'Professor by day and terrorist by night' (JIHAD IN AMERICA ALERT)
CNN.Com - Law Center ^ | Tuesday, November 8, 2005| TAMPA, Florida (AP)
sptimes.com
Sami Al-Arian
Prosecutor charges professor was terror 'crime boss'
A fired college professor acted as a "crime boss" for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a murderous gang that operated like the Mafia, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday.
Although Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants are not charged with killing anyone, they conspired to bring about attacks and are just as guilty under the law as the suicide bombers who carried them out, prosecutor Cherie Krigsman said in closing arguments.
"The men of the PIJ you got to know in this case, they didn't strap bombs to their body," she said. "They leave that to somebody else."
Al-Arian, 47, and his co-defendants are accused of using Palestinian charities and educational entities as fundraising fronts for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to help bombings that killed hundreds.
The men deny they supported violence and say they are being persecuted for views that are unpopular in the United States.
Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering teacher who was fired after he was indicted, "was a professor by day and a terrorist by night," Krigsman said.
Prosecutors built their case around hundreds of pages of transcripts of wiretapped phone calls and faxes intercepted by the FBI from the mid-1990s to about 2003, including discussions about the direction and financing of the PIJ. The participants at times appear to celebrate suicide attacks that killed Israelis and speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried them out.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ... |
