Accused Dallas "terrorist" to be deported.

[TexasStooge]

"Terrorist" Who Worked For Holy Land Foundation To Be Deported

By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs - The Investigators (KTVT CBS-11 News)

Accused Dallas terrorist Aynan Sabri Ismail took the stand in federal court and swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"I love this country," the bearded Kuwaiti-born Palestinian told U.S. Immigration Judge D. Anthony Rogers during a hearing earlier this month. "It's been good to me and this is where my family is. I want to build a peaceful, decent life for them. I just want to be a normal, decent person."

At stake for Ismail in the nearly empty Dallas immigration court was deportation to Jordan or a chance to prosper in America with his wife and five children, all citizens.

Despite professing love for his adoptive country, the 34-year-old illegal immigrant who came on a college student visa in 1988 now faces imminent expulsion, labeled a dangerous terrorist by the U.S. government. This week, Ismail decided not to appeal Judge Rogers' decision to reject an application to stay.

"He's not going to be in this country. He's not going to be acting as a sleeper. He's not going to be raising funds in this country," said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for the Dallas bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "He's going to be out of this country where he's not going to do us direct harm."

Ismail's lawyer, John Wheat Gibson, said his client's deportation is part of a government agenda by a "small group of anti-semitic thugs" to rid the country of Muslims.

"They're fanatic," Gibson said of the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who argued against Ismail's application to stay. "They're fundamentalists. They're just like Hamas."

Government lawyers, under pressure to use any legal means to rid the nation of perceived dangerous elements, put on evidence they said showed Ismail served as a top fundraiser for the banned Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation. President George Bush dubbed the organization a clandestine fundraising arm of Hamas and froze its assets in November, 2001.

Government lawyers said that from 1996 through 2001 Ismail had to have known that the money he raised for the nation's largest Muslim charity was going to the families of Hamas suicide bombers, providing "martyrs" with an incentive and comfort to attack Israeli civilians.

But Ismail, who got a job, married and raised a large family after overstaying his student visa, swore he knew nothing about how the Holy Land Foundation distributed the money.

From the stand, Ismail denounced Hamas and said he harbored no strong political views about much of anything.

"If I had a single doubt that a single penny went to suicide bombers, I would have quit immediately," Ismail testified.

But when Judge Rogers asked Ismail if he thought it would be wrong of the Holy Land Foundation to give money to the families of suicide bombers, Ismail called the idea "ridiculous."

"I don't know how sending money to families of bombers...is going to help them. He's dead," Ismail said. "To me, that is a very ridiculous argument. I don't believe that. That's very stupid."

Mark Briskman, a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League, said financial support for the families of suicide bombers plays a critical role in motivating them to do as they are asked.

"It's never for the suicide bombers. Basically, these people are concerned, 'what's going to happen to my mother, my father, my sister or brother after I do this?'" Briskman told CBS-11 News after the hearing. "If I'm married and have children, 'who will support my family after I am gone?' And so the financial support of the families of suicide bombers is critical to convincing and reassuring the suicide bomber to do what they're asking them to do."

By the end of a 7-hour hearing attended only by CBS-11, Judge Rogers accepted the government's assertions that Ismail was indeed a terrorist and effectively ordered him deported to Jordan.

The judge ruled that as a fundraiser and member of The Holy Land Foundation's inner circle, Ismail should have "reasonably known" that money he helped raise was going to support suicide bombers that killed scores of Israeli civilians. The statutory expectation that he should reasonably have known made Ismail a terrorist under the U.S.A. Patriot Act's expanded definition of the term, Judge Rogers said.

"This nation owes no obligation to extend the priviledge of residency to individuals when, by their actions, they have clearly enabled terrorism," the judge said. "Any non-citizen who supports terrorism is not entitled to the priviledge of residing in our nation."

Ismail's attorney, John Wheat Gibson, said his client was too weary of life as a detainee, in a center near Haskell, Texas, to weather the additional time it would take to appeal Judge Rogers' decision.

"Those five sweet children are going to grow up in Jordan," Gibson said.

During the hearing, Gibson established that the government has never been able to provide documentary or testimonial evidence that Ismail actually knew Holy Land Foundation funds were supporting the families of Hamas suicide bombers.

But ICE Special Agent Donna Chabot testified that Ismail had lied to the government for months about his duties at the Holy Land Foundation. Ismail had insisted he was only a lowly web page designer, omitting his significant fundraising responsibilities until confronted with solicitation letters and checks bearing his name and titles. Chabot testified, showing documents, that Ismail had regularly attended hundreds of top-level staff meetings with the organization's leadership.

Ismail's case is one of a growing number nationwide in which the Patriot Act has been cited as the legal grounds for deportation or to deny immigration applications to stay.

Deportations of non-citizen men and women from the Middle East have become an established part of a government strategy to choose from an arsenal of legal means to neutralize anyone deemed to be a national security threat, within the definitions of terrorism statutes.

Ismail's deportation, for instance, occurred as government prosecutors unsealed criminal indictments against his bosses at the Holy Land Foundation. Among them was Shukri Abu Baker, the Holy Land Foundation's director, who had been scheduled to testify as Ismail's key character witness a week earlier when federal agents arrested him.

Government officials who investigated Ismail acknowledge to CBS-11 that evidence was insufficient to issue criminal charges against him as they did his bosses at Holy Land Foundation. But the evidence against Ismail was sufficient to justify his deportation under the 2002 Patriot Act's broad definition of terrorism to include those who raise money in support of it, they say.

"Those people we can criminally prosecute, we will criminally prosecute. Those that don't have enough evidence in that respect, we'll remove as quickly as possible," said Rusnok, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman.

During this month's hearing, Ismail's wife and father both took the stand and testified on his behalf. They insisted that Ismail was apolitical and worked at the Holy Land Foundation because it paid well and gave the family access to a larger Muslim community.

Zelina Abeldakhelek, 36, testified that she never once heard her husband express sympathy for Hamas or talk about politics since the two married in 1997. She said the couple, living in Tyler then, took the Dallas job because it paid more than his $25,000 job making lenses for eyeglasses.

By 2001, Ismail was earning $41,000 a year with the Holy Land Foundation.

"We liked to move to Dallas because we heard there was work there," she said. "He said it would be an opportunity, not because of politics."

Ismail's 55-year-old father, Safri Ismail, said his son was never interested in politics growing up in Kuwait.

"He was a sporting guy. He was a soccer guy," said the elder Ismail, who lives in Dallas. "I always taught my kids not to be involved in politics. We're just ordinary people."

When he took the stand, Ismail portrayed himself like any other illegal immigrant trying to make a decent living. He said he was apolitical and cared nothing about the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.

"My own interest in politics is listening to the news on TV," he said.

Now, Ismail is about to embark on a one-way trip from the United States Jordan, a country close to the conflict where he has never lived.

Both Ismail and his wife told Judge Rogers that moving to Jordan with their Americanized children would be a hardship. Their five children range in age between 1 and 7.

"It will be a new life for them. Everything will be different, school, friends, everything," Ismail's wife testified. "All our family and friends are here."