Initial Test of Patriot Act Fails to Produce One Conviction

A trial billed as the most important terrorism case in the United States since the September 11 attacks ended in defeat yesterday for the US government after a Florida professor accused of leading a terrorist cell that funded attacks against Israel was acquitted on nearly half the charges against him, and the jury was deadlocked on the rest.

The case against Sami Al-Arian, 47, had been seen as one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act's expanded search-and-surveillance powers. But after a five-month trial and 13 days of deliberation the jury acquitted Dr Arian of eight of the 17 counts against him, including a charge of conspiring to maim and murder people overseas. The jurors were deadlocked on the others, including charges that he aided terrorists.

Prosecutors claimed that Dr Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering professor, commanded an Islamic Jihad cell in Tampa and was said to have helped finance a series of attacks in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel in which more than 100 people died, including at least one American.

Dr Arian, who will remain in prison while prosecutors decide whether to retry him on the deadlocked charges, wept after the verdicts were read out. Two co-defendants were acquitted of all charges against them, while a third was found not guilty of 24 counts with jurors deadlocked on the remaining eight.

His indictment in 2003 was hailed by the then-attorney general, John Ashcroft, as an initial triumph for the Patriot Act, enacted in the weeks after September 11.