"The Private Face of Extreme Jihad"

    

BOISE, Idaho, April 23 -- Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad.

As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

In the indictment, the government charged that Mr. Hussayen provided "computer advice and assistance, communications facilities, and financial instruments and services that assisted in the creation and maintenance of Internet Web sites and other Internet medium intended to recruit and raise funds for violent jihad, particularly in Palestine and Chechnya."

And they have argued that Mr. Hussayen's technical assistance, even if he did not share the beliefs of the groups he helped, were like providing a gun to an armed robber.

Most of the facts are not in dispute. Mr. Hussayen's lawyers said that he gave money to legitimate Islamic charities and that his Web site work was protected by the First Amendment. The Web sites he maintained also posted views opposing jihad, they said.

The government has argued that Mr. Hussayen, a Saudi citizen who is the son of a retired Saudi minister of education, does not have all the protections of an American citizen. They said he abused his privilege as a student by working for computer sites that advocate terror. His friends in the Idaho college town may have known one side of him, the prosecutor, Kim Lindquist, said in his opening remarks to the jury, but they seldom saw "the private face of extreme jihad."

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