He checked single, instead of divorced

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Terrorism suspect imprisoned without conviction in Virginia


Majed Hajbeh, 44, pictured at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in 2005, is seeking release pending his deportation. THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT FILE PHOTO

By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 24, 2007

Majed Hajbeh is a man without a country.

The 44-year-old Palestinian has bounced from one Virginia jail to another for nearly four years, without any criminal conviction in this country. For the past 15 months, he's been held in solitary confinement - 23 hours each day in a cell alone.

He is being detained in an immigration administrative process that could last the rest of his life, according to his lawyers. His initial infraction: He checked single, instead of divorced, on his application for a green card.

Immigration authorities, however, suspect him of being a Jordanian terrorist and want him deported.

Hajbeh, with the help of a Washington law firm, this month filed a lawsuit in Norfolk federal court seeking his release, or at the very least his removal from solitary confinement. The government filed papers this week seeking to block that request.

Hajbeh's case highlights the government's hard-line efforts - since the 2001 terrorist attacks - to keep potentially dangerous non citizens behind bars, even without filing criminal charges. But Hajbeh's case stands out both for the length of time he's been in jail and the government's evidence linking him to terrorist activity.

He was convicted in absentia in his native Jordan of plotting the bombings of an American school and other targets. That 1999 conviction occurred while he was living in Woodbridge, Va. The Jordanian government would later overturn the convictions of his co-defendants, acknowledging the charges were trumped up and the defendants were tortured into confessing. The Jordanian government also apologized. Hajbeh's conviction stands because he has never returned to Jordan.
The U.S. government refuses to accept Hajbeh's innocence. At one point in its investigation, a federal agent suggested that Hajbeh had ties to two Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.

Meanwhile, Hajbeh's wife, who had a minor stroke recently, and their seven children muddle through life in Northern Virginia with limited resources.

The Virginian-Pilot interviewed Hajbeh in 2005 when he was being held at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. He had been in custody for two years and was awaiting a court ruling on his request to remain in the country. That request was denied and his appeals that followed failed.

In late 2005, Hajbeh was moved to the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, about 150 miles from his family in Woodbridge. He was transferred "because he is a difficult detainee," an immigration official said in a court filing and he is being housed in solitary confinement because of his suspected ties to terrorism.

Jail officials and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied requests by The Pilot to interview him.

He has been ordered to be deported to Jordan, but that order was suspended because of evidence that he would face torture if he is returned there. Immigration authorities are searching for another country, possibly Israel, where he could live freely with his family.

"He is, in fact, stateless," his attorney wrote in a court filing.

In ordering Hajbeh deported, an immigration judge cited the incorrect information Hajbeh checked on his papers when he entered the country in 1993. Hajbeh said it was an honest mistake. Because it was an administrative procedure, the judge did not take into account the fact that Hajbeh was acquitted in federal court of a criminal charge of falsifying the document.

The judge also cited his Jordanian conviction. Hajbeh's attorneys argued unsuccessfully that he has never been charged in this country with being a terrorist.

"To give the government unchecked power to unilaterally and arbitrarily designate someone as a terrorist is draconian at the least," one of Hajbeh's former attorneys wrote in a 2005 court brief.

Born in 1962 in the West Bank, Majed Talat Hajbeh and his parents moved to Kuwait in 1967 and then to Jordan during the first Gulf War. He had married in 1988 but divorced in 1992.

Hajbeh arrived in Chicago in 1993, joining other family members who fled Jordan to escape unrest.

During a brief return to Jordan that year to tend to his sick son, Jordanian intelligence authorities detained Hajbeh for 13 days in an effort to force him to become a spy, according to court papers filed by his attorneys. The Jordanians beat the bottoms of his feet and rubbed salt in the wounds, burned him with cigarettes and forced him to ingest unidentified pills, the attorneys said.

"When he was not being tortured himself he could hear the screams of other victims," the papers say.

Hajbeh returned to Jordan again and remarried his ex-wife, Najwa Abualhija. They and their children returned to the United States.

A devout Muslim, Hajbeh settled in Murfreesboro, Tenn., working in factories and studying and teaching his religion at the local mosque. He even converted Priscilla Alnabulsi, the daughter of a co-worker, to Islam.

Hajbeh moved his family to Northern Virginia where he could pursue religious studies. He had hoped to obtain a doctorate and become a Muslim teacher.

He returned to Jordan for brief visits through the 1990s, he said, to visit sick family members. It was during these visits that the Jordanian government alleged that Hajbeh led and financed a group called the Reform and Defiance Movement, which planted bombs at an American school, a hotel and other government offices. No one was injured in the explosions.

After the 2001 attacks in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security mounted an effort to root out suspected terrorists and people with falsified immigration papers. Hajbeh was one of them.

During his immigration proceedings, family and friends testified on his behalf, and his attorneys submitted 31 affidavits from supporters, all of whom spoke of Hajbeh's pacifism.

Hajbeh "would always be lecturing and advising on the true values of Islam: no crime, no adultery, no stealing, no violence," according to a statement from a long time friend, Eyad Ahmad.

They also submitted news reports and records from Jordan detailing Hajbeh's torture, the convictions that were overturned and the subsequent conviction of the "real perpetrator" of the bombings, according to the court records here.

Alnabulsi said she testified about the federal agent who came knocking on her door in 2003, asking questions about Hajbeh. The agent called Hajbeh a fundamentalist and asked if he ever talked about meeting two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.

"There's no way that ever happened," said Alnabulsi, who started a "Free Hajbeh" petition online that has more than 250 signatures.

Hajbeh's oldest child, Sumaya, 16, is signature No. 201.

"My family has been going through a lot of things which we shouldn't have to go through in a country like USA," his daughter writes. "We really are having a hard time living without a father."

Hajbeh's wife said in a brief telephone interview this week that the family subsists on food stamps and help from friends and from her husband's brothers, who live in this country.

She said it's been especially difficult since she had a stroke earlier this month and had to spend three or four days in the hospital. She has recovered and is on medication.

"If we find another country, we will go," she said. "We would rather stay here."

"It's been a pathetic, pathetic thing that's happened to him," said Annandale, Va., attorney Ashraf W. Nubani, who represented Hajbeh during the federal criminal case that was dismissed.

"The problem is we treat non citizens differently," he said. "The post-Sept. 11 atmosphere was ripe for these types of cases."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions e-mailed to her earlier in the week. A spokeswoman for the Jordan embassy in Washington also did not respond to questions.

Some organizations that lobby for tighter immigration rules argue that the government isn't doing enough to close loopholes that have allowed terrorists, such as some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, to enter the country and remain here illegally.

"Five years after 9/11, progress is slow toward protecting the American people against the real likelihood that terrorists are exploiting U.S. immigration policies," Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement this fall upon release of a report on illegal immigration.

Hajbeh is expected to get a hearing in Norfolk federal court soon. No date has been set.

# Reach Tim McGlone at (757) 446-2343 or tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com.


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vbsurfer3001

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It's not as if he is Leonard Pelletier or something. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif" alt="" />

Let's do it the liberal way and just forget all about terrorists and let them all go. In fact, give them all green cards and a fresh start. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif" alt="" />
I'm not in favor of just letting him go. I'm in favor of the prosecution presenting it's evidence before a judge and proving that they have grounds for arrest and trial. I'm for applying justice equally as required by our Constitution. I'm for due process, what about you Disco?

<img src="/forum/images/graemlins/shrug.gif" alt="" />