By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press
MIAMI (July 20, 2001 6:08 p.m. EDT) - A federal appeals court has upheld the deportation order for a Palestinian jailed for three years on secret evidence that purportedly links him to terrorists.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Mazen Al-Najjar and his wife, Fedaa, failed to show enough evidence that they should receive asylum. It denied their request for a new hearing.
The government is trying to deport the couple.
Ethan Kanter, a Justice Department lawyer involved in the case, did not return a phone call Thursday. Calls to Al-Najjar's home were not answered.
Al-Najjar, who has a doctorate in engineering and has taught at the University of South Florida, was jailed in May 1997 after being ordered deported for overstaying a student visa.
A judge denied him bond based on government allegations that Al-Najjar used an Islamic think tank at the university as a front for terrorism. The FBI had seized the records, computers and software of World and Islam Studies Enterprise and froze its bank accounts when it said the group was raising money for terrorists in the early 1990s.
The government, citing national security concerns, refused to reveal detailed evidence against Al-Najjar to his lawyers
. Al-Najjar was released in December after a panel of judges - and Attorney General Janet Reno - agreed there was no reason to keep him behind bars. Al-Najjar denied any links to terrorists.
Deportation orders would send Mazen Al-Najjar to the United Arab Emirates and Fedaa Al-Najjar to Saudi Arabia, their last places of residence before coming to the United States in the 1980s.
Lawyers for the couple argued that they would face persecution if they were deported because of their support of Palestinian autonomy.
"It's a very disappointing decision. It's a shock that they won't let him have a new hearing on asylum," said Al-Najjar's attorney, Martin Schwartz.
David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who also represented Al-Najjar, said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia rarely accept Palestinians. He said the court ruling leaves the couple, parents of three daughters who are U.S. citizens, in a potentially permanent "stateless limbo."
"They will be in a situation where they're deported but not deportable," Cole said.
Al-Najjar's lawyers said they would likely request a rehearing.
In February, leaders of the American Bar Association called for changes to a 1996 anti-terrorism law that has made it easier for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to use secret evidence against noncitizens.
We are going to have to lean hard on those "folks." Or maybe we can plop him in that new Palestinian state </sardonic>
For more on AlArian, check WorldNetDaily's archives for Debbie Schlussel's columns on his and other Islamic radicals' ties with the Prez. It's scary.