Arab-Americans See Bias in Palestinian’s Detention

Abdallah Hjazin, a 26-year-old Palestinian in Los Angeles on a student visa, has been held for more than a month by U.S. immigration authorities on a $75,000 bond following receipt of an anonymous letter charging that he was planning to assassinate President Bush.

The case has become a cause celebre in the Arab-American community in Southern California, based on a belief that Hjazin, like other Palestinian suspects in the past, is being singled out because of his ethnicity. Activists maintain that Middle Easterners suspected of security violations are confined longer and under more stringent conditions than people from other regions.

A Secret Service spokesman in Washington said this week that the agency’s investigation is continuing on a national level, although the Secret Service office in Los Angeles concluded after a three-week inquiry that there was no evidence to corroborate the letter. “A final assessment of the suspect’s dangerousness has not yet been made,” the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said his agency will consider Hjazin a security threat until the Secret Service concludes otherwise.

The INS maintains that the student is subject to deportation on grounds that at one point two years ago he violated the terms of his visa and went to work in this country. But the spokesman said that if this were the only charge against him, he would have been released with minimal or no bond pending legal proceedings that could last years.

Hjazin’s lawyer, Simon Michael, regional counsel of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says he believes the letter, which he termed baseless, resulted from a dispute over $2,000 between Hjazin and a roommate when he was studying in Oklahoma.

“Because he’s an Arab, I think they’re treating him with a different standard,” Michael said in an interview. “It’s an open invitation to anyone with a dispute with an Arab to send something in the mail. The authorities will say he’s an Arab, and they’ll probably think he’s a terrorist.”

Hjazin, interviewed by telephone from an INS detainment facility in Florence, Ariz., where he was sent from Los Angeles over the protests of his lawyer, denied he had ever threatened Bush.

“I’m now in maximum security in this jail,” he said. “They’re keeping me with the most dangerous people they have. There are bars all over, and I have to watch everyone. You look at them wrong and they’ll beat you up. I’m very unhappy. This is a big mistake. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Michael charged that Hjazin was maliciously ordered moved from Los Angeles to Arizona by John Brechtel, assistant INS district director in charge of investigations, after Michael had informed Brechtel that he intended to go into immigration court in Los Angeles to seek the student’s release on little or no bond.

The move made it much more difficult for him to conveniently represent his client, Michael said.

Brechtel, contacted at his office, said Michael had “misrepresented the facts” in the matter.