John Ashcroft called Sami al-Hussayen part of "a terrorist threat to Americans that is fanatical, and it is fierce."

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said al-Hussayen is proof that terrorists are hiding in the heartland.

Yet al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho, didn't exactly fit the profile when he was arrested in February 2003 and likened in court documents to Osama bin Laden.

Instead, al-Hussayen's alleged crimes occurred at his keyboard in Moscow, Idaho, where he volunteered his computer skills to run Web sites for a Muslim charity. While the charity on its face was geared toward peaceful religious teachings, prosecutors alleged that buried deep within the Web sites were a handful of violent messages — written by others — encouraging attacks on the United States and donations to terrorist organizations.

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Law enforcement used the Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law hurriedly passed in October 2001, to get around some of those hurdles. Al-Hussayen was charged under a clause that expanded the definition of "material support" to include those who provide "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists' cause. He was the first person ever to be charged under that provision, which Congress has considered expanding.

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In early 2002, the investigation of al-Hussayen began in earnest. The government's effort, it now appears, turned up a number of bogus clues leading to mistaken conclusions.

For example:

• He had switched advisers for his dissertation midway through the school year. To the FBI, that meant he was trying to slow down his graduation, that his dissertation was "fictitious," and that his real purpose in coming to the United States was to help raise money for jihad, a holy war, using the Web. Al-Hussayen's explanation? His first adviser was battling cancer, and he switched so he could finish his dissertation on time.

• He studied computer-security systems. "They would always mention it with a sneer," said John Dickinson, al-Hussayen's faculty adviser. Al-Hussayen's explanation? He was working on a way to detect computer break-ins, not bring the nation's computer systems down.

• He moved his office from the computer-science building to one that years ago had housed the science department's nuclear reactor. To the FBI, that meant he might be seeking radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. The reality? The reactor was long defunct and the nuclear materials inaccessible, according to school officials.

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In spring 2002, the court granted a government request to record all of al-Hussayen's phone calls and e-mail. All told, some 20,000 e-mails and 9,000 phone calls were captured over the course of about a year.

In addition to the wiretaps, as many as 20 local, state and federal law-enforcement officers began tailing al-Hussayen, according to his lawyer, recording his daily activities around campus and elsewhere.

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At al-Hussayen's bail hearing, the judge was skeptical. Saying there was no evidence al-Hussayen was dangerous, he denied prosecutors' request that al-Hussayen be jailed until trial.

But prosecutors had another plan. Turning to immigration court, where it's easier to keep a suspect locked up until trial, they filed separate charges alleging al-Hussayen had earned about $300 over his five years of volunteering for the charity. The immigration judge, trumping the previous judge, ruled al-Hussayen would be held behind bars until all the charges were resolved.

All told, he would spend about 1½ years in jail.

After about a year, prosecutors filed terrorism charges. They alleged he was supporting terrorists in Israel, Chechnya and other places through the Web sites.

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During week four, prosecutors began to show the jury those alleged connections.

• On al-Hussayen's Web pages, prosecutors argued, you could click on links that would allow you to donate to Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization. Not so fast, the defense replied. Those links were removed from the site before al-Hussayen became Webmaster.

• The links might be hidden, prosecutors countered, but al-Hussayen was still funneling potential donors to Hamas. That's because a would-be terrorist could still donate via al-Hussayen's Web sites if he knew what to type into the address bar. Ridiculous, the defense replied.

"If you really want to have a page that will allow people to make donations to Hamas, it makes no sense to hide it," said Nevin, al-Hussayen's attorney.

• But how to explain the Islamic edicts, or fatwas, the prosecution countered? One of the edicts, written by a radical sheik and posted months before 9/11, advocated "suicide operations" and "bringing down an airplane on an important location."

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