Judge Rebukes, Sentences Al-Arian

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI esilvestrini@tampatrib.com

Published: May 2, 2006

Read Messages From Sami Al-Arian | Read Judge Moody's Comments

TAMPA - Blasting Sami Al-Arian as "master manipulator" who privately rejoiced in suicide bombings while publicly claiming to want peace, a federal judge on Monday sentenced the former college professor to four years and nine months in prison.

The sentence - 11 months longer than prosecutors recommended and the maximum allowed under a plea agreement - means Al-Arian will have to spend at least 10 more months behind bars, assuming he receives credit for good behavior. Al-Arian, who has served three years and two months, would have to serve an additional year and seven months without good-behavior credit.

Before he was sentenced, Al-Arian read from a prepared statement: "I take full responsibility for the actions outlined in the agreement." He then thanked his attorneys, his family and jurors who acquitted him in December on eight of 17 charges.

"This process, your honor, affirmed my belief in the meaning [of] our democratic society," he said. He expressed gratitude for the 31 years he has spent in the United States, noting that he will be deported under the plea agreement. "As I leave, I harbor no bitterness or resentment," he said. "I am grateful for the opportunities afforded the son of stateless Palestinian refugees."

"As usual, you speak very eloquently," U.S. District Judge James Moody told Al-Arian when it was time to impose sentence. "I find it interesting that here in public you praise this country, the same country that in private you refer to as the great Satan. But that's just evidence of how you operate in the face of your friends and neighbors. You are a master manipulator."

The judge issued a withering assessment of Al-Arian's activities, noting at one point that Al-Arian claimed to be raising money for widows and orphans, when instead he was helping the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the United States has classified a terrorist organization.

"Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you created them, even among Palestinians," the judge said. "You create them, not by sending your children to blow themselves out of existence. No. You exhort others to send their children. Your children attend the finest universities this country has to offer, while you raise money to blow up the children of others."

Because Al-Arian gave up most of his rights to appeal under the agreement, it is highly unlikely Moody's sentence could be overturned.

One legal analyst saw in the judge's rebuke not only a condemnation of Al-Arian but also a spotlight of the prosecution's failures in the case.

Defense Notes 'Painful Price'

As the judge spoke, Al-Arian's supporters and family watched in silence in the gallery of the courtroom. About 30 people watched from an overflow room that received a video feed. Many gasped at Moody's proclamations. One man exclaimed, "There might as well have not been a jury!"

After the hearing, Al-Arian's supporters gathered outside the courthouse waving signs with slogans such as, "Charity for widows and orphans is not a crime" and "Palestinian self-determination is not terrorism."

The Rev. Warren Clark, another Al-Arian supporter, told reporters he has spent a lot of time with Al-Arian and prayed with him and his family. "The Sami Al-Arian I know is different than the Sami Al-Arian the judge described," he said. "The family has gone through hell, and it looks like they're going to go through some more."

Last month, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to providing services to the Islamic Jihad, which is responsible for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel and its occupied territories and the deaths of more than 100 people. The plea capped a saga that stretched more than 10 years, going back to late 1993, when government investigators began to secretly wiretap the communications of Al-Arian, then a popular computer science professor at the University of South Florida.

After a trial that stretched over five months, jurors in December failed to convict Al-Arian of a single charge but deadlocked on nine counts. Al-Arian's supporters have said he accepted the plea deal to allow him to be reunited with his family and end the ordeal they have endured.

Defense attorney Linda Moreno tried to persuade Moody to sentence her client to time served, arguing that he has suffered enough. "Dr. Al-Arian has already paid a painful price," she said. Two of the three years he spent incarcerated while awaiting trial were in a high-security unit of a maximum-security federal prison.

"The last time Dr. Al-Arian put his children to bed was before the predawn raid of February 2003," Moreno said. "This is a case that has no victims. This is a conviction that is not a crime of violence."

U.S. Attorney Has No Regrets

U.S. Attorney Paul Perez took the unusual step of presenting the prosecution's side in the sentencing hearing. Perez later said it was his first time arguing a criminal case in a courtroom in more than four years. "This is probably the most important case I've had in my office since I became U.S. attorney," he said.

Although his office and the Justice Department have been roundly criticized for their handling of the case, Perez said he had "no regrets" about how it was prosecuted.

Inside the courtroom, Perez spoke briefly, urging the judge to abide by the plea agreement. "This plea agreement is in the best interests of the United States because the objective of the prosecution was to expose Mr. Al-Arian and other members of the PIJ and bring them to justice for the crimes they committed," he said.

Analyst Speaks Of Legal Flaws

A legal analyst who has followed the case closely, however, thought the judge's hard line should embarrass prosecutors. "It only magnified the low sentence given the defendant in the case," said Jonathan Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School. "While prosecutors may have been personally gratified by it, it only tended to highlight the fact that this was not a very successful prosecution."

Turley said it is unusual for a judge to depart from the government's recommended sentence in a plea agreement, and he saw frustration in Moody's remarks.

"The conclusion of the case has little bearing on whether Al-Arian bears moral responsibility for these acts," he said. "This case had legal flaws. There's a great deal of incriminating material in the record, but the case fell significantly short of supporting the government claims. ... The court clearly believes that Al-Arian got away lightly in this case."

Addressing reporters after the hearing, Moreno said the prosecution of Al-Arian always was political. The government's designation of the Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization, she said, "is a political decision. It is something that changes from administration to administration."