Spies in the Academia

Posted on May 28, 2008
Filed Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Mike Dang

Does reading the Al-Qaeda manual constitute research or espionage? According to the AP, an Algerian staffer and grad student at the University of Nottingham in central England were arrested and detained for nearly a week under British terrorism laws after downloading and attempting to print an Al Qaeda handbook freely available on the U.S. Department of Justice Web site. The student, 22-year-old Rizwaan Sabir, a Muslim, was writing his dissertation on the American approach to Al Qaeda in Iraq and was using the handbook in his research.

Sabir sent the document to the university staffer, 30-year-old Hicham Yezza, to print the document so he wouldn’t having to pay a printing fee, but someone tipped the police about the exchange. The two were released after it was determined nothing illegal had actually occurred, but Yezza was immediately arrested again and now faces deportation after investigators discovered his application to stay in the UK had not yet been approved. Lawmakers say Yezza’s deportation, especially after his 13 years spent living in the UK, looks like an attempt to make up for a botched terror raid.

Back on U.S. soil, an ex-professor from UT-Knoxville, plead not guilty after he was indicted on 18 counts by a federal grand jury that accused him of plotting to violate the Arms Export Control Act, a law that prohibits disclosing sensitive technology to foreign countries. The indictment alleges Roth took several classified documents with him on a trip to China in 2006 and gave two graduate research assistants - one from Iran and another from China - unauthorized access to sensitive military arms information and lying about it. Can’t anyone keep a secret these days?

(Source: Chronicle of Higher Education)

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