On the 13th day of deliberations, on the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Tampa, and after six months of testimony, jurors have rejected federal prosecutors’ assertion that former USF professor Sami Al-Arian was a terrorist.

Samimoreno1_2Although they deadlocked on three of four major charges against Al-Arian and co-defendant Hatem Fariz, jurors on Friday found them and two others not guilty of dozens of charges related to conspiracy, mail fraud, aiding terrorism and extortion.

It was a near-total loss for prosecutors, whose lumbering and complex case didn’t connect with the jury. Al-Arian’s attorney, Linda Moreno, called the jury’s verdict “a stinging rebuke” to the government, which tapped Al-Arian’s phones and investigated him for more than a decade before indicting him in 2003.

“I’m grateful to God,” Nahla Al-Arian said outside the courtroom where her husband was led back to jail despite the near complete acquittal. “I’m grateful to the jury, the wonderful jury.” Once in the lobby of the courthouse, she hugged a friend and cried, “God is great. God is great. I can’t believe it.”

Al-Arian was alleged to be the U.S. head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for dozens of terrorism deaths in Israel and the Occupied Territories. He was flat-out acquitted of conspiring to murder those victims; three other major allegations – conspiracy, extortion and providing assistance to a terrorist organization – resulted in a mistrial when jurors said they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.

So here is where they stand:

  • Al-Arian goes back to jail, awaiting a motion for bond and an immigration detainer request that will keep him there even if he is granted bond. The government must decide whether it wants to retry him on remaining charges on which the jury deadlocked.
  • Fariz is already out on bond and left the courthouse with his attorney, assistant public defender Kevin Beck. They had no comment, but nodded yes when asked if he was happy. He likewise awaits the feds decision on whether to retry him.
  • Sameeh Hammoudeh was found innocent on all charges against him. He now faces deportation, which he agreed to voluntarily as part of a plea bargaining agreement he reached on unrelated charges before this trial. His lawyer, Stephen Bernstein of Gainesville, called for Hammoudeh’s immediate release.
  • Ghassan Ballut was acquitted on all charges and walked out of the courtroom a free man. He said he plans to return home to Chicago and hug his four children.

The victory was also sweet for the Tampa Bay Muslim community, some of whom shrieked in delight and clapped as the verdicts were read in the overflow courtroom. For Ahmed Bedier, the head of the local Council on American-Islamic Relations, the win for Al-Arian and his co-defendants disproved Bedier’s assertions pre-trial that the men could not receive a fair trial in Tampa due to overwhelmingly negative coverage and attitudes toward Muslims. Outside the federal courthouse after the verdicts were read, Bedier said, “We were proven wrong. It was a fair trial.”

This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2005.