Daughter of Sami Al-Arian Says Family "Devastated" by Father's Continued Imprisonment,

The case of Palestinian professor and activist Sami al-Arian took another turn this week when a federal judge in Florida sentenced him to another year and a half in prison.

Al-Arian has been at the center of one of the most closely watched - and controversial - post 9/11 prosecutions. He was arrested in February 2003 and accused of being a leader of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The government's case against Al-Arian included 11 years of FBI wiretaps and searches, three years of trial preparation by federal prosecutors, millions of dollars in costs and a six-month trial that ended last December.

At the end of it all, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 53 criminal counts brought against Al-Arian and three co-defendants. One of those co-defendants - Sameeh Hammoudeh - will join us on the phone from a Florida jail in a few minutes. He remains imprisoned despite being acquitted of all the charges against him. Al-Arian himself was acquitted on eight counts and the jury hung on nine others.

Last month, Al-Arian signed a plea agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser version of one of the deadlocked charges, namely that he helped members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration and legal matters at a time before the State Department designated it a terrorist group.

At his sentencing on Monday, US District Judge James Moody ignored the recommendation of prosecutors and defense attorneys for a lower sentence and gave Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under the plea deal - 57 months, followed by deportation.

With credit for time served, Al-Arian will spend another 18 months behind bars. He has been in prison for over three years now, much of it in solitary confinement.

It is not clear where the government would deport Al-Arian who is a Palestinian born in Kuwait and raised mostly in Egypt. He has lived in the United States for the past 30 years and holds permanent residency status. His five children were born in the US and are all American citizens. Today, one of them joins us in our firehouse studio, Lailia Al-Arian is Sami Al-Arian's eldest daughter. We are also joined by Al-Arian's attorney, Linda Moreno and journalist John Sugg who has been closely following the case.

* Laila Al-Arian, eldest daughter of Sami al-Arian. She is a journalism student at Columbia University.
* Linda Moreno, attorney for Sami al-Arian.
* John Sugg, senior editor for Creative Loafing, an Atlanta-based alternative weekly newspaper. He has closely followed the Sami Al-Arian for the past 10 years.
- Website: http://JohnSugg.com

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