TERRORISM Trial set this week for former professor

Sami Al-Arian's lawyers say his punishment is a result of his views.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI -- After 814 days in prison, many of them spent in solitary confinement, former college professor Sami Al-Arian goes on trial this week, charged with commanding a terrorist cell that flourished in Tampa and infiltrated the University of South Florida.
Al-Arian and eight co-defendants are accused of raising money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel.
The indictment, issued with considerable drama in February 2003 as the nation prepared for war in Iraq and searched for the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also charges the defendants with racketeering, conspiracy and extortion.
Inherently complex -- the 159-page indictment includes 53 counts and the docket already contains 1,032 documents -- the case touches on many issues now confronting Americans: the real but often camouflaged threat of terrorism; inflammatory political campaigns in Florida; the fairness and competence of the media; and the proper balance between prosecutorial vigilance and extremism.
"The tension is that we want the government to be aggressive and to root out terrorists," said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. "But, of course, we are always concerned, and I think rightly so, that the government may overstep its bounds."
What the government contends
Federal prosecutors charge that Al-Arian, 47, cleverly exploited his position at the University of South Florida to create an Islamic think tank and a Palestinian charity that served as fronts for funneling money to terrorists in Israel and the territories it controls.
Prosecutors refuse to comment on the case, but their indictment calls Palestinian Islamic Jihad "a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in acts of violence including murder, extortion, money laundering, fraud and misuse of visas, and operated worldwide including in the Middle District of Florida."
Al-Arian's attorneys say he is being punished for his pro-Palestinian views and is a victim of anti-Muslim bias and post-Sept. 11 hysteria. They say his activities, which appear nefarious when extracted in the indictment, were designed to raise money for Palestinian charities.
During a 1998 interview with The Miami Herald, while under investigation, Al-Arian said:
"What is it that we have done that has made these people decide they will get us through any means? What is it? Because we have strong advocacy for the Palestinian people, that's why they want to get us? What have we done? Everything was in the open. We didn't do anything in secret."
Not true, the government says. Although many meetings and conversations were conducted openly, the indictment includes numerous examples, gathered through wiretaps and other means, of allegedly coded conversations and secret meetings between Al-Arian, his co-defendants and other supposed members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin today in Tampa's federal courthouse, but the proceedings there might be abbreviated. Defense attorneys maintain that the trial should be moved because the jury pool was hopelessly tainted by hyperaggressive media coverage and by political opportunists during last year's U.S. Senate campaign in Florida.
"We took a magnifying glass, put it between the sun and the issue and just burned everybody's retinas with this thing," Jewett said. "It was really something."