 | Al-Arian trial update...In which Sami gets mad when he catches the media watching his hands instead of his lips. |
After The Tampa Tribune ran a series of stories 10 years ago about his ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian was fuming. He called Bashir Nafi, another member of the Islamic Jihad's shura council, or board of directors, and the two of them commiserated. ``The guy is, that's to say, third class,'' Nafi said, referring to the reporter who wrote the stories, Michael Fechter. Al-Arian agreed, using a profanity to describe Fechter. The May 30, 1995, conversation was read to jurors in Al- Arian's trial Thursday morning. He is accused of helping organize and finance the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The two also complained about a piece written by Steve Emerson in the New Republic that same week.
``He discovered that Al-Turabi slept in my guest house,'' Al-Arian said. ``Look at this terrible discovery.''
Hassan Al-Turabi was Sudan's de facto leader during the early 1990s, a time when that nation granted refuge to Osama bin Laden. The Sorbonne-educated Muslim scholar also met with members of Congress and the Washington Post editorial board in 1992 in addition to meeting at USF with a group of scholars from across the country. | Who eagerly lapped up the pearls of wisdom issued by Turabi, and proceeded to ignore the rivulets of blood that had begun to seep across the Sudanese border... |
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