Posted on 08/23/2002 3:30:02 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
TAMPA -- Former University of South Florida instructor Mazen Al-Najjar flew to Bahrain on Thursday, a move his family hoped would end a seven-year legal saga.
But new complications arose late in the evening when an official with the Embassy of Bahrain in Washington, D.C., said his country would reject Al-Najjar when he arrived.
Jamal Rowaie, second secretary at the embassy, told the Times that the two-week visa Al-Najjar obtained was intended for "ordinary people" who want to visit the tiny Middle Eastern country.
He did not know why the visa was granted in the first place.
"His case is not an ordinary case," Rowaie said. "Because of that, Bahrain will not allow him to come."
Al-Najjar, accused of having ties to terrorism, was jailed last year for overstaying a student visa. He was expected to arrive in Bahrain via jet early this morning. Rowaie said he did not know what would happen if Al-Najjar is rejected.
Rowaie's statement was news to U.S. government officials. Al-Najjar was traveling in the custody of American immigration officials.
Citing security concerns, including the possibility of radicals attacking his American escorts, U.S. officials remained tight-lipped about Al-Najjar's destination until the last possible moment. His family said they would remain silent on which country Al-Najjar was being deported to until he arrived safely.
Even before Rowaie's revelation, Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian, said he thought there was a chance Al-Najjar would be turned away from wherever he landed.
"Then we would be back to the beginning again trying to find him a country," Al-Arian said.
Al-Najjar, 45, came to the United States in 1981 but overstayed his student visa. In 1997, the government jailed him, saying it had classified evidence linking him to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They never charged him with a crime.
He was released in December 2000, after a federal judge ruled his rights were violated by the government's refusal to divulge the evidence so that he could mount a defense. Last November, a federal appeals court upheld a deportation order for overstaying the visa and ordered him back into custody.
For the last 10 months, Al-Najjar has lived in solitary confinement at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County. He has spent more than four of the last six years behind bars.
He and his family spent the last months trying to secure a visa from one of a handful of mostly Middle Eastern countries. Last week, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority granted him travel documents, which paved the way for securing a visa from Bahrain.
Al-Najjar called his family from prison Wednesday night. During the 10-minute call, he told them he was leaving the next morning. Al-Najjar has never been to the country where he is headed and has only one acquaintance there, said his sister Nahla Al-Arian, who is Sami Al-Arian's wife.
"We are very very worried about his safety," Nahla Al-Arian said. "We are praying he will be safe and join his family."
Al-Najjar's wife, Fedaa Al-Najjar, also is facing deportation, though she has not been jailed. She, like her husband, has no passport. Both are stateless Palestinians.
Egyptian officials have indicated they will grant her travel documents, but that is no guarantee she and their three children will be able to join Al-Najjar, wherever he ends up. They hope to reunite in the next month or so.
"They've taken my husband. They've taken my driver's license. They've taken my job," Fedaa Al-Najjar said. "They've taken my life."
If the reunion is in Bahrain, they will find themselves in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation about 31/2 times the size of Washington, D.C.
The island-nation lies off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. It is just west of Qatar.
Due in part to petroleum processing and refining, the country has one of the highest standards of living in the Persian Gulf area. It is also an international banking center and boasts a more relaxed social environment than its neighbors, the CIA World Factbook says.
Behind Al-Arian's facade (founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprise at USF a decade ago)
(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. ***
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. ***
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