January 20, 2004: Sameeh Hammoudeh is denied his request in a rehearing for bail. A judge also orders the government to release more of its evidence. The government narrows its use of wiretapped conversation from the 21,000 hours to 200 hours of phone conversations. Defense attorneys file dozens of motions including a motion to dismiss the indictment based on the First Amendment. All defense motions are subsequently denied.

October 2004: Dr. Al-Arian was returned to Tampa in the county jail for about two months for discovery.

December 7, 2004: Dr. Al-Arian was returned to Coleman.

December 9, 2004. At Coleman, a period of “lockdown” begins and continues most of the next 60 days. During this lockdown, Dr. Al-Arian is allowed no visitors, including family member and attorneys. He is not allowed to leave his cell under any circumstances. Although he is a diabetic, his blood sugar is never checked.

During these 60 days, he is given one telephone call, one attorney visit, and severely limited access to the evidence though the trial date is only a few months away.

February 8, 2005: Dr. Al-Arian is moved back to the Orient Road Jail in Tampa.

He is still in solitary confinement, and although he is housed alone in a four-cell unit, he is only allowed outside of his cell one hour per day. This hour is his only access to showers, telephones, or exercise.

June 6, 2005: The trial begins. The government calls 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel. The evidence includes lectures Dr. Al-Arian presented, speeches he gave, articles he wrote, magazines he edited, conferences he convened, rallies he attended, books he read, websites he never accessed, and even a conversation that one of his co-defendants had with him in a dream. A few months later, Dr. Al-Arian’ defense rests without calling a single witness.

December 6, 2005: The trial ends. Although Judge Moody instructed the jury to continue deliberations the previous day, he then looks at the partial verdicts and upon realizing that the jury was in the process of acquitting all defendants, abruptly stops deliberations the following day. The jury acquits Dr. Al-Arian of the most serious terrorism charges and does not return a single guilty verdict. Local newspaper reports later reveal that ten out of twelve jurors voted for a total acquittal of the remaining charges. Co-defendants Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Ballout are acquitted of all charges. In spite of the verdict, Dr. Al-Arian remains in jail in solitary confinement. To bring this to an end, he agreed to enter negotiations with the government.

February 28, 2006: Dr. Al-Arian does not want to spend another year or more in prison awaiting a retrial, so he agrees to plead guilty to the remaining count with the lowest sentence possible. The parties fashioned a count for providing services to individuals the government claims were associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad so as to end the case. The facts of the count were: 1) hiring attorneys for his brother-in-law in a 1997 immigration case; 2) sponsoring a researcher for the USF-affiliated think tank in 1994; and 3) failure to disclose his knowledge of another person’s association with the group to a newspaper reporter. In exchange, Dr. Al-Arian is offered time served followed by a speedy deportation. The government acknowledges that Al-Arian’s activities were nonviolent and that his actions created no victims. During the negotiations he insisted on removing the standard clause regarding cooperation with the government. The Department of Justice agrees to remove that language from the plea agreement.

May 1, 2006: At the sentencing hearing, Judge James S. Moody, Jr. stuns onlookers by rejecting the recommendation of prosecutors and giving Dr. Al-Arian the maximum sentence allowed under the plea agreement. He makes a highly charged statement contradicting the evidence presented at trial, the jury’s findings and the facts presented by the government in the plea agreement. The judge in fact contradicted himself since the plea deal, which stated that there were no victims, had to be approved by him before it was to take effect. Projected release date is April 11, 2007.

October 2006: Although the plea agreement released Dr. Al-Arian from cooperating with government and grand jury investigations, Gordon Kromberg, Assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, summons him to testify before a grand jury looking into an unrelated case of alleged terror funding.

November 16, 2006: Because he refuses to testify, Al-Arian is placed under civil contempt until December 21, 2006, when the grand jury term expires. The time spent under civil contempt does not count toward fulfilling the remainder of his sentence.