June 29, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1429

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28: Palestinian activist and a former professor of South Florida University, Dr Sami al-Arian, has been indicted in Alexandria, Virginia on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.

The indictment alleges that al-Arian knowingly disobeyed a judge’s order to testify before the grand jury. Al-Arian has said that terms of his plea agreement of May 2006 exempt him from testifying, but two judges have rejected his plea.

Dr al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody because he has refused to testify before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses. Only three weeks before his scheduled release date of April 7, 2008, he was informed on March 19 that he would be called to testify before a third grand jury in Virginia.

A federal jury, on December 6, 2005, acquitted Dr Sami al-Arian, of conspiring to aid a Palestinian group in killing Israelis through suicide bombings. Al-Arian was found not guilty on eight of 17 counts, including conspiracy to maim or murder.

Jurors deadlocked on the rest of the charges, including ones that he aided terrorists.

“After failing to convict Dr al-Arian before a Florida jury, the government has continued to use any and all means to prolong his confinement,” said al-Arian’s attorney, Jonathan Turley.

He said the government has used similar tactics to confine others acquitted of terrorism-related charges. For example, former Howard

University professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar was sentenced to 11 years in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Chicagoafter he was acquitted on charges of aiding the Palestinian militant networkHamas.

Turley said al-Arian has given two sworn statements to the government and volunteered to take a polygraph test to demonstrate he’s told everything he knows about the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Va., which funded his Palestinian think-tank in Tampa.

“This confirms that the government always intended to indict Dr al-Arian regardless of his cooperation,” Turley said.

The mistreatment of Dr Al-Arian remains an international symbol of how the Bush Administration has discarded fundamental principles of fairness in a blind pursuit of retribution against this political activist, he stressed.

When Dr Sami al-Arian was arrested in 2003, the then Attorney General John Ashcroft declared a major victory in the “war against terrorism.”