A Palestinian university instructor and researcher, who has recently been freed from a Florida jail, said Friday that he intends to pursue his appeal for asylum in the states.
Mazen Najjar, who had been kept in detention as part of a deportation proceeding since May 19, 1997, told Al Jazira satellite channel that the court ordered his release after it found that there was no case against him.
“There were no official charges, no evidence,’ he said in a telephone interview. He was detained on the basis of the so-called “secret evidence.”
Asked if he would claim compensation, Najjar said that he is not preoccupied with this, and his aim is to obtain the political asylum “as a Palestinian who has no homeland,” in the proper sense of the word.
Najjar had applied for asylum days before he was detained in 1997.
The government alleged then he was a threat to national security, giving him one non-specific sentence of evidence that accuses him of an "association" with a terrorist organization.
Najjar was an associate of Ramadan Shalah, leader of the Islamic Jihad Palestinian faction, who used to run a research center in Florida before he returned to Damascus to assume the leadership of the hardline group.
Najjar is waiting for a court hearing on January 6, where his appeal for asylum will be determined, he told the station.
Secret evidence has been employed against more than 100 individuals, the majority of whom are of Arab descent. US courts in New York, New Jersey, and California have consistently ruled against the use of secret evidence. In several cases, individuals held for prolonged periods were freed after it was revealed that the secret evidence against them consisted of inadmissible hearsay or inconsequential newspaper clippings – Albawaba.com
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
