WASHINGTON, 16 April 2006 — Federal authorities have decided to deport a former Florida professor and advocate for Palestinian rights after failing to convict him on charges that he helped finance terrorist attacks in Israel.
The scholar, Sami Al-Arian, who was indicted in 2003, has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser charge and be deported, two lawyers familiar with the case said Friday. The deal requires the approval of a judge.
The lawyers spoke on condition of anonymity, because the agreement has not been made public by the court.
It was not clear where Al-Arian would be sent. He was born in Kuwait.
Al-Arian has remained in jail since he was indicted in 2003, even though a Florida jury acquitted him in December of 8 of the 17 federal charges against him and deadlocked on the rest. Stung by the defeat in the highly publicized case, prosecutors pondered whether to retry him on the remaining charges, including three conspiracy counts, or deport him.
Justice Department and immigration officials would not comment on the deportation agreement, nor would Linda Moreno, a lawyer who represented Al-Arian in his trial. Ms. Moreno and William Moffitt withdrew as Al-Arian’s lawyers in March, and it was not clear who currently represents him.
No one answered the phone at the home of Al-Arian’s wife, Nahla.
The case against Al-Arian was once hailed as a triumph of the broad antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which allowed secret wiretaps and other information gathered by intelligence agents to be used in criminal prosecutions.
Al-Arian and three co-defendants were charged with running a North American cell of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian had been under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since at least the mid-1990’s.
At the end of a five-month trial, however, jurors said the mountain of intercepted phone calls and other materials did not link Al-Arian and the others directly to a Palestinian Islamic Jihad truck bomb attack in 1995 that killed seven Israelis and an American, Alisa Flatow.
Ms. Flatow’s parents won a judgment of more than $247.5 million in American courts against Iran, which was found to have instigated the attack, but they have been unable to collect most of the money.
Al-Arian has lived in the United States for 30 years and holds permanent residency status. He was reared mostly in Egypt.
He had been a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida but was fired after his indictment. He has been held without bail for more than three years.
Al-Arian was a nationally known activist who organized voter registration drives, campaigned for candidates and lobbied politicians.
Lawyers who have represented him have said he had been in the White House on four occasions and met Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush.
Al-Arian also had contact with almost two dozens political and government leaders, including Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Trent Lott and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and his predecessor, former Representative Newt Gingrich.
The handling of Al-Arian’s case became an issue in the 2004 United States Senate election in Florida, won by the Republican candidate, Mel Martinez. Betty Castor, the Democratic candidate, was the president of the University of South Florida when Al-Arian was on the faculty.
