Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Professor to Be Deported After Secret Evidence Case/NY Times |
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| se7en |
| 11/28/01 at 10:52:21 |
November 27, 2001 THE DETAINEE Professor to Be Deported After Secret Evidence Case By DANA CANEDY IAMI, Nov. 26 — A Palestinian man who was held in United States custody for more than three and a half years on secret evidence was jailed again this weekend after an appeals court ruled that the government could deport him. The professor, Mazen al-Najjar, who was born in Israeli-occupied Gaza and settled in Tampa, Fla., was arrested outside his home on Saturday and faces deportation for overstaying a student visa in the early 1980's. Last Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, upheld Mr. Najjar's deportation. The Justice Department maintains that Mr. Najjar has ties to terrorist groups and that his legal recourse for fighting deportation has simply run out. But lawyers for Mr. Najjar say he is being used to test the government's powers to detain foreigners, particularly men of Middle Eastern descent, a power they say the government is misusing. Mr. Najjar, a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, has raised three daughters in Tampa, is active in a mosque and has no criminal record. He came to the attention of federal authorities because of his involvement in the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a research center affiliated with the university, and the Islamic Concern Project, whose activities included sending money to orphans in occupied Palestine, his lawyers said. The Justice Department said Mr. Najjar supported terrorism through those organizations. The I.C.P. and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise "are front organizations that raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas," the Justice Department said in a statement. "Furthermore, Al-Najjar's Tampa-based I.C.P. was responsible for petitioning for other known terrorists to obtain visas to enter the United States." Mr. Najjar has repeatedly denied those accusations. One of his lawyers said today that the government had never proved its case. "This was one of the last secret evidence cases," said David Cole, Mr. Najjar's lead lawyer and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. "The government has lost case after case in which it has sought to detain or deport aliens on the basis of secret evidence." The Immigration and Naturalization Service first detained Mr. Najjar in May 1997, contending that he was involved in organizations that were fronts for terrorism. But citing national security, the government refused to reveal its evidence to Mr. Najjar's lawyers. In May 2000, a federal judge in Miami ruled that Mr. Najjar's detention violated due process and ordered a hearing in which he would be able to confront the evidence against him. Last December, an immigration judge ruled that a summary of the secret evidence provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service was not detailed enough to allow Mr. Najjar to defend himself. The Board of Immigration Appeals decided to release Mr. Najjar, and he left jail on Dec. 15. Russell Bergeron, a spokesman for the immigration service in Miami, said today that last week's decision to detain Mr. Najjar "was made in consultation with the Justice Department, although it is based purely on immigration issues." Mr. Najjar's lawyers said they were reviewing options that might enable him to remain in the country. "We don't believe that it is proper for I.N.S. to detain Mazen al- Najjar because the government has already failed to prove that he was either a threat to national security or a danger to the community," said Martin Schwartz, one of his lawyers. A Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Najjar's arrest had occurred after he exhausted his appeals through the courts. "All of them found Mazen al-Najjar did not merit relief from deportation," said the spokesman, Dan Nelson. "This is a matter that addresses an immigration law violation of Mr. Najjar on his student visa when he entered the U.S. originally in 1984." |
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