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Landed in Lebanon
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times MANAMA, Bahrain -- During his 48-hour international deportation odyssey, Mazen Al-Najjar chatted amicably with his federal escorts, signed autographs and posed for photos. But when the agents finally deposited him in Beirut, Lebanon, on Saturday morning, they took off in their chartered jet so fast they didn't know whether Lebanese authorities would allow him to stay in the country. To his relief, they did, and the former USF instructor spent his first day as a free man in nine months. "It feels much different," Al-Najjar said Saturday evening in an exclusive telephone interview from his sister's home in the city once called "the Paris of the Middle East." "Although for the last three days I didn't get more than three hours' sleep, I started to forget the frustration of the last nine months. I feel a lot of peace in my heart." Al-Najjar was handcuffed and shackled during much of the transcontinental journey, and had to spend 25 hours in the steamy confines of the small corporate jet when Italian authorities refused to let him get off during a stopover in Rome. "It was awful, it was August, it was Rome." But Al-Najjar, 45, said he was treated well by his escorts. A doctor who accompanied him from Florida even took digital photos to e-mail to Al-Najjar's wife and three daughters back in Tampa. He hopes to be reunited with them soon, perhaps in South Africa where he says a Muslim school has expressed a willingness to sponsor him for a job. "I really miss them a lot," he said of his family, "and I'm afraid that they might lose hope and their situation is deteriorating." A stateless Palestinian, Al-Najjar had been jailed for most of the past five years on accusations he had links to Palestinian terrorists. Although he was never charged with a crime, he overstayed his U.S. student visa and learned recently that he would be deported for the violation. Through an acquaintance in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, Al-Najjar obtained a Bahraini visa earlier this month to work as an engineering consultant for a large local company. The plan was for him to spend two weeks in Bahrain, then go on to Lebanon to visit a sister he had not seen in 15 or 16 years. But the saga turned into a major embarrassment for the U.S. government when Bahrain refused to accept Al-Najjar because he was "a different case" and not a typical visitor.
The entire hassle could have been avoided, Al-Najjar said, had the government listened to his lawyer and allowed him to go to Bahrain on a commercial flight rather than a private jet that needed special permission to land. "The problem was the chartered plane that taxpayers paid so much money for. It was counterproductive -- it raised suspicions." The odyssey began early Thursday at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County, where Al-Najjar had been held since November. He awoke around 3 a.m., showered, said his prayers and traded his orange prison jumpsuit for the dark blue slacks and light blue shirt he had last worn Nov. 24, the day he was incarcerated. "Getting rid of that orange jumpsuit was like going to paradise, it was a lot of relief." He also packed one suitcase and a smaller satchel in which he carried a radio and headphones and some of his favorite reading material, including an English-language copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Around 4 a.m. Thursday, three cars filled with agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrived at the prison. Within 15 minutes Al-Najjar was in one of the cars, surprised to be heading north on Interstate 75 instead of south to Tampa International Airport. He discovered they were going to Gainesville "because it had a small airport and the media wouldn't know I was there." Al-Najjar was surprised, too, to see a sleek corporate jet parked on the tarmac. One of the immigration officers "made a very nice statement I appreciated. He said, "Freedom is waiting here for you."' The jet, whose previous passengers purportedly included Britney Spears, was "very nice -- it had a couch and eight seats and there were sandwiches and cold drinks." In addition to Al-Najjar, the plane carried two pilots and two co-pilots, a doctor, a top INS official and two immigration officers that Al-Najjar knew from an INS facility in Bradenton where he once had been held. At the crew's insistence, Al-Najjar said, he was handcuffed and shackled at the ankles. "One of the INS officers implicitly apologized -- he didn't have any aim to cause pain and misery but the pilots wanted it." Al-Najjar said he made it clear that he was agreeable to his deportation and would cause no trouble. But "I was not really happy because I am leaving behind my family, my mom, my sister, my community, the things I achieved in my life, my memories and my friends. I am leaving so many people who supported me, who sent me dozens of letters while I was incarcerated."
During the first part of the flight, Al-Najjar could not go to the restroom unless one of his escorts went in with him. Later, they dropped that requirement and also removed his handcuffs after the plane entered Canadian airspace. To while away the time, "we talked abut several things, mostly about detainees and guards I used to know in Bradenton. That one was deported, this one was released, this officer retired, that officer quit." The jet landed at Shannon, Ireland, on Thursday night for a brief refueling stop and to take on more food, including chicken and roast beef sandwiches. They continued on to Rome, where they arrived at 10 p.m. Thursday EDT (4 a.m. Friday there) and the crew left for a hotel to get some rest. Italian authorities would not let Al-Najjar off the plane even though "it was really hot and we were sweating like hell." The INS officers took turns staying with him and one finally opened the front and back doors to get some breeze. Adding to the physical discomfort was the growing realization that there was a problem with Bahrain. Although Al-Najjar had been told that Bahraini authorities had approved the plane's landing there, they did an about-face and reneged. Al-Najjar feared he might soon end up back in prison in the United States. "I thought that if the preparations for Bahrain didn't work, other preparations wouldn't work either." The high-ranking INS official aboard asked if Al-Najjar could go to Lebanon. He replied that his family had previously obtained a Lebanese visa for him, so after another flurry of talks between Al-Najjar's lawyer and U.S. government officials, the plane took off at 11 p.m. Friday (5 a.m. Saturday there) -- more than a full day after it first touched down in Rome. By this time, Al-Najjar was resigned to his fate, however uncertain it remained. "I submitted myself to God, whatever should happen, I could do nothing about it." As the jet began its final approach to Beirut 31/2 hours later, resignation turned to anticipation. "I was really excited. It's a beautiful place and I like being so close to the Mediterranean. It was looking good." After a brief discussion with an airport official, the INS team was ready to go. Al-Najjar wished his escorts a safe trip home and some of them wished hin good luck in return. "They didn't wait, they left immediately, which meant that if anything was not successful they would have left me in limbo." Al-Najjar, who has no passport because he is stateless, showed the authorities the travel documents he had been issued by the Palestinian Authority. The Lebanese asked him a series of questions designed to prove his identity and explain why he had come to their country. "I told them I could leave tomorrow, I'm only waiting for a chance to resettle with my family in some place like South Africa, said Al-Najjar, who has a doctorate in engineering. "Lebanon is a nice country but it is a small country and I don't know how many job opportunities there are for me. It's a country that exports people with skills and higher education. But they are a very warm people and it is good to be here." Like her husband, Fedaa Al-Najjar also is not a U.S. citizen but hopes to obtain travel documents from Egypt. She and their three daughters, who are U.S. citizens, hope to reunite with him after she gets the documents. But there is no guarantee when, or if, a reunion will take place. Al-Najjar waited at the airport for two hours until his sister and her husband, unsure of his exact arrival time, came to pick him up. "When I saw her last she had only two small children. Now she has six and the eldest has just been admitted to the American University in Beirut. I'm very proud of him." Much of Al-Najjar's new-found freedom Saturday was spent on the phone talking to his wife, daughters, father, mother, sister and brothers. He tried to take a nap, but was too keyed-up to sleep much. Al-Najjar said he bears no rancor about his years of detention although the six months in solitary confinement from November to May temporarily weakened his memory and caused depression and anxiety. "No, I'm not bitter against anybody, especially the U.S. people. People showered me with support and letters and prayers ... even those who targeted me and my family and community and tried to destroy our image and defame us and spread false representations about our ideas, I don't really hate them." As he has maintained all along, Al-Najjar said Saturday that he has no ties to terrorists. While he supports the cause of Palestinian statehood, he said he has never approved of the use of violence against Israel. "Is it right to answer the violence of an adversary with more violence? No, we need to answer violence with more wisdom, more justice, more peace." Although he finally won his freedom, Al-Najjar worries about what he considers a dangerous erosion of civil liberties in the United States and a disturbing backlash against Muslims in particular. "I think the standard of civil rights is not the same as it used to be one year ago. I hope people who believe in the Constitution and civil rights will stand up and keep their eyes open and point out what can happen." -- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com
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