Palestinian Jailed Over Alleged Terrorist Links Will Be Deported

A Palestinian imprisoned twice for immigration violations and suspected terrorist ties will be released this week from a federal prison and deported to a Middle Eastern country, his attorneys said Monday.

Mazen Al-Najjar, 45, has been held since November on a deportation order for overstaying his visa, which was issued 20 years ago.

Al-Najjar, who has never been charged with a crime, has been held in solitary confinement at the federal prison in Coleman, Fla.

“There’s no justification for the fact he’s been detained all this time and there’s no justification for sending him to a country and splitting him up from his family,” said Martin Schwartz, one of the attorneys involved in Al-Najjar’s case.

Al-Najjar was jailed from 1997 to the end of 2000 on secret evidence that he helped support terrorists through an Islamic think tank and charity he founded with his brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian. Both men consistently have denied any connection to terrorists.

Al-Najjar was free for nearly a year but was taken into custody again for the visa violation after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He will be deported this week, but an exact time of deportation will not be released for security reasons, said Rodney Germain, an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman.

Al-Najjar has acquired travel documents from the Palestinian Authority and will be deported to an Arab country “with friendly relations with the United States,” such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar or Bahrain, said Joe Hohenstein, another attorney for Al-Najjar.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard concluded in February that the government had legitimate reasons for keeping Al-Najjar behind bars for at least six months while trying to deport him.

Al-Najjar’s wife, Fedaa, is also under a deportation order and is trying to find a country that will accept her, so that at some point she and her three U.S.-born daughters can be reunited with Mazen Al-Najjar, Hohenstein said.

Al-Arian, a tenured computer science professor at the University of South Florida, has been on paid leave since September. University President Judy Genshaft is expected to decide whether to fire him before fall semester classes begin next week.

Al-Arian is the former head of a university-based Islamic study think tank and charity the FBI has accused of being a front for terrorists. He denies any wrongdoing and denies knowing that speakers his group sponsored were terrorists. Al-Arian has never been arrested.