Tampa PIJ Defendant Sentenced in Separate Fraud Case

By Bill West

This past Friday, Sameeh Taha Hammoudeh, who is one of three codefendants scheduled to begin trial in Federal court in Tampa on June 6 with Sami Al-Arian for allegedly providing support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), was sentenced along with his wife Nadia after earlier pleading guilty to three Federal felony fraud counts in a separate indictment that was brought last year.

The Hammoudehs pleaded guilty to committing tax, mortgage and immigration fraud and received sentences of five years probation on each count, to run concurrently. The Hammoudehs also agreed to deportation from the United States, as neither are US citizens nor even permanent resident aliens.

The immigration fraud stemmed from the Hammoudehs lying to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on immigration forms about their employment at the Islamic Academy of Florida, a religious school in Tampa which was founded and operated in conjunction with Al-Arian and his brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar, both of whom are defendants in the PIJ terrorism case; Al-Najjar having been deported in 2002 after a lengthy legal battle.

While the indictment under which the Hammoudehs were just sentenced was technically separate from the pending PIJ case, it likely never would have been brought but for the PIJ investigation that identified Sameeh Hammoudeh and his activities and involvement with the Al-Arian group. The case closing of this particular guilty plea and sentencing on these �separate� felony fraud counts is notable because it marks the third felony conviction case for associates of Al-Arian.

The others were Fawaz Damra, convicted last year in Akron, Ohio of committing fraud in naturalization proceedings by lying about his connections to PIJ and other radical Islamists; and Hussam Abujbara, who helped Al-Arian found the Islamic Concern Project in 1988 (which was the paper front for the Islamic Committee for Palestine � the alleged charity utilized by Al-Arian and others to help PIJ support activities) who pleaded guilty to felony immigration fraud in Orlando in September, 2003 stemming from his prior false statements in his own deportation proceedings several years earlier. Abujbara, who is not named in the pending Tampa PIJ indictment, was placed into new deportation proceedings after his conviction, was a computer engineering professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and once worked for Jesse Maali, the Palestinian-American millionaire who died of cancer in January in Orlando just before he was scheduled to go on trial for multiple counts of immigration and tax fraud.

It is interesting how immigration fraud seems to swirl around these matters. It was INS pursuing immigration fraud that launched the criminal investigation against Al-Arian and the other original Tampa PIJ suspects in late 1994 after the airing of the PBS documentary Jihad in America by Steve Emerson. This demonstrates, yet again, the intimate connection between international terror and violations of US immigration and nationality law. That is something some of us have been desperately trying to make known for a very long time. Unfortunately, until the tragic events of September 11, 2001, not many, especially not many in a position to actually do something about it, wanted to listen.

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