Ex-Professor Won Court Case but Not His Freedom

Aside from his work as a Palestinian activist, al-Arian was the founder of a mosque and a 250-student school here, which has struggled because prosecutors said it was a front for al-Arian's efforts to aid terrorist groups.

"This is an American school," Ayman Barakat, a used-car exporter who is the chairman of the school's board, said as he walked around the 12-acre campus. "The only difference is we teach, in addition to everything else, Arabic and Islamic studies. Our kids have gone to Yale and Duke. It's not a front."

"When he was first arrested, there were many here who had doubts about the American justice system," Barakat said. "When the verdict came out, they knew it could work."

Whether al-Arian might ever work at the school again is in doubt, however.

Steve Cole, a spokesman at the U.S. attorney's office in Tampa, said prosecutors have not decided whether to retry al-Arian on the deadlocked charges. If they do, that could mean years more behind bars.

"We don't really have a timetable for a decision, but it's not something that's going to take months," he said.

Once the legal proceedings are completed, al-Arian "most likely will be put into removal proceedings" for deportation, said Pam McCullough, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. She declined to say what the grounds are for deporting al-Arian.

To the anger of some professors at the University of South Florida, officials suspended al-Arian again, in 2001, just days after he appeared on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," where he was chastised for his affiliations by host Bill O'Reilly, who said, "If I was the CIA, I'd follow you wherever you went."

The TV appearance led to a flood of angry phone calls to the university from people who said tax money should not be paying al-Arian's salary. He was eventually fired.

Even today, faculty members are split over his role at the university and in the world at large, said Roy C. Weatherford, president of the faculty union. "Some believe he has been treated unfairly," he said. "And some believe he should never again be associated with the university."

In the absence of guilty verdicts, questions about al-Arian revolve around his sympathies for terrorists, his affiliation with Shallah and the strong words with which he condemned Israel.

His supporters defend his words as a matter of free speech. His wife put them in a political context.

"What people do not understand is that victims say bad words about their victimizers," Nahla al-Arian said, when asked about some of her husband's remarks. "We are the victims. . . . We don't hate people. We don't hate the Jews. We hate the occupation."