USF professor Al-Arian faces firing - brother-in-law Al-Najjar deported

TAMPA -- A Palestinian professor was deported to an undisclosed Middle Eastern country Thursday, one day after the university he formerly taught at filed a lawsuit seeking to fire his brother-in-law because it thinks he has ties to terrorism.

Mazen Al-Najjar left the country at 9 a.m., ending his seven-year legal battle to remain in the United States, according to his attorney, Joe Hohenstein. He would not reveal Al-Najjar's destination until his client safely landed in that country.

Al-Najjar, who has a doctorate in engineering and has taught Arabic language classes at the University of South Florida, spent more than 31/2 years in jail on secret evidence linking him to terrorists. He was released in 2000 but arrested again in November and held until his deportation.

Al-Najjar is the brother-in-law of USF computer-science Professor Sami Al-Arian. USF President Judy Genshaft announced Wednesday that she intends to fire Al-Arian because of his alleged ties to terrorism. The school filed a lawsuit Wednesday that includes the termination letter university officials will send to Al-Arian if the courts rule that firing him would not violate his constitutional rights.

(Nov. 27, 2001)-- Al-Najjar (former USF teacher) may go to the United Arab Emirates (It depends on who you ask)*** Since January 1999 the Immigration and Naturalization Service has sought a travel document issued to Al-Najjar by the Egyptian government that the INS says it must have to get Al-Najjar accepted into the United Arab Emirates, the country to which an immigration judge ordered Al-Najjar deported in 1997. Al-Najjar refused to hand over the document, Hohenstein said, because the INS had lost a previous important travel document.

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.

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.***

Source--In 1995, after a suicide bombing operation carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad killed 21 Israeli soldiers, University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian wrote a fund-raising letter in which he "call(s) upon you to try to extend true support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue." Many of Al-Arian's past statements and associations have raised suspicions that he was involved with terrorist organizations based in the Middle East. However, the fund-raising letter signed by al-Arian, shown during the Oct. 28 telecast of NBC's Dateline, is direct evidence of his active support for terrorism. [End Excerpt]

Source--News host Bill O'Reilly warned his audience last week that USF "may be a hotbed of support for Arab militants." O'Reilly's contentious interview with Sami Al-Arian, a USF engineering professor who founded WISE in the early 1990s, brought predictable reactions from some Tallahassee politicians and university donors. For USF president Judy Genshaft, the controversy over WISE, in the emotional environment created by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, represents one more inherited problem that will require a deft response. [End Excerpt]

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