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Lawyers for Palestinian Jailed on "Secret Evidence" File Motion
Requesting Federal Judge to Enforce Previous Order
September 5, 2000
MIAMI ? Five days after abruptly halting Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar's second court-ordered bond hearing, lawyers for the 43-year-old man jailed for more than three years on "secret evidence" filed a motion in U.S. District Court asking a federal judge to prohibit the INS from continuing to detain him without first presenting his defense team with a summary of the classified information in open court.
The 16-page request, filed today in federal district court in Miami, asks Judge Joan A. Lenard to compel Immigration Judge Kevin McHugh to follow-through with her May 31 Order, in which she criticized the INS for detaining the Muslim cleric without allowing him or his attorneys the opportunity to review or rebut the speculative evidence that purportedly links him to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group the United States government has designated as "terrorist." Contrary to Judge Lenard's ruling, Immigration Judge McHugh agreed at last week's bond hearing to consider the classified evidence without establishing any procedural safeguards designed to preserve Dr. Al-Najjar's due process rights.
Three days into the second bond hearing, which began Aug. 29, Dr. Al-Najjar's lawyers stopped the proceedings just as the government was once again about to share secret information with Immigration Judge McHugh behind closed doors ? without Dr. Al Najjar's defense team present. On Aug. 31, after Immigration Judge McHugh refused to release even an unclassified summary of the secret evidence, Dr. Al-Najjar's attorneys requested a stay in the proceedings in order to file the emergency motion in federal court to compel him to comply with Judge Lenard's order.
Background
The lawsuit, AlNajjar v. Janet Reno, was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Nationalities Service Center and Tampa-based attorney Martin Schwartz on behalf of Dr. AlNajjar, a former professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His detention without bond in Bradenton's Downtown Detention Facility began on May 19, 1997 when INS and FBI agents stormed into his home and arrested him in front of his wife and three U.S.citizen daughters. Dr. AlNajjar has lived in the United States as a student, professor and community activist for the past fifteen years.
