Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects; Is Khaled Saffuri, a prominent Palestinian activist with connections to terror suspects, exerting undue influence on the Bush administration, or is he getting a bad rap?

"The only time Jewish organizations did something not really together but in coordination with Muslim groups were demonstrations against the genocide in Bosnia," says Yehudit Bartsky, an aide to AJC President David Harris. But that cooperation evaporated in 1994, once statements by Alamoudi and other Muslim leaders condemning the Oslo agreements became public. "Everybody was shocked to see they were opposed to Oslo, which all the Jewish organizations supported at the time," he says. After the horrific spate of suicide bombings in 1996, which the AMC and other Muslim organizations refused to condemn, those ties such as they were evaporated. "So 1997 would be really late," Bartsky adds.

Saffuri tells Insight that the suicide bombings used by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and others is "a condemned tactic. It's horrible, it's wrong, it's un-Islamic, it's unethical, because you're targeting innocent civilians."

Saffuri claims he broke with Alamoudi "after a year-and-a-half of bickering and arguing." But the arguments weren't over Alamoudi's support for suicide bombing, but over the latter's demand for a strict Islamic lifestyle in the office. "When I came, I was the first one to hire women without cover," Saffuri says. "Most people would hire from the mosque. I told him this was wrong. I hired peoples with skills. I ended up leaving because I couldn't work with that style of work."

Another key Saffuri ally, Sami Amin al-Arian, was arrested on Feb. 20, 2003, by federal agents in Tampa, Fla., because of his alleged ties to Palestinian terrorists. Like Saffuri, al-Arian is a Palestinian who came to this country from Kuwait. He was the subject of a long-standing criminal investigation because of the leadership role he allegedly played in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has claimed responsibility for the murder of hundreds of Israelis and more than a dozen Americans, and that raises money for terror in the United States [see "Controversial Professor Arrested in Florida on Terrorism Charges," posted March 4, 2003, at Insight Online].

Al-Arian was one of a group of Muslim leaders who met with President Bush in the White House in May 2001 as part of White House outreach to the Muslim community. The person who helped set up that meeting and who chose the participants was Khaled Saffuri, White House officials tell Insight.

Federal prosecutors now believe al-Arian was a founder of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that the organization actually was created in the United States by Muslim immigrants in the 1980s who used America's lax immigration laws and strong civil-liberties protections to shield them from federal law-enforcement investigations.

The federal indictment against al-Arian alleges that he used his position as a professor at the University of South Florida to gain visas for terrorists to enter the United States. It also alleges that he transferred cash into overseas accounts that were used for the planning or support of terrorist operations that killed Americans. All through the 1990s, Saffuri worked together with al-Arian and Alamoudi to prevent the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from using secret evidence in deportation hearings, perhaps because the INS was seeking to deport top leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. During the 2000 election campaign, Saffuri's chief effort was to get the Bush campaign to support the repeal of secret evidence, a position Bush publicly adopted in his final debate with Al Gore.