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January 5, 2007
US: Ohio Imam Finally Deported
After two and a half years, the lying imam from the Islamic Center of Cleveland, the largest mosque in Ohio, has been deported. On Thursday June 17, 2004 Fawaz Damra (pictured) was convicted of lying to US authorities. When he had applied for US citizenship in 1994, he had denied that he had any terrorist links.
He was not admitting that he was linked to Afghan Refugee Services, the Islamic Committee for Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 1991 he had been caught on film saying that Muslims should be "directing all rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews," and two years earlier claiming that "terrorism and terrorism alone is the path to liberation".
He was shown on film raising money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has been designated as a terrorist entity by the US Treasury since 1989.
Fawaz Damra was born in Nablus in the West Bank in 1961. He studied Islamic Law in Jordan and arrived in the US in the mid-1980s. He was the imam at the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, New York from 1986 until 1990 when he moved to Ohio and took up residence as the imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland.
In September 2004, following his conviction in June of that year, he was given a jail sentence of two months' imprisonment and given four months' house arrest. US District Judge James Gwin said he could begin his jail sentence in November 2004, following Ramadan. Damra was told he would have is citizenship evoked, but he could not be deported until he had an appeal.
On March 15, 2005, a federal appeals court upheld Judge Gwin's ruling, so finally, on November 25 2005, Damra was arrested, in preparation for deportation. Brian Moskowitz, special agent with the federal office in Detroit, made a statement which read: "With today's arrest, ICE begins the process of removing from the United States a criminal alien who has unequivocally supported terrorists and terrorist organizations."
It appeared that things would then be a simple matter of putting Damra on a plane and dispensing with him, but the issue was not clear-cut.
In July 2006, Damra was still in a Michigan jail, awaiting deportation. He had said that he would be willing to be deported to either Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Egypt or the Palestinian territories, but no country agreed to take him.
His attorney, Robert Birach, said that he could be held indefinitely. He stated: "If there was progress, he'd be gone by now. We haven't gotten a country yet to say yes."
Today, according to WJLA, Damra has finally been deported to the Palestinian territories, where he began his path of deception and anti-Semitism. The news was announced today by US immigration authorities.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 5, 2007 5:11 PM
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