Washington - Kuwaiti-born Sami Al-Arian, a one-time computer
engineering professor, was released from jail just hours ahead of a
court deadline for US officials to explain why immigration officials
still wanted him held, media reports said Wednesday.
Al-Arian, 50, had fully served a five-year sentence that resulted
from a plea bargain to charges of conspiring to aid an Islamic group
by helping with immigration benefits for a member of the group.
His term was up in July, but US immigration officials wanted him
to be kept in jail pending a trial on another set of charges that he
refused to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia in a
separate case, the St Petersburg Times reported.
But a federal judge had in July ordered his release by this week
unless immigration officials could come up with a good reason not to
release him.
Al-Arian was acquitted of some terrorism conspiracy charges in
2005 in a Tampa, Florida courtroom. He later reached the plea bargain
to serve five years over nine other counts over which the jury was
deadlocked.
Arian and three co-defendants were charged with financing a
terrorist group - the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - since 1984.
Al-Arian taught at the University of Southern Florida for ten
years, where his employment status fluctuated. The school suspended
him in 1996, but reinstated him when they were unable to press
charges against him.
In 2001, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a
commentator on a national television broadcaster, Fox News, accused
him of being a terrorist and using the university as a front for the
terrorist group. The university suspended him, saying it was for his
own safety after death threats were made, but he received paid leave.
After his arrest in 2003 by federal prosecutors, Al-Arian was
fired.
USA
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