Posted on 11/28/2001 6:24:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft expressed confidence Tuesday that the government would prevail in its five-year effort to deport Mazen Al-Najjar.
"I believe that the government will be successful in his deportation. Yes, I do," Ashcroft said at a news conference. He did not elaborate.
Immigration and Naturalization Service agents arrested Al-Najjar Saturday outside his Tampa apartment after a federal appeals court in Atlanta affirmed his deportation order on Nov. 13.
A Palestinian who overstayed a student visa, Al-Najjar was jailed for 31/2 years while he fought deportation because the government said classified intelligence information linked him to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group.
He was released last year after a federal judge in Miami ruled his due process rights had been violated because the government would not reveal enough of the classified evidence to allow him to mount a defense.
The government is now working to secure his entry into the United Arab Emirates, the country where Al-Najjar last lived before entering the United States in 1981 and the country to which an immigration judge ordered him deported in 1997.
While it appears that Al-Najjar's long-running battle to stay in the United States is nearing an end, his brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian, suggested otherwise.
"The way I read the rules, if the government decides to deport him anywhere other than the (United Arab) Emirates, he can challenge the decision, which could take another two years," Al-Arian said Monday. "Even if it is the Emirates, he'll have some avenues to challenge."
INS spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar declined to comment on the possibility for further procedural delays, saying only, "we're confident we'll be able to deport" Al-Najjar.
In 1995, federal authorities opened an investigation into whether Al-Najjar and Al-Arian were using a University of South Florida think tank and charity as front organizations to raise funds for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Israel.
The investigation did not result in criminal charges, although Al-Najjar was apprehended on a visa violation.
Instead of releasing Al-Najjar on bail while his deportation case moved through the courts, the INS detained him from May 1997 until December 2000, citing the classified information.
An immigration judge who reviewed the secret evidence in 1997 agreed that it showed Al-Najjar to be a national security threat.
But a federal judge in Miami who declined to review the secret evidence, ruled last year that the government must either reveal the information or free Al-Najjar.
Al-Najjar's arrest on Saturday was not made on the basis of the classified information but because his deportation appeals had run out. His lawyers are preparing to ask the Supreme Court to review his case but have not yet done so.
He is being held at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex near Bushnell, about 75 miles north of the Tampa Bay area in rural Sumter County.
Times Staff Writer Graham Brink contributed to this report.
USF and WISE [Excerpt] Al-Arian later was reinstated, and people should understand that he has never been charged with any crime. Mazen Al-Najjar, Al-Arian's brother-in-law and WISE associate, was arrested at the same time and charged with visa violations. Al-Najjar then was imprisoned for more than three years based on supposed secret evidence that he was a threat to national security. He finally was released in December after a federal judge and then-Attorney General Janet Reno concluded that the evidence didn't warrant his imprisonment. Al-Najjar's mistreatment was an embarrassment to the judicial system. Al-Arian and Al-Najjar are not U.S. citizens, but they deserve the same presumption of innocence as any other U.S. resident. [End Excerpt]
Behind Al-Arian's facade (founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprise at USF a decade ago)------ (Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian and Al-Najjar worked together in the 1990s at a University of South Florida think tank that was investigated for alleged ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.)
A damned Democratic-Socialist Clintooooon appointee I'll wager. These people are either so stupid that it is hard to see how they can conduct adult lives or they are closet mini-traitors who look for ways to make the country worse off for they're having happened to live here. Or, of course, they may be both stupid and traitorous.
I vote yes.
The legal fees for both brothers must be HUGE--yet one's pulling a university professor's salary (even though he's suspended) and the other just got out of jail last December after spending 3 1/2 years in jail--and they plan on fighting this for the next few years, including a USSC appeal, etc. So where's the money for the legal fees coming from? Out of thin air?
OMG, I just noticed this....I believe it was Barbara Olson who reported that the hijackers on her plane had put on red headbands, a symbol of the Islamic Jihad.
Okay, now make the hair on the back of my neck go down, please?
If this is what the Justice Dept. has to go through to deport just one person, they are going to need to hire on a significant number of staff that specialize in deportation matters.
Exactly!
Their community is well established in the area so I expect they can create a lot of noise and generate money for their cause.
The media is blindly following most of the LIBERAL line and so afraid to get off that politically correct fence, they have a permanent crease in their butts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.