UAE rejects Al-Najjar's request for residency

WASHINGTON -- The United Arab Emirates has rejected Mazen Al-Najjar's request for residency, setting the stage for a renewed legal battle over the use of classified intelligence information in immigration cases.

A stateless Palestinian linked to terrorism by the United States but never charged with a crime, Al-Najjar has been jailed since a federal appeals court in Atlanta affirmed a final deportation order against him Nov. 24.

"We regret that the entry of Mr. Al-Najjar to the UAE is not possible at this time," an official of the UAE Embassy in Washington, Saeed R. Al Zaabi, wrote in a March 11 letter to al-Najjar lawyer Joe Hohenstein.

Al Zaabi said neither the temporary work visa from the UAE that Al-Najjar held more than 20 years ago nor the presence of family in the UAE qualifies him for re-entry.

If Al-Najjar wants to enter the UAE, he "should find a (work-related) sponsorship and initiate new procedures for the visa," the letter said.

The UAE's rejection of Al-Najjar's residency request appears to bolster his long-standing claim that he cannot be deported because no country will accept him.

At the same time, there is no indication the U.S. government plans to back away from its equally long-standing claim that Al-Najjar is a threat to national security.

These two views have clashed before, and now it appears they will clash again, most likely after May 14, when the legal authority the government is currently invoking to hold al-Najjar expires.

In 1997, the former University of South Florida teacher sparked a national debate over civil liberties when he challenged an immigration judge's decision to keep him jailed on the basis of classified evidence allegedly linking him to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Najjar eventually spent 31/2 years in jail on the basis of the classified information. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno released him in December 2000 after a federal judge ruled his constitutional rights were violated by the government's refusal to share the secret evidence with him.

Al-Najjar's current detention is not based on any intelligence information; rather, it is because his appeals in his long-running deportation case have run out.

At the moment, the government has "unfettered discretion" to keep Al-Najjar jailed for the purpose of bringing about his deportation, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled last month. But she noted a 2001 Supreme Court decision, Zadvydas vs. Davis, sets a six-month time limit on detention in such cases.

On May 14, it will be six months since the appeals court in Atlanta affirmed Al-Najjar's final deportation order. If Al-Najjar still hasn't been deported by then, the government will either have to free him or produce evidence that he is a security threat who must be jailed indefinitely.

And the evidence that he is a security threat is classified, meaning the courts will likely be asked to again take up the unsettled question of whether the use of secret information is constitutional.

Al-Najjar is being held in solitary confinement at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex near Bushnell, about 75 miles north of Tampa Bay.

His case is entwined with that of his brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian, a tenured USF professor and Palestinian whom USF president Judy Genshaft suspended for misconduct after he appeared on a cable news network discussing alleged past ties to terrorism.

Al-Arian was a founder of the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, an Islamic think tank at USF that was raided by the FBI in 1995 after a former head of the group turned up as the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Najjar was also involved with the think tank.

U.S. Attorney Mac Cauley in Tampa announced last month that his office is investigating al-Arian.

Al-Najjar's case, meanwhile, is being watched closely by government lawyers and civil liberties advocates because of the precedent it may set for other terrorism-related immigration cases.

But Al-Najjar's lawyers say the UAE's rejection of his entry request is his light at the end of the tunnel.

"I think in a couple of months he should be a free man. In my view he should be a free man today because the government has not pointed to any reason he should be locked up," said David Cole, one of Al-Najjar's attorneys.

(November 27, 2001)-Al-Najjar (former USF teacher) may go to the United Arab Emirates (It depends on who you ask) [Excerpt] In 1998, Egypt issued Al-Najjar a new travel document in anticipation that Guyana, in South America, would take him. Although Guyana backed out of the deal for reasons that Hohenstein says were never clear, Al-Najjar was left with a valid travel document.

It is this second document that the government says Al-Najjar refused to hand over: the equivalent of the "valid passport" sought by the UAE as a condition of his entry.

"His representation to this court that he "cannot leave, because no country will accept him' is open to serious question," the government said in a brief submitted to U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard in Miami in March 2000. "Najjar has failed to cooperate with the INS's efforts to find countries that may accept him."

An INS agent submitted an affidavit saying that Al-Najjar had failed to respond to two requests since January 1999 for his Egyptian-issued travel document.

That second document expired last year. Now, in order to deport Al-Najjar, the U.S. government will have to persuade Egypt to issue him a third travel document and persuade the UAE to issue him an entry visa. Those negotiations are taking place quietly through diplomatic channels.

Hohenstein says he doubts the negotiations will succeed, because a representative of Al-Najjar's approached the emir of one of the UAE's seven emirates and received a negative answer about the possibility of relocation there.

In a June 20, 2000, letter submitted to the court, Agieb Bilal, the former principal of the Islamic Academy of Florida, said the ruler of the emirate of Sharjah told him in a December 1999 meeting that Al-Najjar would not be welcome unless the United States disclosed the classified information concerning his alleged terrorist ties.

The Islamic Academy, a private school in Tampa, is now run by 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. No charges were filed.

But the seven emirates often act autonomously, according to a State Department description of the UAE. That means one emir does not necessarily speak for them all, said Patrick Clawson, research director of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, a think tank.

Nonetheless, Hohenstein said Al-Najjar "is not comfortable with the UAE because the UAE government has a history of mistreatment of Palestinians." He said it is "extremely likely" that the UAE government would detain him, "and it's well-recorded in detention that they torture people."

But Clawson, who has traveled frequently to the UAE over two decades, said, "Palestinians don't fare on average worse than people from South Asia or East Asia, who if anything tend to get worse jobs and be subject to more social discrimination" in a country where 80 percent of the residents are foreigners recruited to fill jobs.

And when asked if the UAE is known for torturing prisoners, Clawson said: "Oh, good lord, no. I wouldn't say their respect for human rights is spectacular, but among Arab nations, it's not bad." [End Excerpt]

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