Trial to Reveal Reach Of U.S. Surveillance

The al-Arian case has been the subject of intense controversy for a decade. It is a kind of proxy battle for the Middle East conflict, and it has stirred emotions as raw as those in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

In October 1995, after years directing a campaign of deadly attacks on Israelis, Fathi Shiqaqi, then the head of the terrorist group, was assassinated in Malta by the Israelis. His successor was Ramadan Shallah, a longtime top official of al-Arian's USF-affiliated think tank in Tampa. Al-Arian and others at the think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), said they had no idea Shallah had ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Weeks later, federal agents raided the homes and offices of al-Arian and his associates. Al-Arian denied any wrongdoing or any link to the terrorist organization, and for years academic-freedom activists supported his contention that he was being pilloried for being an anti-Israel Muslim activist.

Much of that controversy died when al-Arian and eight other people, including Shallah, were indicted in 2003. The indictment included lengthy quotes from FISA intercepts indicating that al-Arian had been in close contact for years with Shiqaqi, Shallah and other top group leaders about the group's most secret internal operations.

U.S. officials were allowed to use the FISA intercepts in the case because the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and a FISA appeals court decision in 2003 had torn down the long-unbreachable wall between FBI criminal investigators and intelligence personnel. The legal wall had previously prevented FBI intelligence agents from sharing any information about the FISA taps with agents pursuing criminal cases.

Conviction on the main charges -- including conspiracy to commit racketeering through the murder of Israelis, money laundering and other crimes -- could bring life sentences for al-Arian, Hammoudeh, Fariz and a fourth defendant, Chicago dry cleaner Ghassan Zayed Ballut.

All four also are accused of extortion as part of that conspiracy, on the theory that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad threatens Israelis with death if they do not leave Israel. Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, said he believes that is an unprecedented use of the extortion law, but he added that it appears to be legally sound.

McCarthy said the case most resembles a classic Mafia trial, in which prosecutors charge that simply by being in, say, the Gambino family, all the defendants conspired to commit the array of crimes that each committed individually. "You've got to convince the jury the entity is evil," he said.

Prosecutors said they intend to place on the witness stand dozens of Israeli survivors of Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacks. To illustrate the effects of an attack, officials may also play videotapes they made of a bus being blown up in Florida.

Five of the nine indicted defendants are overseas and not in custody and will not be tried. They are Shallah, who still runs the organization from Syria; Abd al Aziz Awda, its original spiritual leader; al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar; leading Muslim scholar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khatib, the group's alleged treasurer.

In the early- to mid-1990s, al-Arian, Shallah, al-Najjar and Nafi were all at the WISE think tank in Florida, and U.S. officials said they were four of the 10 members of the terrorist group's worldwide Shura Council, or top leadership body.

Last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter E. Furr III said in court that the Tampa group was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad "cell" that acted as "the communications center" for the Syria-based group by, among other things, disseminating announcements of its suicide attacks.

Al-Arian's alleged role as a conduit of information among group leaders is outlined in the intercepted conversations and faxes. The intercepts also detail the alleged roles of al-Arian and the other WISE defendants in straightening out the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial problems, as well as the arguments with various group leaders about how much to tell their Iranian financial patrons about the embezzlement allegedly committed by the group's treasurer.

Al-Arian's attorneys note that he was well known for advocating that Muslims participate in U.S. politics. Al-Arian worked hard to get himself invited to gatherings of powerful officials, meeting with President Bill Clinton and with then-presidential candidate George W. Bush in 2000. Those meetings "seem to belie the notion that Dr. al-Arian was in any way considered by anyone in the intelligence or law enforcement communities to be any kind of threat," his attorney, William Moffitt, said in a court document.