Al-Arian released from prison after years, before court deadline

Sep 3, 2008, 17:23 GMT

Washington - Kuwaiti-born Sami Al-Arian, a one-time computer engineering professor, was released from jail just hours ahead of a court deadline for US officials to explain why immigration officials still wanted him held, media reports said Wednesday.

Al-Arian, 50, had fully served a five-year sentence that resulted from a plea bargain to charges of conspiring to aid an Islamic group by helping with immigration benefits for a member of the group.

His term was up in July, but US immigration officials wanted him to be kept in jail pending a trial on another set of charges that he refused to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia in a separate case, the St Petersburg Times reported.

But a federal judge had in July ordered his release by this week unless immigration officials could come up with a good reason not to release him.

Al-Arian was acquitted of some terrorism conspiracy charges in 2005 in a Tampa, Florida courtroom. He later reached the plea bargain to serve five years over nine other counts over which the jury was deadlocked.

Arian and three co-defendants were charged with financing a terrorist group - the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - since 1984.

Al-Arian taught at the University of Southern Florida for ten years, where his employment status fluctuated. The school suspended him in 1996, but reinstated him when they were unable to press charges against him.

In 2001, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a commentator on a national television broadcaster, Fox News, accused him of being a terrorist and using the university as a front for the terrorist group. The university suspended him, saying it was for his own safety after death threats were made, but he received paid leave.

After his arrest in 2003 by federal prosecutors, Al-Arian was fired.