Former teacher asks for rehearing

By SUSAN ASCHOFF

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 15, 2000

Attorneys for Mazen Al-Najjar asked Friday a federal judge who found the Tampa man's first bond hearing unconstitutional to put some teeth in her order for a rehearing by setting a deadline of 30 days.

The 43-year-old Palestinian, a former University of South Florida teacher, has been in jail for three years by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on secret evidence that the government says indicates he has ties to terrorists.

He is ordered to be deported for overstaying a student visa, but he denies any other wrongdoing.

Al-Najjar's lengthy incarceration on secret evidence has drawn national attention from civil rights and immigration activists as well as more than 100 U.S. House members who want the practice stopped.

He won a major ruling -- his first in federal court -- when U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard found May 31 he was denied his due process rights at his original bond hearing in 1997. Al-Najjar could not defend himself against unrevealed evidence, she said, and ordered a rehearing.

There has been no hearing scheduled. The government has filed for delays. And Al-Najjar remains in detention in Bradenton.

Friday's filing asks Lenard to set a 30-day deadline. Her ruling in May included no time frame. Since she concluded then that Al-Najjar had been detained unconstitutionally for more than three years, according to Friday's filing, he deserves speedy relief.

The government contends bond should be decided not by the immigration judge in Bradenton but the INS district director in Miami, as is typically done in cases with a final deportation order.

The filing states asking the district director to decide bond is like asking the "prosecutor." It also fails to remedy the constitutional violations cited by Lenard.

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