Feds in bed with terror sponsor?

by Joel Mowbray

What a difference a few months can make. That’s all it took for the federal government to go full-circle, from prosecuting an alleged terrorist to headlining and funding an event co-sponsored by one of his biggest supporters—a group that also happens to be still under investigation itself.

Through December of last year, the U.S. government was using its full force to convict the alleged North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami al-Arian, of terrorism charges. By this March, the State Department dispatched its head of counterterrorism, Ambassador Hank Crumpton, to be the keynote speaker at a conference co-sponsored by one of al-Arian’s former principal funder, the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). And for good measure, the Defense Department largely paid for the event.

Aside from the group’s history with al-Arian, IIIT’s co-founder and former longtime president—and an unindicted co-conspirator in the al-Arian trial—allegedly wrote a fatwa, or religious edict, years ago endorsing Jihad against Israelis. Though he wasn’t at the conference, Taha Jaber al-Alwani still sits on IIIT’s board. ....