Judge won't unlock Al-Najjar's cell door

MIAMI -- Former University of South Florida instructor Mazen Al-Najjar lost a chance to be freed from federal prison Tuesday when a judge refused to intervene on his behalf.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard concluded the government has legitimate reasons for keeping Al-Najjar, a Palestinian-born longtime Tampa resident with suspected terrorist ties, behind bars for at least six months while trying to deport him.

Lenard refused to let him go now, review evidence to justify his release or order his removal from solitary confinement. But she noted the clock is ticking for the government under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued last year.

"We're obviously extremely disappointed and concerned because at the end of the day our claim was you can't lock somebody up without any evidence showing that they need to be locked up," said Georgetown University law professor David Cole, one of Al-Najjar's lawyers.

A call for comment to the Justice Department was not immediately returned.

Al-Najjar was jailed for 31/2 years on secret evidence, set free in December 2000 by Lenard who ruled that Al-Najjar's due-process rights were violated when the government refused to share enough of the classified information for him to mount a defense.

He was free for nearly a year, but taken into custody again on Nov. 24 for overstaying a student visa issued 20 years ago.

Al-Najjar, 44, has been fighting deportation since 1997.

A deportation order against Al-Najjar, 44, has been upheld by a federal appeals court. But his attorneys say he will say he will never be deported because he is stateless and unwanted elsewhere while carrying the terrorist tag.

The Supreme Court has ruled immigrant criminals with no country to accept them cannot be jailed indefinitely and suggested a six-month standard for either deporting people or setting them free.

For Al-Najjar, who has no criminal record, Lenard indicated he may have a valid legal case starting in mid-May.

Al-Najjar will appeal Lenard's ruling and be back in court in May if he remains in custody, Cole said.

"This decision goes far beyond any decisions of the Supreme Court," he said. "The Supreme Court has never upheld presumptive preventive detention."

Nationwide, more than 600 men from Arab and Muslim countries were detained after the Sept. 11 attacks for immigration violations and other nonterrorist-related charges.

In 1997, without releasing any evidence, the federal government said Al-Najjar used an Islamic think tank at the University of South Florida in Tampa as a front for terrorism. The government maintained Al-Najjar's defunct Islamic studies group had ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which actively supports terrorist bombings in the Middle East.

Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian, is fighting his firing from a tenured computer engineering professorship at USF. He was deemed a security risk after a Sept. 26 appearance on Fox News Network's The O'Reilly Factor and a drain on university fundraising.

USF president Judy Genshaft said she would move to fire Al-Arian because controversy surrounding the allegations of his terrorist ties has disrupted university operations.

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