> An appeal for justice
>
> With renewed hope, an immigrant jailed on secret
> evidence faces a last-resort quest for justice.
>
> By SUSAN ASCHOFF
> St. Petersburg Times, published December 8, 1999
>
> On his first morning of freedom after 31/2 years jailed as a
> dangerous man, Nasser Ahmed phoned a woman in Tampa he has never met.
He told her that, God willing, her husband, Mazen Al-Najjar, who has been
> held more than 2 years, would soon be free as well.
>
> The government, he said, cannot prevail.
>
> Strangers to each other, Ahmed in New York and Al-Najjar in
> Florida and another 20 men across the country share
> membership in the same bleak fraternity: Arab and Muslim
> immigrants jailed indefinitely o secret government evidence
> linking them to terrorists.
>
> The release of Ahmed on Nov. 29, and of another immigrant
> jailed in New Jersey, Hany Kiareldeen, on Oct. 25, comes
> after more than a decade of secret evidence cases against
> Arabs and Muslims and three years of intense opposition to
> the tactic by civil rights and immigrant groups.
>
> Now it is Mazen Al-Najjar's turn. Denied bail and residency by an
> immigration judge and appeals panel, he will take his battle to
> federal court.
>
> This week his attorneys will seek his immediate release in a habeas
> petition at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. A habeas is
> an extraordinary proceeding of last resort to free a person wrongfully
> jailed.
>
> "I feel the other side, the government, is losing. They have to lose,"
> Al-Najjar said in a telephone conversation from the INS detention
> facility in Bradenton last week.
>
> He and the others jailed say they are innocent. Critics charge that the
> Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI are abusing the system in
> the name of national security, depriving the men of their constitutional
> right to confront their accusers.
>
> Ahmed, a 39-year-old Egyptian, was accused of carrying communications
> from the jailed Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman to terrorists opposed to the
> Egyptian government. Palestinian Kiareldeen, 31, spent 19 months in jail,
> accused of meeting with one of the World Trade Center bombers and
> threatening Attorney General Janet Reno.
>
> The U.S. government's recent decisions to drop its appeals in the Ahmed and
> Kiareldeen cases do not make legal precedent. But they provide momentum
> for those still seeking release from detention.
>
> The dramatic developments in the New York and New Jersey cases contrast
> sharply with the dearth of good news for Al-Najjar.
>
> His case has lagged on the litigation front.
>
> Florida lawmakers have declined to get involved. Rep. Alcee Hastings of
> Miami is the only member of the Florida delegation to join 60 House
> members sponsoring legislation to ban secret evidence.
>
> The only congressman who has visited Al-Najjar in jail is Rep. David Bonior
> of Michigan.
>
> Several area law firms were asked to take the case pro bono on
> constitutional grounds, but none would do so. Friends and family have
> paid more than $100,000 thus far in court costs and to private attorneys,
> even though they often have discounted fees.
>
> The specter of domestic terrorism and a prejudice against Arab-Americans
> and Muslims blind those who should rush to defend a constitutional right,
> supporters say.
>
> The 42-year-old Al-Najjar, a former Arabic teacher at the University of
> South Florida who has lived in the United States almost 20 years, was
> arrested in May 1997 on an expired visa. He was denied bail because of
> an "association with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."
>
> The accusation stems from Al-Najjar's work at a USF-affiliated think tank.
> Another member of the think tank, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, left Tampa in
> 1995 and assumed leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Government
> agents say the now-closed institution was a front for abetting Middle East
> terrorists.
>
> In the 21/2 years Al-Najjar's case has moved through the immigration system,
> he has been told nothing more.
>
> "In each of these (other) cases they got a little bit of information and
> were able to go back to the judge" and defend themselves, said his
> brother-in-law Sami Al-Arian. "We have been unable to get anything.
>
> "It took the (appeals panel) 29 months to say the exact same thing as the
> immigration judge" and order Al-Najjar deported, Al-Arian said.
>
> His wife, Fedaa Al-Najjar, is not accused of any terrorist ties, but she is
> also ordered deported on an expired visa. A petition for review of the
> Al-Najjars deportations and their rejected requests for asylum has
> already been filed in federal court. The couple has three daughters born
> in the United States.
>
> There has been an earnest idealism on the part of the family about how the
> system works in such cases. If Janet Reno and President Clinton were told of
> the injustice, the family believed, they would stop it.
>
> Al-Arian and others spent long days in Washington, D.C., visiting elected
> and administrative officials and thrusting large envelopes of newspaper
> editorials and documents into their hands. They went to find Hillary
> Clinton at an appearance in Michigan. Members of Al-Najjar's east Tampa
> mosque and the Hillsborough Organization for Progress and Equality
> wrangled a meeting with Justice Department officials in April 1998.
>
> Nothing changed.
>
> Meanwhile, attorneys for Ahmed and Kiareldeen were wielding legal filings
> in federal court and FOI requests to the FBI, ignoring the 1996 law that
> says an immigrant must first exhaust his remedies in the immigration
> system before asking the federal courts to intervene. The government, to
> head off a ruling from a federal judge, released pieces of its evidence
> to throw the cases back to the immigration judges. The immigrant at
> least got something to rebut.
>
> In the end, that was enough for Ahmed and Kiareldeen to show the allegations
> against them were unproven.
>
> With the release of Ahmed and Kiareldeen, the focus of those opposed to
> secret evidence is now on Mazen Al-Najjar.
>
> A Philadelphia attorney, Joe Hohenstein, signed on this summer to represent
> the Al-Najjars. David Cole, a constitutional law expert from Georgetown
> University who has made major case law for immigrants battling secret
> evidence and who worked on the Ahmed and Kiareldeen cases, has agreed to
> help. In November, the ACLU of Florida announced it will be "directly
> involved in this effort."
>
> "We've always been deeply troubled by Al-Najjar's incarceration," said
> legal director Andrew Kayton in Miami.
>
> Kayton notes that Al-Najjar's is the only case in which the immigration
> judge failed to keep any record of the secret evidence given in chambers,
> leaving nothing for an appeals judge to review.
>
> "It's equally troubling that these types of proceedings are used against one
> type of ethnic group," Kayton said. The silence and inaction by the Florida
> legal community and legislators "plays to base prejudices," he said. While a
> habeas filing would appear to promise quick action, one for Nasser Ahmed
> was 2 years old and still pending when he was released. Al-Najjar's
> attorneys believe that because he has a final deportation ruling from
> the Board of Immigration Appeals, the federal court is free to act.
>
> Supporters are optimistic. Buoyed by the government's losses in at least
> three secret evidence cases this year and the tongue-lashings it got from
> judges, they have faith that justice will come to Mazen Al-Najjar.
>
> "I think in every religion, God will stand by the persecuted," said his
> wife, "I think Mazen will be free."