The LIVERMORE LAB GUY:
March 02, 2004 - 3:40:14 AM PST
Newark man home after being held
Terrorism charges untrue,
By Sandhya Somashekhar, STAFF WRITER
NEWARK -- As he lay blindfolded, gagged and shackled in a Philippine prison, deprived of food or a toilet, Jamil Daud Mujahid doubted he ever would return to the United States, he said.
Yet Monday afternoon, he played with his grandchildren at their Newark home, nearly two weeks after agreeing to be deported from the country that had held him on terrorism charges for more than two months.
"I'm still angry, because I've been hurt and it was for no reason," said Mujahid, 57, who arrived Saturday at San Francisco International Airport. "But it feels good to be back."
In mid-December, Mujahid and his brother, Michael Stubbs of Antioch, were arrested in the Philippines on suspicion of maintaining "constant contact and communication with known members of terrorist groups operating within the country," according to Mujahid's deportation papers.
Mujahid, born in the United States as James Stubbs, said he was in the Philippines visiting his wife of six years, a Filipina who was pregnant with his eighth child.
During the visit, however, he was arrested by Philippine government agents -- who swarmed his brother's home and virtually kidnapped him, he says -- and was charged with trying to raise money for mosques and schools through Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group associated with al-Qaida.
U.S. agents also investigated Stubbs' prior employment at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's nuclear weapons laboratory, where he worked as a heating and air-conditioning technician for 10 years.
Immigration officials since have said they have found no evidence that the brothers violated federal law, and FBI officials say there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Stubbs while he worked at the lab.
FBI officials would not say whether they still are investigating the men.
Mujahid has maintained since his much-publicized arrest that he was innocent of the charges and has no ties with any terrorist groups. He believes he was targeted because he is a Muslim American, because he spent some time in Sudan and because he was a Black Panther and a civil rights activist in the 1960s.
Mujahid, who converted to Islam in 1971, went to Sudan to study Arabic and teach English, he said.
He does acknowledge that, on one of his trips to the Philippines, he agreed to help a man he met at a Friday prayer service to raise money in the United States for various agricultural, health and educational projects.
Nothing ever came of that request, Mujahid said.
After being bound and gagged for four days after his arrest, Mujahid said, he was moved to a dormitory-style detention facility with about 200 foreign nationals being held for various offenses, including drug dealing and murder.
There, food came in little baggies, most of which he refused, he said. The environment was "toxic," he said, with inmates suffering untreated from various illnesses.
He has lost a great deal of weight and has more gray hair now, said Jamil Stubbs, Mujahid's 30-year-old son.
"He's definitely aged," said Jamil Stubbs, who lives in Newark. "You can just see that he's been through a lot."
On Feb. 18, Mujahid signed a voluntary deportation order, an act he says was recommended by the U.S. embassy. On Friday morning, he said, he boarded a commercial air jet to Japan, then to San Francisco, escorted all the way by Japanese security officers.
Barred from returning to the Philippines, he is in the process of trying to bring his wife and their children to the United States.
He says he plans to sue the Philippine government.
"It feels good to be with my family and my grandkids, but I know I still have work to do and a story to tell," he said.
Staff writer Sandhya Somashekhar covers education for The Argus. She can be reached at (510) 353-7010 or
ssomashekhar@angnewspapers.com .
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