NEW YORK, 2 July 2004 — The US government dropped all remaining charges against a Saudi graduate student on Wednesday, and agreed to let him return home.
In a tit-for-tat agreement, the government agreed to dismiss their remaining immigration charges against Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, in exchange for his agreement to drop an appeal over his deportation order. He could have faced a lengthy prison sentence if convicted, as the terrorism counts carried sentences of up to 15 years in prison, officials said.
“He’s going back to Saudi Arabia,” his defense attorney David Nevin, told the media. “This long ordeal has come to an end.”
It has been quite an ordeal for Al-Hussayen, who was in custody for more than a year. In June he was acquitted of using his computer skills to support terrorism.
The case against Al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old doctoral candidate in computer science at the University of Idaho, was seen as an important test of a provision of the Patriot Act that makes it a crime to provide expert advice or assistance to terrorists.
Al-Hussayan’s supporters claimed his acquittal was a major blow to the Patriot Act - and disappointment from prosecutors, who played down the case’s significance to the anti-terrorism strategy.
“We’ve known all along Sami was not guilty of these charges,” said Nevin in an interview with local media. “What a relief and a pleasure.”
In the closely watched case, a federal jury in Boise acquitted Al-Hussayen of all three-terrorism charges lodged against him by federal prosecutors, along with one count of lying to federal investigators and two counts of visa fraud.
Prosecutors said Al-Hussayen set up and ran websites that were used to recruit terrorists, raise money and disseminate inflammatory rhetoric. They said the websites of the Islamic Assembly of North America included religious edicts justifying suicide bombings and an invitation to contribute financially to the militant Palestinian organization Hamas.
Al-Hussayen’s attorneys argued that he had little to do with the creation of the material posted, and was more involved with the technical requirements than the content of the websites.
They also said the material was protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and was not designed to raise money or recruit extremists.
The trial that lasted nearly two months and finally the jury agreed with the defense.
“We are quite relieved,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told journalists. “It has been a test of free speech, and we hope the government will now get off the backs of our (Muslim) community.”
