On Friday, the New York Times today became the latest tool in an aggressive lobbying campaign aimed at sabotaging a continuing terror investigation in northern Virginia.
The campaign to free Sami Al-Arian started in earnest last year, led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and other American Islamist groups after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative was held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with grand jury subpoenas. He is now defying his third subpoena to testify in a terror-finance investigation involving a Virginia-based network that provided Al-Arian’s organizations with tens of thousands of dollars in the 1990s.
In 2006, Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, with credit for time served, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to provide support to the PIJ. Though his sentence is over, Al-Arian could face criminal contempt of court charges, as the
New York Times reported Friday. But, like Al-Arian’s advocates, the
Times story grossly mischaracterizes the case, distorts what Al-Arian has admitted, and incorrectly states why he remains in legal trouble:
The Justice Department and some independent terrorism investigators have long accused Mr. Al-Arian of being the main North America organizer for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for some of the more deadly suicide bombings against Israeli targets and which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
Mr. Al-Arian’s supporters, though, say that he is nothing more sinister than an outspoken Palestinian activist, and that the Justice Department has tried to exploit the post-Sept. 11 mood in the United States to punish him for that, using legal maneuvering to keep him behind bars.”
If this were a secret tribunal, Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar might be excused for blindly accepting the representations of Al-Arian’s attorneys and supporters. But there is an open record, one every reporter at the nation’s supposed paper of record should be able to locate: Al-Arian’s plea agreement.
Page 10 of the agreement reads: “During the period of the late 1980s, and early to mid-1990s, defendant Al-Arian was associated with several organizations, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Two paragraphs later, it says “Defendant Al-Arian performed services for the PIJ in 1995 and thereafter.” That includes “hiding the identities of individuals associated with the PIJ.” In addition, “Defendant Al-Arian was aware that the PIJ achieved its objectives by, among other means, acts of violence.”
Evidence presented at Al-Arian’s trial showed he was on the PIJ Shura Council — its governing board. Al-Arian signed the plea agreement and initialed each page. There was no shortage of evidence.
Federal wiretaps recorded him arguing with the group’s founder, Fathi Shikaki, during the PIJ’s financial crisis in 1994.
Al-Arian ran “the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement “and hid behind a charity name for ‘security reasons.’ ” He called on supporters to “damn America” for launching the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. He has proclaimed that Allah cursed the Jews by turning them into “monkeys and pigs.”
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