Decision delayed on new trial for student

BOISE – Federal prosecutors have delayed a decision until next week on whether to retry Sami Al-Hussayen on eight immigration charges.

The University of Idaho graduate student was acquitted by a unanimous jury of three similar immigration charges, along with three charges of providing material support to terrorists. But jurors deadlocked on the eight remaining immigration charges, and a mistrial was declared on those charges.

Federal prosecutors met Friday morning to discuss their next step but determined that they needed “a little more time, a few more days” to reach a decision, said spokeswoman Jean McNeil. “I would say they made progress.”

McNeil estimated that the decision would come, at the earliest, “the middle of next week.”

Meanwhile, the 34-year-old Saudi student remains in jail, awaiting the outcome. If prosecutors decide to try again to convict him on immigration charges, a new trial date would have to be set within 70 days of the June 10 mistrial declaration. If the remaining charges are dropped, Al-Hussayen would then face a deportation order, which he has appealed.

His attorney, David Nevin, said, “Meanwhile, there’s a guy sitting in jail.”

“I understand that these counts weren’t decided, but the central premise of this thing was that Sami was assisting terrorism, and what I hear from jurors is that it wasn’t even close,” Nevin said. “And he’s been sitting in jail for 16 months. At what point does this end?”

Al-Hussayen, a devout Muslim and a doctoral candidate in computer science, has been passing the time in jail mainly by reading. He finished David McCullough’s “John Adams,” a biography of the nation’s second president, shortly after his acquittal, and then read, “Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America,” a book by a math professor in Kansas about his own conversion to the faith.

“I think he’s anxious to know what’s going to happen,” Nevin said. “He wants to see his wife and children so much.”

Al-Hussayen’s wife and three young sons returned to Saudi Arabia several months ago, rather than face deportation. The graduate student has been jailed since his arrest in February 2003.

In a case that drew national attention, he is the first person to be charged in the United States with providing material support to terrorists by operating Web sites. Al-Hussayen maintained his innocence, and his attorneys argued successfully that the sites he helped maintain for an Islamic group were religious and analytical in nature – not terrorist fund-raising and recruiting tools as prosecutors alleged.

He also is the first to be charged in the nation with visa fraud for engaging in activities outside class after certifying repeatedly on immigration forms that he was coming to the United States “solely” to study. Al-Hussayen was accused of seven charges of visa fraud and four of false statements; jurors acquitted him of two of the visa fraud charges and one of the false statement charges.

Afterward, jurors said the immigration charges were confusing, and terms such as “solely” were never defined in the law.