Sami Into The Sunset

By Bill West

Today, as reported earlier by Steve Emerson on this Blog and in other media outlets, Sami Al-Arian was sentenced in Federal court to 57 months in prison after pleading guilty to one felony count linking him to support for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. As part of the plea agreement, the Government dropped the remaining counts against Al-Arian. Al-Arian also agreed to be removed (deported) from the US as part of the deal. The sentencing effectively ends the criminal case against the former University of South Florida (USF) professor, and although US District Court Judge James Moody gave Al-Arian credit for the more than three years he has already been incarcerated, he will spend something close to another year and a half being detained before facing deportation.

That deportation itself may prove problematic for the Government. As noted in a previous article in this Blog, removing stateless Palestinians, and Al-Arian is that, is not an easy task. One who is a convicted felon with a terrorist background becomes even harder to deport. Finding a country to physically accept such a person is the problem. Making arrangements for transferring those deportees directly back to the Palestinian controlled territories is not necessarily an answer, either, since dealing with the Palestinian Authority before the election of the new Hamas government was never easy and under the new circumstances may be nearly impossible. Working these matters with moderate and somewhat friendly third countries will likely be the only solution to successfully deporting Al-Arian and some of his similarly situated fellow Palestinian “colleagues.” At least with Al-Arian, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will now have some added time to work through the removal issues.

The criminal case against Al-Arian was long and complex. As the Government made public with the indictment and prosecution, the FBI had an intelligence investigation going against Al-Arian from the 1990s before any criminal investigation was launched. The criminal investigative effort was actually begun in late 1994, after the airing of Jihad in America, produced by Steve Emerson, that publicly highlighted Al-Arian’s links to the PIJ and his PIJ support activities in Tampa. Jihad in America coincided with a series of articles in the Tampa Tribune written by investigative reporter Mike Fechter detailing many of Al-Arian’s suspected PIJ-linked activities. I was an INS Supervisory Special Agent in Miami at the time and happened to watch both the Emerson documentary and read the Fechter articles. After conducting initial immigration checks and determining that Al-Arian was a resident alien who had applied for US citizenship, the criminal investigation was launched, focusing at the time on potential felony immigration violations.

The INS investigators teamed up with the FBI in Tampa. However, the FBI maintained its intelligence inquiry separate from our criminal investigation, and assigned specific criminal case agents to work with INS and later US Customs personnel. The case quickly evolved into a substantial multi-agency counter-terrorism investigation with many facets. When Ramadan Shallah surfaced in Damascus as the new chief of the PIJ in late 1995, the criminal investigation was kicked into higher gear and the November of 1995 search warrant operations raiding Al-Arian’s residence and USF office and the WISE office were conducted. Those search warrants, written by me with some help from my FBI friends, were based primarily on immigration crimes at the time. Immigration violations, it should be understood, were always a major part of what this case was about. The indictment indicated that and the fact basis in the guilty plea clearly bares this out. This was always a terrorism support case, but one wherein the utilization of immigration fraud and other immigration violations were intrinsically linked to that terrorism support.

From that perspective, the Al-Arian case is a glaring example of how savvy and sophisticated terrorism operatives can blatantly abuse our immigration systems to their nefarious purposes. It also demonstrates how complex and difficult pursuing and prosecuting such a case can be, particularly when those violations occur over a very long period of time and in conjunction with other complex activities such as multiple and confusing business and financial transactions. Judge Moody, today at the sentencing hearing, called Al-Arian a “master manipulator.” His Honor is a keen and intelligent observer.

I was closely involved with this investigation from its inception in late 1994 until late 2001, when after 9/11 my duties supervising the National Security Section for INS in Miami required a different focus. When Al-Arian was arrested in February 2003, he was quoted as saying his prosecution was all about politics. Al-Arian had ingratiated himself with a number of political figures of both parties, and had even visited the White House on a couple of occasions. All this played out in the media, usually in Al-Arian’s favor.

I found Al-Arian’s political comment when he was arrested a bit humorous. It reminded me of all the times I personally had recommended, from at least late 1995 onward, that Al-Arian could and should be prosecuted for “stand alone” immigration violations that would be “sterile” of any terrorism support charges that could be pursued later. The idea in that was rooted in the counter-terrorism concept of preemption, prevention and disruption. Those recommendations, given the high-profile nature of the case, had to be considered by senior levels of the Department of Justice before being decided.

The answer was always no. The answer was always to continue the investigation to “gather additional evidence” and any immigration charges would be “wrapped into” a larger indictment later. Eventually, most of those potential immigration crimes had the statute of limitations expire because of the length of time that went by. Interestingly, those denied prosecution requests came from the Janet Reno DOJ at the same time President Bill Clinton was routinely playing host to (and being played by) Yasser Arafat at the White House and Camp David in his failed attempt to become the great peacemaker in the Middle East. If there were political issues involved in deciding the Al-Arian prosecution, score for Sami - the junkyard dogs were kept at bay for a long time.

The prosecution team that finally indicted and tried Al-Arian took a lot of criticism. The hung jury in December was a tough blow; but, it was a hung jury and not a decisive victory for the defense. This was a long, complex, difficult and messy case. The prosecution has hung tough and deserves great credit for continuing the effort through the end. Any conviction is a victory for the prosecution and, notwithstanding what Al-Arian’s apologists and supporters (dwindling as they may now be) continue to say, Al-Arian has now been proven to be a supporter of PIJ terror. He is also now a convicted criminal alien felon who, hopefully, will be removed from the United States upon completion of his remaining sentence.

The plea agreement, and it was a guilty plea wherein Al-Arian admitted his guilt, resulted in Al-Arian also admitting that several other of his associates were PIJ operatives. Those include his brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar, Ramadan Shallah and Bashir Nafi.

Bashir Nafi, who the INS deported in 1996 from Virginia for violating his “H” temporary worker visa status. A visa Al-Arian and Al-Najjar helped him obtain to supposedly work at their Tampa Islamic think-tank. Nafi, the PIJ operative, was really working at another Islamic think-tank in northern Virginia...that happens to still be in existence. Interestingly, an executive of that Virginia think-tank once sent a message to Al-Arian attesting to their solidarity.

A quick reminder - it was Mazen Al-Najjar that we in INS spent five years trying to and finally deporting in 2002 (yet another example of how time-consuming, complex and difficult the deportation process can be) and taking hits in the press from every angle over our partial use of classified (“secret”) evidence for detaining him after a court had already issued a deportation order against him. Al-Najjar was a PIJ terror operative. We knew it, couldn’t publicly tell why we knew it at the time, but had to try our best to detain him for security reasons while we tried to deport him. What did we, the folks trying to do our jobs protecting the public, get for our efforts? Crucified in the press. So...what else is new? A note here - Mike Fechter at the Tampa Tribune was about the only media person that kept a balanced and fair perspective on the Al-Najjar case.

That’s the kind of treatment the Al-Arian prosecution team has been through. They didn’t deserve it, but they got it, and now they have won, whether the media will recognize it or not. It’s often tough in Government service, especially the law enforcement and national security side of things, to plow through in the face of mounting public adversity. The Al-Arian case prosecution team did just that, and did an excellent job, and they deserve substantial credit and thanks.

A final comment: The “Sami Al-Arian, et al” case has been unique and strange from the outset. It was a counter-terrorism investigation conducted in substantial part in full view of the media, but that is because in large part its criminal case genesis was with the media. Steve Emerson and Mike Fechter, by bringing Al-Arian’s activities to public light, toppled the first dominos in a very long chain. Nearly twelve years later, the last few of those dominos are finally falling, with some reasonable degree of justice being meted out thanks to a lot of hard work by not a few smart and dedicated folks in Federal service.

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