BY JANET POST

MIAMI - Sami Al-Arian, an engineering professor at the University of South Florida [USF] in Tampa, was to have resumed teaching when the university opened its fall term. Instead, Al- Arian is on a forced paid leave-of-absence, accused by the U.S. government of "connections to terrorism" in the Middle East.

Al-Arian has taught computer engineering at USF since 1986 and leads a group called the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP) that he explains was formed to "expose some of the atrocities of Israel during the intifada," the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Al-Arian came under investigation when ICP fund-raising donations were rumored as going to the Islamic Jihad. An FBI agent also claimed that phone calls had been made from Al- Arian's home to "phone numbers associated with known alien terrorist suspects," including two people investigators claim were linked with the World Trade Center bombing, though charges were never laid against them. In November of last year, Al- Arian's home and offices were searched by FBI agents for six hours, during which they carted away bank statements, airline ticket records, telephone bills, tapes, and computer disks.

The government also claims that Al-Arian failed to mention his political involvement with different organizations on his application for U.S. citizenship. He faces a Florida state investigation for voting in a 1994 Hillsborough County election after receiving his voter registration card that officials say he should have known was an error.

The St. Petersburg Times reported that USF-hired investigator William Smith, former university president, has " `found no evidencé beyond Al-Arian's Palestinian nationalist views to link him to terrorism." Smith interviewed journalist Steven Emerson, author of the PBS documentary called "Jihad in America," who claims to document "proof of terrorist ties" by Al-Arian from a videotape of an Islamic rally and copies of a Palestinian magazine.

Al-Arian is also the founder of the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) in Tampa. This group worked with the university's Committee for Middle Eastern Studies to co-sponsor programs, train and finance graduate students, and share libraries. After the Persian Gulf War, the groups sponsored six conferences.

When the organizations invited speakers such as Hasan Turabi from Sudan to speak on Islamic law and Rashid Ghanoushi from Tunisia, "one of the most controversial Islamic movement leaders," according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the programs were heatedly contested by some as "anti-Israel." Ghanoushi's visa was denied.

In May, Al-Arian's speaking engagement at an academic conference at Villanova University in Philadelphia was canceled after the Anti-Defamation League warned the university of violence if he spoke.

Al-Arian is also accused by immigration agents of assisting U.S. entry for two USF instructors who worked with WISE. One instructor, Basheer Nafi, was forced to leave the United States this year under threat of deportation even though he had a three-year work permit and was working as a journal editor in Washington, D.C.

The other professor was Ramadam Abdullah Shallah, who holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Durham in England, taught Middle Eastern studies at USF, and edited an academic journal for WISE. Last year Shallah returned to the Middle East to help lead the Islamic Jihad when a founder of its Palestinian section, Fathi Shikaki, was assassinated, presumably by Israeli agents. Shallah helped lead a funeral march of 3,000 through the streets of Damascus.

In the May 6 issue of Newsweek, a senior U.S. Justice Department official called Shallah a "poster child" for the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that President William Clinton signed April 24. The bill authorizes the government to ban from the United States individuals from other countries who have links to organizations branded as "terrorist" by Washington, even if there is no evidence they broke any laws. It calls for the prosecution of anyone in the United States accused of raising funds for any such organization. The law also allows the government to deport those accused of terrorism based on secret evidence.

The FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service have refused to name any criminal acts by Al-Arian and, as a U.S. resident, he is fighting the denial of his U.S. citizenship.

At the end of the spring 1996 term at USF, the university received an unidentified bomb threat from "The Leader of the War Purgers," claiming to have ties with Hamas in Palestine and the Islamic Jihad and demanded an apology to Shallah. The school moved its week of final exams ahead and closed the school during the period of the threatened bombing. There is no evidence that the letter was tied to any pro-Arab organizations or its members.

The university has come under fire for allowing the association between WISE and the Committee for Middle Eastern Studies. A St. Petersburg Times editorial took aim at USF vice- president of public relations Harry Battson, who defended the association, saying, "We espouse diversity, we espouse understanding different cultures, and we will always do that."

"The Islamic Jihad does a lot of things," said Battson. "There may be a terrorist element to it, but it is also an important cultural group in the Middle East."

In response the editorial called on someone "to explain to Battson the difference between diversity and terrorism."

Officials at the school are also discussing a proposal to fingerprint some 10,000 professors and staff members. "I find it a horrifying thing," said Sara Mandell, president of the local faculty union and a religion professor. "It's insulting, but it's also very, very dangerous."

Today, Al-Arian is teaching at the Islamic Academy of Florida, a school supported by one several mosques in the Tampa area. After the Tampa Tribune published a photo of the mosque and the school, a mosque member wrote a letter of protest to the paper fearing the photo and tone of Tribune articles were inflaming the already heated anti-Islamic propaganda.

Meanwhile, Al-Arian's brother-in law, Mazin Al-Najjar, a former USF student who also taught at the university and was the volunteer executive director of WISE, is currently involved in deportation hearings in Florida around his own legal status. Al- Najjar, 39, was born in Gaza and came to the United States to attend school in 1982.

Janet Post is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 368.  
 
 
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