Muslims For Kucinich

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the amendment to the Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Bill offered by Mr. Campbell. This amendment stops the funding for the use of secret evidence by the
Immigration Naturalization Service.

In 1996 an amendment was added to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, authorizing the INS to use secret evidence in barring or deporting immigrants as well as denying benefits such as asylum. However, this law restricts two rights Americans hold very dear: (1) the right to due process and (2) the right to free speech. This country has always and must continue to value the right to a fair trial and the freedom to hold and practice personal beliefs.

However, allowing the use of secret evidence undermines the rights and liberty of both citizens and legal aliens alike because it lessens the constraints of both Constitutional considerations and conscience on INS cases. The case of the Iraqi seven clearly illustrates the flawed use of secret evidence.

Seven Iraq individuals were among the many Iraqi Arabs and Kurds who were part of a CIA-backed plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein. While attempting to gain political asylum in the United States after their work in Iraq with 1,200 other Iraqis, these seven individuals were singled out and detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service on the claim that they were a risk to national security. These seven individuals, who had worked with the U.S. in opposition to Saddam Hussein, were now seen as a threat to our national security based on secret evidence. Evidence that no one was allowed to see. Not the 7 Iraqis. And not their attorneys. Evidence that could be used to deny them asylum and deport them back to Iraq where they would surely meet their death.

After much pressure, 500 pages of this so-called secret evidence was released. Closer examination revealed the evidence was tarnished due to its faulty translations, misinformation and use of ethnic and religious stereotyping. There have been about 50 cases where secret evidence was used to detain and deport individuals. This is unAmerican. The cornerstone of our judicial system is that evidence cannot be used against someone unless he or she had the chance to confront it. The INS is relying more and more on the use of secret evidence. If we continue to fund the use of secret evidence against non-citizens, then soon secret evidence will be used against American citizens too. There will be no limit to its use.

So, I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment. I ask you to maintain and defend the civil rights of all citizens living in the United States under the U.S. Constitution. Vote "yes" on the Campbell
amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I include material relating to this matter for the Record.

The following are supplementary materials presented by Rep. Kucinich:

1) A letter explaining the position on secret evidence of the men whose amendment Kucinich is supporting

Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, August 2, 1999.

Dear Colleague, we invite you to join us in cosponsoring "The Secret Evidence Repeal Act of 1999," a bill to repeal the use of "secret evidence" in Immigration and Naturalization Service deportation hearings. Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the INS is allowed to arrest, detain and deport non-citizens on the basis of "secret evidence"--evidence whose source and substance is not revealed to those who are targeted or their counsel.

The right to confront your accuser, hear the evidence against you and secure a speedy trial are fundamental tenets of the American justice system. This violates our deepest faith in the right to due process, and violates our democracy's most sacred document, the United States Constitution.

We are very concerned about the arrest, imprisonment and even forced deportation of individuals here in the United States based on evidence that the individual is not afforded an opportunity to review or challenge. The use of such "secret evidence" directly contradicts our sense of due process and fairness.

The Bonior-Campbell bill would correct this injustice by ensuring that no one is removed, or otherwise be deprived of liberty based on evidence kept secret from them.

People should know the crimes with which they are being charged and should be given a chance to challenge their accusers in court. I am proud to join my colleague, Congressman David Bonior, in proposing legislation to end this practice.

Most affected by the INS and Justice Department's use of "secret evidence" are Muslims and perhaps the most egregious case is that of Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar of Tampa, Florida, arrested two years ago by INS agents.

Virtually all of the "secret evidence" cases have been directed at Muslims and people of Arab descent. This law is clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional, and we need to take a strong stand against it.

Tom Campbell.
David Bonior.

2) An explanation of the specific amendment Kucinich is supporting here

It's Unthinkable That in America an Individual Could be Imprisoned Without Showing That Person the Evidence

our amendment would block funding only for this section:

"(ii) Restrictions on disclosure
A special attorney receiving classified information under clause (i)--
(I) shall not disclose the information to the alien or to any other attorney representing the alien, and
(II) who discloses such information in violation of subclause (I) shall be subject to a fine under Title 18, imprisoned for not less than 10 years nor more than 25 years, or both."

Amendment to H.R. 2670, as Reported Offered by Mr. Campbell of California

At the end of the bill, insert after the last section (preceding the short title) the following:
Sec. . None of the funds appropriated under this Act may be used to enforce the provision of 8 U.S.C. 1534(e)(3)(F)(ii).

3) A news article about secret evidence from the L.A. Times, December 15, 1997. This explains the "Iraqi Seven" case that Kucinich referred to in his speech.

Use of Secret Evidence by INS Assailed

By Jeff Leeds

While a judge weighs a decision in his case, Ali Mohammed-Karim is still waiting to hear the evidence against him.

Along with hundreds of other Iraqis who worked with the Central Intelligence Agency in a failed effort to oust Saddam Hussein, he fled northern Iraq last year and sought political asylum in this country.

Upon his arrival, he and 12 other refugees were thrown in jail, accused by the Immigration and Naturalization Service of posing a "danger to the security of the United States," an allegation the agency has refused to explain.

The case of the Iraqi refugees is the latest front in the widening legal battle over the INS use of classified evidence.

In the proceedings against the refugees, the INS has argued its case and questioned its witnesses--one of whom is employed by an agency it will not identify--behind closed doors. Lawyers for the refugees were not present. They had to put on a defense based essentially on guesswork.

"It's completely frustrating," said Niels Frenzen, an attorney with Public Counsel, who represents the eight Iraqi men who are jailed in San Pedro. "How are we doing? We don't know. Have we guessed the secret evidence? We don't know."

Both sides have rested their cases and are awaiting immigration Judge D.D. Sitgraves' decision. She has indicated that she may not rule until early 1998 on whether six of the men jailed in San Pedro are security risks.

Sitgraves already has ruled that two others are not, but they remain incarcerated while they seek political asylum. Another group of Iraqis faces similar proceedings in Northern California.

In a telephone interviews from the INS detention facility in San Pedro, Mohammed-Karim, 35, said he is a doctor who was excited about starting a new life with his family in the United States. He said he once treated an American CIA operative in Iraq for a migraine headache, and denied that he was an agent for Hussein.

"I was never a single agent," he said. "How could I be a doubt agent?" He added that the allegations against them are "just illusions."

Although the use of secret evidence is prohibited in criminal courts, the INS says its use of such information to deny political asylum is permitted under Supreme Court decisions dating from the 1950s. And under new legislation, the immigration service is allowed to use secret evidence to deport residents suspected of associating with terrorists.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who is suing the federal government over its use of secret evidence in a New York immigration case, says the Iraqi men were evacuated and transported to this country by the government and are entitled to due process.

"Even the most minimal due process protection would invalidate the use of secret evidence," Cole said.

But the INS has refused to reveal the nature of its suspicions about the Iraqis. INS officials noted that national security is typically used as a basis for keeping out spies or potential terrorists, and has been used to block members of the Irish Republican Army from staying in the country.

Before being flown to the United States, the jailed Iraqi men worked for their country's two main resistance groups: the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord. Those groups produced newspaper articles and radio broadcasts critical of Hussein, and mobilized soldiers to battle his forces.

Many experts believe that despite the CIA's support, the resistance was never strong enough to pose a serious threat to the Iraqi leadership, in part because the groups were riven by internal political disputes. And even the resistance leaders concede that Hussein's spies may have infiltrated the groups.

In August, Iraqi military forces rolled into northern Iraq and crushed the resistance effort. U.S. forces evacuated more than 6,000 Iraqis and Kurds to a NATO air base in Turkey before flying them to Guam.

During their five-month stay in Guam, the refugees were taught American civics--including, Frenzen notes with irony, the right to face one's accuser in court. They also submitted to FBI interviews.

Frenzen contends that disgruntled resistance workers, motivated in some cases by petty personal disputes with his clients, intentionally misled the FBI about their backgrounds.

But because the FBI's reports of those interviews are classified, federal authorities will not disclose why the refugees are considered potential threats to national security. The INS has granted asylum to their wives and children.

The proceedings--at least the portion that was open to the public--have shed little light on the evidence. Sitgraves has repeatedly stopped the Iraqis' lawyers from probing too deeply into classified evidence, forcing them to essentially guess what in their clients' background raised red flags for the FBI.

In a typical exchange recently, FBI Agent Mark Merfalen testified that he interviewed one of the refugees about his experience with chemical weapons, his service in the Iraqi military before he deserted to join the resistance and his earlier request for political asylum filed in Saudi Arabia.

But Merfalen, a counterintelligence specialist assigned to the FBI's Oakland office, did not indicate what information led him to conclude that the man, Mohammed Al-Ammary, posed a security threat.

"I don't have enough facts" to form an opinion about whether Al-Ammary represented a threat, Merfalen said at one point.

A key witness for the accused was Ahmad Chalabi, president of the Iraqi National Congress, who testified by telephone from an INS office in Arlington, Va.

"I do not believe that any of them is an agent for the Iraqi government," Chalabi said. He said the congress conducted background checks on its members, and that he was also assured that the men were not spies for Iran, Syria or Turkey.

"It is inconceivable to the Iraqi people why these people are jailed," he said.

4) Another article from the L.A. Times, August 15, 1997

Secret Evidence--A Local Professor Languishes in Jail, Even Though He Has Been Charged With No Crime, Thanks to a Troubling Provision of a New Anti-Terrorism Law.

In their zeal to protect U.S. citizens against acts of domestic terrorism, such as the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, President Clinton and Congress passed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Unfortunately, the legislation undermines some of the constitutional rights that make America the free nation it is.

Nothing illustrates this dilemma better than the case involving Palestinian refugee Mazen Al-Najjar, a 40-year-old, American-educated engineer who taught Arabic part time at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He was not rehired after his visa was not renewed.

Al-Najjar has been in an Immigration and Naturalization Service holding facility at the Manatee County Jail since four agents grabbed him from his northeast Tampa home the morning of May 19. He has been denied bail based on "secret evidence" said to connect him with the Islamic Jihad, a notorious terrorist organization in the Middle East.

INS officials allege that the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, the USF think tank that Al-Najjar managed, is a fund-raising front for terrorists and that Al-Najjar is an Islamic Jihad shill. Troubles started for Al-Najjar and others connected to WISE on Oct. 26, 1995, when the head of Palestine Islamic Jihad was shot to death on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Days later, Ramadan Shallah, who had been an instructor at USF and a member of WISE, became the new leader of Islamic Jihad.

Authorities assumed they would find a terrorist cell at USF. But no convincing evidence to support that suspicion has been made public. After an internal investigation. USF President Betty Castor said: "Was there illegal activity, subversive activity, terrorist activity? We don't have any evidence of that."

Was USF's investigation incomplete? Were Castor's conclusions self-serving? If the government possesses evidence that the USF investigation missed, it isn't revealing it.

Yet Al-Najjar remains in jail. No formal charges have been brought against him. He is being held under an unconstitutional provision of the Anti-terrorism Act. The merit of the case notwithstanding, the anti-terrorism legislation allows the government to use informant testimony or other forms of secret evidence to imprison and deport legal immigrants suspected of terrorism without letting the suspects cross-examine their accusers.

Remember, the U.S. supreme Court has ruled that aliens have the same rights of due process that U.S. citizens enjoy. U.S. citizens should expect their government to take all reasonable steps to protect them from terrorism, both foreign and domestic. But officials have a responsibility to balance the need for security with the obligation to protect the constitutional rights of everyone.

If investigators have incriminating evidence against Al-Najjar, then let him, his family and the rest of the nation see it. Either Al-Najjar should be tried--with evidence of his activities in plain view--or he should be set free. The U.S. Constitution calls for no less. He deserves no less.