Inventing-Terrorists-study

attended, interviews he gave, news he heard, and websites he never evenaccessed. In fact, several websites, presented to the jury as evidence, werecreated by anonymous individuals after his arrest while he was awaitingtrial in solitary confinement in a federal prison.Government prosecutors were aware that they had virtually noevidence to convict Al-Arian and his co-defendants, so during the twentyeight-monthpre-trial period they brought additional charges against Al-Arian’s co-defendants, Fariz and Sameeh Hammoudeh, in an effort to getthem to make a deal and give false testimony against Al-Arian, who wasthe real target. Both Hammoudeh and Fariz refused.At the 2005 trial, with almost 100 counts between all defendants, thejury did not return a single guilty verdict on any count. Two otherdefendants were totally acquitted on all counts. Fariz and Al-Arian wereacquitted on most charges, with the jury deadlocked (10 to 2 for acquittal)on some counts. The prosecution announced its intention to retry thedefendants on the charges on which the jury was deadlocked.In early 2006, in an effort to gain his freedom, Al-Arian agreed toplead guilty to a single count of providing immigration services inexchange for his release and voluntary deportation. The acts in the pleawere non-violent: he admitted hiring a lawyer for his brother-in-law, fillingout an immigration form for a visiting Palestinian scholar, and failing todisclose the political associations of a colleague to a newspaper reporter.The government then claimed that these acts provided material support toPIJ because the individuals involved were associated with the PIJ. In thewritten agreement, the Justice Department stipulated that Al-ArianB-2