The arrest of a Palestinian activist and suspected terrorist in Harvard Square just a week before Commencement led the University to institute a “lock-down” during June’s Commencement exercises, according to recent interviews with people involved with the incident.

Speaking publicly for the first time on the incident, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley says that a number of issues—including the controversy behind the “American Jihad” speech by Zayed M. Yasin ’02, a World Bank protest at MIT planned for the day after Harvard’s Commencement and post-Sept. 11 concerns—led HUPD to plan for heightened security at the June 6 Commencement ceremony.

But it wasn’t until the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) arrested 24-year-old Jaoudat Abouazza on traffic violations and dangerous weapon charges near the Au Bon Pain in Holyoke Center that the University decided to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Yard on Commencement Day and bring in extra assistance from other state and federal agencies.

“There was enough concern, coupled with many other factors, that led the University administration to decide for the first time to put all 30,000 people through metal detectors and high level security screenings,” Riley says. “We even had bomb technicians, bomb-sniffing dogs, members of federal agencies and the National Guard at Commencement.”

Riley and other University administrators stress, however, that there was never a credible or specific threat against Commencement.

For their part, Abouazza’s lawyer and supporters say that his arrest was unwarranted.

Steve Kirschbaum, a pro-Palestine activist who knows Abouazza, says Abouazza’s arrest was unjust and that he has never posed a threat to the community.

“The fact that HUPD would attempt to use the Jaoudat Abouazza case as one in which to heighten their security really highlights that we need security from the egregious police-state actions from these authorities,” says Kirschbaum, who said he was initially unaware of any relation between the arrest and Commencement security.

Efforts to reach Abouazza were unsuccessful.

The Arrest

University officials had already reevaluated security at Harvard’s 351st Commencement because of concerns of terrorism after Sept. 11 and because of heightened tensions surrounding the national attention and controversy over Yasin’s Commencement address.

However, an investigation following Abouazza’s arrest raised additional concerns among federal and area law enforcement officials that Commencement might be the target of a plot to disrupt the exercises.

According to police reports, a CPD officer first became suspicious of Abouazza on the night of May 30—less than a week before Commencement—after routinely running through a computer the license plate number of a Chevy Corsica driven by Abouazza.

After the plates came up as stolen in the computer, the officer stopped the car on Dunster Street and conducted a “field investigation,” and determined that Abouazza’s license had been suspended nearly seven months earlier.

The officer searched the car and found a double-edged knife, a can of mace and leaflets for a June 9 protest at an Israeli Independence Day festival in Boston.