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Al-Arian Granted Bail, But He Might Not Be Freed

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 10, 2008

Updated: 07/10/2008 02:59 pm

A federal judge in Virginia has granted bail for Sami Al-Arian while he awaits a trial in August on contempt charges.

But it was unclear whether Al-Arian will be released from custody, because government authorities are still trying to hold him in immigration detention pending his deportation, according to a blog post by Jonathan Turley, one of Al-Arian's attorneys.

Al-Arian has completed a federal sentence for helping a group classified by the United States as terrorist, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but is still behind bars because he refused to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered that Al-Arian be allowed to post a signature bond, requiring him to forfeit his $340,000 pension should he not appear in court. He also must wear a GPS monitor and live with a third-party custodian. The custodian was not identified in court minutes, but Al-Arian's attorneys have suggested he live with one of his sons. He would be allowed to leave the apartment only to visit his attorneys, to go to court and to visit his son, according to the minutes of the court hearing.

Although there were earlier reports that the grand jury was investigating an Islamic charity linked to Al-Arian, Turley said a federal prosecutor conceded in court that the government wanted to question Al-Arian under oath about matters related to his 2005 trial in Tampa.

During the Tampa trial, the government presented evidence that Al-Arian's think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprise, received funding from the International Institute of Islamic Thought, based in Herndon, Va. IIIT offices were raided in 2002 as part of the investigation into WISE

"The government is trying to revisit the Florida trial that it lost when a jury acquitted Dr. Al-Arian of various counts" and came within two votes of acquitting him on all counts, Turley wrote on his blog.

"The government also said that Dr. Al-Arian had refused to meet face-to-face with investigators," Turley wrote. "We will be submitting material today to the court to show that Dr. Al-Arian repeatedly agreed to meet face-to-face with investigators and only refused to revisit the Florida trial."

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