Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Al-Arian must find his own refuge

The jailed former USF professor who agreed to deportation has to arrange his own travel documents.

By MEG LAUGHLIN
Published April 18, 2006

TAMPA - Sami Al-Arian has agreed to help arrange his own deportation once he serves his sentence. That means getting his own travel documents, securing a visa and finding a country willing to take him.

Can he do it? Or will he find himself like his brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar, who was deported to Bahrain in 2002 only to have the country balk while his plane was midflight?

"It took us four years to find a country to take Mazen, and then that didn't work out," said Al-Arian's wife, Nahla. "We are trying to be hopeful about Sami but, as you know, he is a Palestinian refugee, and it is complicated to find a country."

Al-Arian also could find himself in legal limbo like co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh, who remains in immigration custody despite having the travel documents he needs and being acquitted of all charges four months ago.

"If I were Sami Al-Arian and I looked at what is happening to Sameeh Hammoudeh, I'd be suspect about any representation the government makes about what will happen" after Immigration and Customs Enforcement gets the case, said Hammoudeh's lawyer, Stephen Bernstein.

After pleading guilty to helping associates of a terrorist group, Al-Arian agreed to prison and deportation. But the details are fuzzy: how much prison time? Deported where and how?

Al-Arian must go to "a country outside and not contiguous to the United States." But getting travel documents to make that happen isn't as easy as it sounds, said attorneys familiar with the case.

Bernstein said Hammoudeh has an "expedited order of removal" like the one the government has recommended for Al-Arian, "but it appears to mean nothing."

He said his advice to Al-Arian would be to ask U.S. District Judge James S. Moody to release him from jail after he completes his sentence.

"The conditions of his release need to be stated while Moody is still in charge," Bernstein said.

Tampa immigration lawyer Simon Gaugush is working on a smooth passage for Al-Arian, but would not talk about the case or immigration issues.

The government's recommendation in Al-Arian's plea agreement to "expedite" the deportation should help Al-Arian leave the country fairly quickly, said Dan Vara, chief counsel in Orlando for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"That judicial order means he will avoid protracted litigation over immigration issues," Vara said.

Al-Arian needs a visa and the government needs proof it can land a plane and escort Al-Arian off.

"The first step is to get a country to allow him to come in on a transit visa," Vara said. The government needs "assurances from that country that we can deliver him," he added.

"We have no interest in keeping him here," he said.

Vara would not talk about why the agency is keeping Sameeh Hammoudeh incarcerated, despite his having an active transit visa from Jordan.

"Because there are similar security concerns," Vara said, he expects Al-Arian's removal to be similar to Al-Najjar's. That involved a private jet with three immigration officials, a four-person flight crew, a doctor and Al-Najjar.

When Al-Najjar was not allowed to land in Bahrain, which had issued his transit visa, he went to Lebanon, which gave him a passport.

David Cole, who was Al-Najjar's attorney, said he doesn't think Al-Arian would have agreed to get his own travel documents unless he was confident that a particular country would take him.

"Besides, Al-Arian was very helpful at finding a country for Al-Najjar and knows a lot about it," Cole added.

Meg Laughlin can be reached at 813 226-3365 or mlaughlin@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 19, 2006, 00:01:59]