: After Years Of Investigating, FBI Finally Arrests Sami Al-Arian

For a while, it looked like University of South Florida engineering professor Sami Al-Arian was on his way to prevailing over a decade-long investigation by the US government that tried to pin him to terrorism. The FBI combed through his life in 1995, looking for connections to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but found nothing that could implicate him. They tried to link him in a guilt-by-association strategy to associates Mazen Al-Najjar, detained without charge in 1997 in a case that brought the issue of secret evidence to the forefront, and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, a former partner at an Islamic think tank co-founded with Arian who abruptly left the US and popped up as the head of Islamic Jihad (OK, we’ll admit – that’s creepy). He spent much of the past year fending off attempts to fire him from his position at USF and dealing with the fallout from an O’Reilly interview where he was chastised for “Death to Israel” comments he made a decade ago. But, you can’t arrest someone based on things they said or people they know, right? Well, given the scope of the Al-Arian investigation, something more was bound to happen. Yesterday, armed with a new indictment that purports to show Al-Arian leading fundraising for the Islamic Jihad, the FBI finally arrested Al-Arian on charges of supporting terrorism. The indictment, which details phone conversations and meetings Al-Arian had with suspected Islamic Jihad operatives, marks the first time in a decade that specific charges are being brought on Al-Arian. Al-Arian has had quite a bit of support from the Muslim community, as well as from his colleagues and groups supporting academic freedom. These groups have given Al-Arian the benefit of the doubt in the past, and are now calling for an open, fair trial to determine Al-Arian’s fate – and are probably also hoping that their trust in Al-Arian’s innocence hasn’t been unfounded.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.