TAMPA After more than three months of trial, the prosecution in the Sami Al-Arian case is nearly finished presenting its evidence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek told U.S. District Judge James Moody on Thursday that the government should complete its case within the next three weeks.

Prosecutors had forecast their presentation would take six months to a year, but the number of witnesses was reduced significantly when prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to stipulate to the facts of 15 attacks by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Israel and its occupied territories.

The lawyers also agreed that two Islamic Jihad associates blew themselves up in an open field while attempting to build a bomb on March 17, 1995.

The stipulations also state that the defendants were not personally involved in any of the attacks.

The agreements eliminated the need for scores of witnesses and shortened the trial.

Also Thursday, Moody denied defense motions that he declare a mistrial and dismiss two jurors because they had discussed a newspaper story. The judge reserved decision on whether to dismiss another juror who allegedly had made pro-prosecution remarks in front of other jurors.

The newspaper story concerned events in Israel and a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Although jurors have been instructed not to read news accounts of events related to the trial, the court has provided jurors with copies of The Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times each day.

Defense attorneys provide the court with citations of articles to be cut out each day, and the papers are provided to jurors after those articles are removed.

A juror told Moody that another juror had made comments concerning events in Gaza on Aug. 25. After an inquiry, Moody determined that the parties had failed to flag an article about that in the Tribune, so it was in the paper provided to jurors.

The judge said it was not improper for jurors to discuss an article in a newspaper that had been given to them by the court.

Also on Thursday, a witness testified that Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah served briefly as the religious leader of a mosque in Chicago.

Mohammed Hasan, who testified under a grant of immunity, also placed Al-Arian co-defendant Hatim Fariz at a 1991 rally in Chicago.

Now the secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shallah worked at Al-Arian's think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprise, in the early 1990s and also was employed as an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. He emerged as the Islamic Jihad leader less than five months after leaving Tampa, after the assassination of the former secretary general, Fathi Shikaki.

WHAT HAPPENED

Prosecutors said they should finish presenting evidence in the Sami Al-Arian trial within the next three weeks.