The Investigative Project has published a report titled “Al-Arian Saves One Last Lie For The Road” which comments on the deportation of convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian. The IP report begins:
February 5, 2014 Sami Al-Arian boarded a commercial flight late Wednesday night from Washington Dulles International Airport to Turkey, ending a 20-year con in which he posed as a mere academic and advocate for Palestinian nationalism. In reality, he was a board member in a terrorist organization who lied to his supporters about his true identity over and over again.
As early as 1994, he denied any connection with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) during an interview with Steven Emerson, now the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s executive director. It was a story he clung to until 2006, when he pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide goods and services to the terrorist group. But even then, he never acknowledged his leadership role or his commitment to violent jihad that was captured on video and documents seized by federal investigators.
True to form, he issued one last statement before his deportation – a condition of that 2006 guilty plea – in which he cast himself as a victim of political persecution who did nothing more than espouse unpopular views.
‘Today,’ he wrote, ‘freedom of expression has become a defining feature in the struggle to realize our humanity and liberty. The forces of intolerance, hegemony, and exclusionary politics tend to favor the stifling of free speech and the suppression of dissent. But nothing is more dangerous than when such suppression is perpetrated and sanctioned by government.'”
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW reported in June 2014 that the US Justice Department had dropped the long-standing criminal contempt case against Al-Arian. In December 2013, we discussed another Investigative Project report which looked at the appearance of Sami Al-Arian at a northern Virginia event tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood.
We reported in March 2009 that Al-Arian was to stand trial on charges of criminal contempt in relation to his failure to testify about the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
