Attorney General Janet Reno today authorized the release of a Palestinian immigrant who was held for three and a half years in a Florida jail on the basis of secret government evidence.
The release of the immigrant, Mazen Al-Najjar, a Tampa resident and a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, is the latest in a string of terrorism cases that have unraveled and exposed justice officials to charges of bias against Arab or Muslim immigrants.
The case has also brought new scrutiny of the anti-terrorism bill approved by Congress in 1996 after the World Trade Center bombing, which allowed the Immigration and Naturalization Service to arrest or detain noncitizens, without identifying either their accuser or the evidence against them.
Mr. Al-Najjar, 43, was born in Israeli-occupied Gaza and settled in Florida after admittedly overstaying a student visa in the early 1980's, his lawyers said. He raised three daughters, was active in a mosque in Tampa and had no criminal record.
But suspicions were raised at the F.B.I. and among immigration officials because of his involvement in the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a research center affiliated with the University of South Florida, and the Islamic Concern Project, whose activities included sending money to orphans in occupied Palestine, his lawyers said.
Mr. Al-Najjar, who denies any link to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, was arrested in May 1997 and had been held in jail until today, though he was never charged with a crime based on the government's evidence. Initially, relatives said, his contact with his children was limited to once a year.
"Life was not really life," said Mr. Al-Najjar in a telephone interview after his release today on $8,000 bond. "I was missing everything."
Ms. Reno ultimately backed a decision earlier this week by the Board of Immigration Appeals to allow Mr. Al-Najjar's release. In May, a district court judge in Miami ruled his detention violated due process and ordered a hearing in which Mr. Al-Najjar would be able to confront the secret evidence against him. Last week, an immigration judge ruled that a summary of the secret evidence provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service was not sufficiently detailed to allow Mr. Al-Najjar to defend himself adequately.
David Cole, Mr. Al-Najjar's lead lawyer and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said he has represented more than a dozen clients like Mr. Al-Najjar in recent years: Arab immigrants who were detained on weak evidence and ultimately released.
"It's really an incredibly embarrassing record for I.N.S.," Mr. Cole said. "Virtually all of the secret evidence cases I.N.S. has brought in the last five years have all involved Arabs. If the I.N.S. used this tactic against a group that was less subject to a terrorist stereotype, there would be a much broader outcry."
Two cases based on secret government evidence fell apart for the Justice Department last year after courts ruled that the suspects' detention was unconstitutional. Authorities released Nasser K. Ahmed, an Egyptian man jailed in New York for three and a half years, and Hany Kiareldeen, a Palestinian man who was held for 19 months, despite classified F.B.I. assertions that they were linked to terrorists.
In Congress, some lawmakers who had supported strengthening the hand of law enforcement against foreign terrorists, are now seeking to repeal the 1996 law allowing the use of secret evidence. President-elect Bush has expressed support for such a move, and Representative David E. Bonior, the Democratic minority whip, plans to fight for the change.
In May, the I.N.S. said 11 people were being held in the United States on the basis of secret evidence, though critics of the process said the number is higher.
"The case of Mazen Al-Najjar represents a shameful chapter in our nation's history," Mr. Bonior said. "Unfortunately, there are others still held, despite four federal judges' rulings that the practice of secret evidence is unconstitutional."
Justice Department officials said that they would continue to seek Mr. Al-Najjar's deportation.
"Mazen Al-Najjar is an alien subject to a final deportation order who has been illegally present in the United States for many years," Ms. Reno said in a statement. "I continue to believe that the nation has been well served by the efforts of the I.N.S. to remove Mr. Al-Najjar expeditiously from the country."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Mazen Al-Najjar greeted family and friends yesterday after his release from jail. He had been held for three and a half years on secret F.B.I. data. (Associated Press)