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Palestinian Professor Accused of Aiding Terror Ordered Deported
MIAMI, Nov 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian professor in Florida, who was jailed for more than three years on secret evidence laws for alleged terrorist attacks before being freed late last year, was detained Saturday for violating his visa, the Justice Department said.
Palestinian Mazen al-Najjar was arrested Saturday for violating his visa and will be deported as a threat to national security, the Department of Justice said.
On Friday, al-Najjar appealed a U.S. appeals court's order allowing him to be deported, and plans to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to block the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from deporting him, lawyer David Cole said.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, cleared the way Tuesday for Najjar to be deported for overstaying his U.S. visa, originally issued 20 years ago, Cole said.
"Because he is a stateless Palestinian with no 'right' to return to any country, and because the [U.S.] government has labeled him a 'terrorist,' it is exceedingly unlikely that there will be any country for him to go to," said Cole, a Georgetown University constitutional law expert.
Federal officials desire that al-Najjar be deported to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
Najjar was jailed for more than three years after U.S. authorities accused him of supporting terror groups, citing evidence kept secret for reasons of national security. He was not charged with a crime or shown the evidence against him.
According to ABCNEWS.com, in 1996, immigration officials charged Al-Najjar with overstaying his visa and sought to deport him. While Al-Najjar contested his deportation, the INS sought to keep him in jail on the basis of so-called secret evidence linking him to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government. The government said some of the evidence of Al-Najjar's ties to the group was classified and refused to provide it to Al-Najjar or his lawyers.
The Justice Department accuses Al-Najjar of holding leadership positions for the Tampa-based Islamic Concern Project (ICP) and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise. The organization "raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups," including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the department said.
The World and Islam Studies Enterprises, founded by Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian, was raided by the FBI in 1995 and its assets were frozen. Al-Arian has been on paid leave from the university of South Florida since late September pending an internal review of campus safety and an investigation of a telephone death threat he received.
For his part, al-Najjar says, "I have never been a member of any Palestinian organization or any militant organization," he said earlier this year. "I have never practiced violence."
Najjar, who helped run an Islamic studies group and a charity for Palestinians in the early 1990s while a University of South Florida professor, was freed in December after U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled the INS had violated his constitutional rights.
The Justice Department last week asked the appeals court to reverse Lenard's ruling, saying immigrants labeled as threats to national security do not have the right to due process.
"I think the principle at stake is that every person deserves the right to defend himself," said Cole.
"There is a possibility to set a precedent suggesting it is permissible to lock people in jail without showing them the evidence against them and without giving them a fair chance to defend themselves."
Cole, who expects the appeals court to issue a decision in two to six months, said he believes the government is attempting to seize on the September 11 terrorist attacks to justify the use of secret evidence in a broader push for increased anti-terrorism powers.
There was no suggestion in a Justice Department statement that Al-Najjar was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, but the department did accuse an organization Al-Najjar founded of "petitioning for other known terrorists to obtain visas to enter the United States."
"The government is using him as a guinea pig to test their powers to detain foreigners,'' said Martin Schwartz, an attorney for al-Najjar. "The government is aware Dr. al-Najjar has no travel documents allowing him re-entry to the United Arab Emirates or any other country."
A Justice Department spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
Al-Najjar taught Arabic at the University of South Florida.
He has never seen the secret evidence against him. He and his wife have three U.S.-born daughters.
According to ABCNEWS.com, during the presidential campaign last year, candidate George W. Bush said he opposed the use of secret evidence in immigration cases. The Justice Department states, however, that Al-Najjar's current detention is not based on secret evidence. Meanwhile, the government continues to assert that it can use secret evidence to detain foreigners. An appeal making that argument is still pending before the 11th Circuit.
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