Slammer!

Via TalkLeft, I hear that Sami Omar Al-Hussayen has been acquitted after a seven-week trial in Boise, Idaho.

He was the grad student I wrote about back on April 27 who was charged with 14 counts of aiding terrorism, making false statements, and visa fraud for his role as webmaster to sites that had posts (none of which he wrote) supporting suicide bombings and links to other sites with similar material.

As AP reports on June 10,

[t]he case ... was seen as an important test of a provision of the Patriot Act that makes it a crime to provide expert advice or assistance to terrorists.

But after a week of deliberation, the jury acquitted him on all the terrorism counts and some of the others. A mistrial was declared on those.

It's likely the government pushed this case because they figured it would be easier to get a conviction in conservative Idaho, thereby establishing a precedent for future prosecutions. As it turns out, they did get their precedent, just happily not the one they wanted. So take that, Cigarettebuttfarm.