Sami Amin Al-Arian (Arabic: سامي أمين العريان; born January 14, 1958) is a Kuwaiti-born political activist of Palestinian origin who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida.
However, as his release date approached, a federal prosecutor in Virginia demanded he testify before a grand jury in a separate case, which he refused to do, claiming it would violate his plea deal.
[12] He moved to Temple Terrace after he was hired as an assistant professor to teach computer engineering at University of South Florida (USF) on January 22, 1986.
[8][19][20] WISE published journals, supported graduate student education, and held seminars between American and Middle Eastern scholars.
[24] In November 1995, federal agents investigating "violations of perjury and immigration laws" searched Sami Al-Arian's home for six hours to seize bank statements dating as far back as 1986, airline passes, telephone bills, AAA travel maps, family videotapes, audiotapes, and computer disks.
[10][25] A three-month independent inquiry was led by prominent Tampa lawyer and former USF President William Reece Smith that involved hundreds of documents and 59 interviews.
[27] In May 1996, Villanova University canceled a seminar that involved many speakers including Al-Arian after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) complained about the possibility of riots.
[7] Al-Arian met Bush during a campaign stop at the Florida Strawberry Festival to demonstrate against the Clinton administration's use of secret evidence.
[7] During the White House briefing that announced Bush as the winner of the election, Al-Arian received a spot in the front row for his voter outreach efforts in Florida.
[7] On June 20, 2001, Al-Arian joined 160 Muslim-American activists in a White House briefing with Bush senior adviser Karl Rove.
[46] But in a separate White House event on June 28, his son Abdullah – a congressional intern – made national headlines when he was escorted out by Secret Service without explanation.
[44] President Bush personally apologized in a letter to Nahla and thanked the family for their charitable contributions to the Muslim communities around the world.
[57] The Faculty Senate held an emergency meeting in January 2002 in which they approved by a wide majority a resolution that condemned the firing as an assault on academic freedom.
[63] At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Lakeland in February 2002, Al-Arian discussed the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and answered questions from the community regarding his USF quandary.
[65] Following the summit, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) revealed that it was conducting an investigation on Genshaft to determine if she had violated academic freedom.
[65] In late April 2002, AAUP investigators reported that Genshaft was wavering on her decision to fire Al-Arian, especially if the university was officially censured.
[67] AAUP's investigating committee determined USF's premise for Al-Arian's removal was "insubstantial" and cited "grave issues of academic freedom and due process".
[69] John Esposito, a prominent scholar of Middle East, cancelled his USF speech in October 2002 to protest Genshaft's contraventions on academic freedom.
[73] In March 2002, John Loftus compounded on O'Reilly's accusations by citing anonymous sources and filing a lawsuit that claimed Al-Arian used state-regulated organizations to launder money.
[75] After one of the Justice Department's longest-running and most controversial terrorism investigations, federal prosecutors filed an indictment on February 21, 2003, which charged Al-Arian with racketeering for Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
[78] Local community activists, Iraq war protesters, and Muslim-Americans held demonstrations regularly on Al-Arian's affair in the weeks following the indictment.
[87] On February 28, 2006, Al-Arian signed a plea agreement in which he agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to contribute services to or for the benefit of the PIJ, a Specially Designated Terrorist organization, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
[93][94] Judge Moody sentenced al-Arian to the maximum 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release on May 1, 2006, and gave him credit for time served.
[98] In a 2007 letter to Ashcroft, the human rights organization went on to declare that his "unacceptably harsh and punitive" abuse by prison guards was "based, at least in part, on his political background.
[91] Thirteen months later, on December 14, 2007, the Virginia District Court lifted its contempt order, starting the clock ticking again on his days-served on his conspiracy guilty plea sentence.
[91] A Florida District Court also held that the plea agreement was not ambiguous, and did not prevent the government from issuing a subpoena requiring him to testify before a grand jury.
[107] On September 2, 2008, he was released from custody and put under house arrest at his daughter Laila's residence in Northern Virginia, where he was monitored electronically while he awaited trial on criminal contempt charges.
[108][109][110] At a January 2009 hearing to schedule his trial, his attorneys filed documents saying Al-Arian "did cooperate and answer questions on IIIT" for federal prosecutors.
[114] On March 9, 2010, Judge Leonie Brinkema postponed the criminal contempt trial, pending a motion by defense attorneys to dismiss the charges in the case.
In 2024, the New York Police Department and Mayor Eric Adams stated that Al-Arian posted on Twitter a photo of his wife at the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupation.