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House GOP Boss Blasts Florida Muslims' Leader

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The Associated Press

Published: March 11, 2009

TALLAHASSEE - The organizer of a day that brought nearly 200 Florida Muslims to the state Capitol to lobby politicians Tuesday was called a "known terrorist sympathizer" by a head lawmaker and others, a label the leader emphatically rejected.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner said his colleagues should learn more about the head of Tampa-based United Voices for America before deciding whether to meet with any of the men and women at the Capitol for Florida Capitol Muslim Day. The group is about a year old and has four staff members and about 100 volunteers in the state. It had urged Muslims to come to talk to lawmakers about education and health care issues.

"All Floridians are welcome to come to Tallahassee to petition their government," Hasner said repeatedly during a news conference on the back steps of the Capitol. "This is to draw a light onto the leader of this organization who is a known terrorist sympathizer, who is a part of an organization with ties to funding Hamas and other terrorist organizations."

Hasner, R-Delray Beach, was talking about Ahmed Bedier, United Voices for America's executive director. Before starting the group he was the executive director of the Tampa office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Washington-based group was founded in 1994 and has offices in 20 states. CAIR was one of hundreds of Muslim individuals and groups named as unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism-financing trial where a Texas charity was accused of helping to fund Hamas. CAIR is fighting the label in court.

Bedier said Hasner's comments linking him to terrorists were "absolute nonsense."

"I've repeatedly spoken out against terrorists," Bedier said, adding that CAIR was not the organization at the Capitol on Tuesday. "This is a distraction from his real motive of disenfranchising minority participants, Muslims, from participating in the political process," Bedier said.

Bedier pointed to comments made in 2006 by the head of the Tampa office of the FBI who thanked him for an "open line of communication" between the agency and CAIR. Hasner, he said, has a "history of anti-Muslim propaganda."

Hasner and other speakers at the afternoon news conference pointed to what they called Bedier's role as an "unofficial spokesman" for Sami Al-Arian, a former computer science professor at Tampa's University of South Florida once accused of being a leading Palestinian terrorist. Al-Arian, acquitted of many charges, agreed to a plea bargain on others and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison. CAIR had supported Al-Arian during the time Bedier was in Tampa, and he often was quoted on the case.

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