A former Howard University professor and Palestinian activist is scheduled to be jailed for the second time in five years for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian group Hamas’s finances and activities.

Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who taught at Howard for three years, gained national attention for a six-month hunger strike in 1998 while he was jailed for not cooperating with a New York grand jury. In a separate case last month in Chicago, a court again held Ashqar in civil contempt for refusing to talk to a grand jury even after he was granted immunity.

Unless he wins an appeal, Ashqar said he will fly to Chicago on Friday to go to jail rather than participate in what he called a “witch hunt” against Palestinians fighting Israeli oppression.

Authorities allege that Ashqar organized meetings with activists from the Islamic Resistance Movement in Philadelphia in 1993 and Oxford, Miss., where he was a graduate student, in 1994. He has never been indicted or charged with a crime.