'Wandering Palestinian's' ordeal ends

Mazen Al-Najjar's quest for a new home landed him in Lebanon on Saturday, ending a tense two-day ordeal of scuttled travel plans and secret international negotiations.

Al-Najjar was greeted warmly in the Middle East, where newspapers have portrayed him as a victim of U.S. oppression.

Now, he can live freely in Lebanon for six months on a tourist visa. The former University of South Florida instructor hopes to be reunited with his family and later move to South Africa, where a Muslim school has offered him a job.

"Today, I'm really at peace," Al-Najjar said in an interview from his sister's home in Beirut. "(You) can't imagine how much peace I feel."

He will live with his sister and her family after spending much of the last five years in Florida jails, first on secret evidence of suspected ties to terrorists and then on immigration violations.

The international drama of Al-Najjar's deportation had been weeks in the making, complete with secret negotiations, but by Thursday the outlook appeared grim when the tiny Middle East country of Bahrain rejected Al-Najjar as he flew over the Atlantic.

Al-Najjar left a Sumter County prison Thursday morning with U.S. cash and a credit card, escorted by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents. They drove to Gainesville and took a 10-seat jet to Ireland, where they refueled. Then, they flew to Italy, where they spent 25 hours on a Rome runway before landing in Beirut early Saturday.

Al-Najjar's family, including wife and children in Tampa, worried that Lebanon also would reject him and force a return to the United States, where he had been in prison since November.

At one point, the family hurriedly faxed a copy of his Lebanese visa to U.S. government officials after INS agents threw away the copy in Al-Najjar's bag because it was in Arabic, the family said.

Lebanese officials allowed the plane to land about 2:30 a.m. EDT. INS agents flew away before his paperwork was processed.

"The story of Dr. Al-Najjar is really the story of the wandering Palestinian," said Sami Al-Arian, Al-Najjar's brother-in-law. "A hundred years ago, there was the wandering Jew around the world. And what we have today is the wandering Palestinian.... He is a person without a country."

Al-Najjar was met at the airport by his sister, Hala Al-Najjar, who lives in Beirut with her husband and six children.

His other sister, Nahla Al-Arian of Tampa, wife of Sami Al-Arian, described her brother's ordeal as "horrible."

"I feel upset because I lost my brother in this way," she said Saturday. "All of us feel ashamed the way he was treated."

Al-Najjar's wife, Fedaa Al-Najjar, also is facing deportation. She was not able to travel with her husband because she does not have the proper travel documents.

But Sami Al-Arian said the Egyptian government agreed to renew her expired documents, paving the way for her and their three daughters, ages 14, 11 and 7, to join him, though it may take months.

"Hearing him speak was such a great moment," Fedaa Al-Najjar said. "I'm so happy for him but also sad that he is without us."

Al-Najjar's father, a U.S. citizen who flew to the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip several months ago for the third time to try to acquire travel documents for his son, will visit soon. Al-Najjar's mother and sister also plan to travel there in the next few weeks.

"All his life he was a man of peace, high morals and character," said his mother, Imaam Al-Najjar, whose comments were translated by her daughter. "Four years of his life were lost. They punished him for four years for nothing."

The family received word of Al-Najjar's arrival in Beirut about 5 a.m. Saturday. Al-Najjar's wife and sister spoke to him for an hour that morning as he drank tea at his sister's house.

"I'm excited. I can't believe," said Nahla Al-Arian, who was seen crying publicly several times last week but couldn't help but smile during an interview Saturday.

Since November, Al-Najjar, has been jailed at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex for overstaying his student visa. He had tried to find a new country but none would take him until two weeks ago, when Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority granted him travel documents.

The family secured a visa from Lebanon on Aug. 6, but the country would not take him if he came directly from the United States, Sami Al-Arian said. A couple of weeks later, a friend in Bahrain helped get him a visitor's visa so he could spend a few days there before heading to Lebanon.

"Many of these countries don't want all the publicity," said Sami Al-Arian, a USF professor who himself is under federal investigation into accusations of terrorist ties. "By having Mazen come in from a country other than the United States, it can cut down on all the (news) reports."

Al-Najjar and his U.S. escorts headed to Ireland on Thursday night to refuel, but learned Bahrain would not welcome him.

It's unclear why officials in Bahrain changed their minds. But Al-Arian thinks the pilots radioed ahead for clearance, and when officials there heard who was on board, they rejected the request.

Jamal Rowaie, second secretary at the Embassy of Bahrain in Washington, told the Times last week that Al-Najjar's deportation and the publicity his case had generated had influenced Bahrain's decision to renege on the visa. Rowaie said he did not know why Bahrain officials would grant Al-Najjar a visa in the first place if they intended to turn him away.

The family begged U.S. government officials to take Al-Najjar on a regularly scheduled commercial flight from Europe. If Al-Najjar had flown in on a commercial flight, Al-Arian said, he would have been just another passenger with a two-week visa.

U.S. officials in Washington confirmed details of Al-Najjar's journey on Saturday. But they would not explain why he was sent on a corporate jet.

"They wouldn't listen to us," Sami Al-Arian said.

A stateless Palestinian, Al-Najjar came to the United States in 1981 but overstayed a student visa. He was jailed in 1997 in Bradenton on classified evidence that allegedly linked him to the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad. He was never charged.

Al-Najjar was released 31/2 years later in December 2000, after a Miami federal judge ruled his constitutional rights were violated by the government's refusal to divulge the evidence so that he could mount a defense. In November, a federal appeals court upheld a deportation order for overstaying the visa and ordered him back into custody.

Al-Najjar and his wife came to the U.S. using Egyptian travel documents, but Egypt refused to renew their documents. The Palestinian Authority, which usually issues such documents only for people living in occupied territories, recently took the rare step of granting Al-Najjar new documents to get him out of U.S. custody.

"We are not bitter or upset," his wife said. "We just wonder why he had to be treated this way if he hadn't done anything wrong."

Now, free in Lebanon, where thousands of Palestinians have settled over the years, Al-Najjar will recuperate from his lengthy prison stays and his medical ailments that stem from diabetes. On the trip to Beirut, Al-Najjar was accompanied by a doctor, who gave him two weeks' worth of medication for his diabetes and heart troubles.

"Right now," said Sami Al-Arian, "we want to savor that the worst of the ordeal is over."

-- Times staff writers Susan Taylor Martin and Paul de la Garza contributed to this report.

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