On Friday, June 27, the Department of Justice dropped a long-stalled second criminal prosecution of Sami Al-Arian, the former USF professor who pleaded guilty to one count of aiding a terrorist group in 2006, following a high-profile federal trial in Tampa in 2005 where a jury of his members acquitted him on eight charges and deadlocked on the other nine.
But after Al-Arian ultimately pleaded guilty of count of aiding terrorists, he was scheduled to be deported. That has never happened, as in 2007 he was called to testify before a grand jury in Virginia on a completely different case. When he refused to testify, he was charged with contempt, and ultimately was kept under house arrest for nearly seven years, until last week. He is again , scheduled to be deported.
