first Palestinian intifada - an armed uprising against Israeli occupation.

He was accused of being the leader of the Chicago cell of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He faced five counts of using telephone lines to engage in money laundering or extortion and nine counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist group.

Ballut was extradited to Florida in February 2003. His wife, Hanan Ballut, was left alone to run their dry cleaning and tailor shop in Ford City Mall and care for their four children, ages 16, 15, 10 and 6.

"We were deprived from our lives for a while," Hanan Ballut said. "Enough crying for us. Now, nothing but happiness, I hope."

She said she worked 12- to 14-hour days, leaving her oldest daughter to care for her siblings. Hanan hired a part-time worker so she could pick up her two youngest children from the bus stop, cook for them and drive 45 minutes back to work.

"There were no adults at home," Hanan Ballut said. "The kids were living alone. There was so much emotions that grades were dropping. I had to be strong and have faith."

The only one of the four allowed bail, Ghassan Ballut occasionally flew home. In late 2003, his lawyer said, he attempted to board a plane in Chicago and was detained by the FBI. He was on the no-fly list, a Transportation Security Administration effort to keep terrorism suspects off airplanes.

His attorney successfully petitioned for Ballut's name to be removed a year later.

Ballut was born in the West Bank and came to the United States in 1985. He became a U.S. citizen in 1991. In Chicago, he met his wife, who was born in Jordan and is also a U.S. citizen. She arrived in the United States with her parents at age 16.

Hanan Ballut said the trial's outcome cements that Muslims, Arabs and Middle Easterners are part of American society.

"We could have lost faith," she said. "We believe now that we belong. We believe in humanity and the American people. I'm an American, and so are my children."