RICHMOND, Virginia: A former professor who pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a Palestinian terrorist group but has refused to testify in a related investigation has ended a nearly two-month hunger strike, his supporters said.
Sami Al-Arian, 50, suspended his fast Tuesday after 57 days. The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace says family and friends urged the former University of South Florida computer science professor to resume eating after he collapsed last week in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail because of low blood pressure and blood sugar levels.
Attorneys for Al-Arian also encouraged him to resume eating so federal authorities could not cite the hunger strike as a reason to further delay his deportation to the Middle East.
He had lost almost 40 pounds and was experiencing serious physical consequences from the hunger strike, Al-Arian s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. The government indicated that it would not be able to deport him in his current chronic medical condition.
Al-Arian could be deported either to the Middle East or to one of a few countries that have expressed interest, including Norway and Germany, Turley said.
Al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody because of his refusal to testify before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses. Turley said that Al-Arian should have been deported a year ago, but that the government stopped the clock with a series of contempt citations.
The last contempt citation was lifted in December. Turley said that he is negotiating for Al-Arian’s deportation, but that the government continues to insist it will seek further sanctions and perhaps a criminal indictment if he does not testify before the grand jury.
Jim Rybicki, a spokesman for the US attorney s office in Alexandria, said Al-Arian has been transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He declined to comment further.
The government s prosecution of Al-Arian has drawn international attention since he was taken into federal custody in 2003. Prosecutors alleged that Al-Arian was a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the United States calls a terrorist organization, but his 2005 trial ended in acquittal on some charges and a hung jury on others.
Prosecutors decided to retry him, and he entered a plea bargain on lesser charges. He was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison with credit for time served.
Government critics have said the case against Al-Arian reflected overzealous prosecution of Muslim Americans in the war on terror.
In his plea agreement, Al-Arian admitted helping a family member with links to the terrorist group obtain immigration benefits and lying to a reporter about another person s ties to the group. Al-Arian says terms of the deal exempt him from testifying before a grand jury investigating Muslim charities and businesses, but two judges have rejected that claim.
Al-Arian was born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugee parents and was reared mostly in Egypt before coming to the United States 30 years ago.
