Former professor acquitted on charges of aiding terrorist

TAMPA, Fla. -- In a stinging defeat for prosecutors, a former Florida professor accused of helping lead a terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel was acquitted on nearly half the charges against him Tuesday, and the jury deadlocked on the rest.\nThe case against Sami Al-Arian, 47, had been seen as one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act's expanded search-and-surveillance powers.\nAfter a five-month trial and 13 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight of the 17 counts against him, including a key charge of conspiring to maim and murder people overseas. The jurors deadlocked on the others, including charges he aided terrorists.\nAl-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering professor, wept after the verdicts, and his attorney, Linda Moreno hugged him. He will return to jail until prosecutors decide whether to retry him on the deadlocked charges.\nTwo co-defendants, Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, were acquitted of all charges. A third, Hatem Naji Fariz, was found not guilty on 24 counts, and jurors deadlocked on the remaining eight.\n"While we respect the jury's verdict, we stand by the evidence we presented in court," Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.\nAl-Arian's wife, Nahla, celebrated outside the courthouse with family members and supporters.\n"I'm ecstatic," she said. "My husband is an outspoken Palestinian activist who loved this country, believed in the system, and the system did not fail him."\nMoreno said she hoped prosecutors would take into account the "overwhelming number of not-guilty verdicts" against the defendants in deciding whether to try Al-Arian again.\n"We are so grateful to these jurors," Moreno said. "They worked hard." She planned to ask the court soon to release Al-Arian from jail.\nFederal prosecutors said Sami Al-Arian and his co-defendants acted as the communications arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, spreading the word and raising money that went toward the suicide attacks that have killed hundreds.\nAl-Arian was considered one of the most important terrorist figures to be brought to trial in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His indictment in 2003 was hailed by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as one of the first triumphs of the Patriot Act, which was enacted in the weeks after Sept. 11.\nThe Patriot Act gave the government greatly expanded powers and broke down the wall between foreign intelligence investigations and domestic law enforcement. In the Al-Arian case, officials said, it allowed separate FBI investigations -- one of them a yearslong secret foreign intelligence probe of the professor's activities -- to be combined and all the evidence used against him.\nA male juror, whose name was being kept secret by the court, said he did not see the case as a First Amendment issue, explaining that the decision came down to lack of proof. "I didn't see the evidence," he said.\nOn Monday, the panel told federal Judge James S. Moody that they could not reach verdicts on all counts. Moody sent them back to continue deliberations, and they emerged Tuesday to tell the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked on the remaining counts against Al-Arian and Fariz.\nOne juror said in a note to the judge that she was being pressured by other jurors to change her vote and could not continue to deliberate. "My nerves and my conscience are being whipped into submission," the juror wrote.\nAl-Arian, a Palestinian who was born in Kuwait, has lived in the United States since 1975. He was granted permanent-resident status in 1989 and denied U.S. citizenship in 1996. He was fired from the university shortly after he was indicted.\nThe federal jury heard from 80 government witnesses and listened to often-plodding testimony about faxes and wiretapped phone calls.\nThe government alleged that the defendants were part of a Tampa terrorist cell that took the lead in determining the structure and goals of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the State Department has listed as a terrorist group.