Eight people, including four U.S. residents, were charged in a 50-count indictment with supporting, financing and relaying messages for a violent Palestinian terrorist group blamed for the deaths of more than 100 people in and around Israel. The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Fla., was unsealed Thursday. It charges that the men are members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. Among them are a Palestinian professor at the University of South Florida, 45-year-old Sami Amin Al-Arian, who is described as the group’s U.S. leader and secretary of its worldwide council. In Florida, Al-Arian was seen being led in handcuffs to FBI headquarters in Tampa after the arrest. “It’s all about politics,” Al-Arian told reporters as agents led him inside. The indictment charges the eight men with operating a criminal racketeering enterprise since 1984 that supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad and with conspiracy to kill and maim people abroad, conspiracy to provide material support to the group, extortion, perjury and other charges. Each defendant faces up to life in prison if convicted. Al-Arian and two others were arrested in Tampa and a fourth man was arrested in Chicago. The other four were living abroad and it was not immediately clear if they had been taken into custody. Full Story
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