College professor. Graduate student. Defender of free speech. Ultimately, they all were aliases for terrorists, the FBI now says, who for more than a decade used the University of South Florida to serve their purposes: providing financial and organizational support for suicide bombings and other killings intended to destroy Israel. It began, USF officials say, as an honest if naive attempt to expand the young and ambitious university’s Middle Eastern studies program as interest increased during the Gulf War crisis. It ended Thursday, with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment that named eight men and led to the arrest of four. ”The defendants and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] utilized USF as an institution where some of their members could receive cover as teachers or students,” the indictment said. “Additionally, USF was utilized by PIJ as the instrumentality through which the co-conspirators could bring other PIJ members and associates into the United States under the guise of academic conferences and meetings.” Full Story
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