they say the prominent Ohio Muslim leader has disappeared after the U.S. government reported deporting him to his native Palestinian territories on the West Bank... Immigration authorities said Friday that Damra was flown to Amman, Jordan, at 4 a.m. EST Thursday, then crossed the Allenby Bridge to the West Bank.
But his friends and family in Cleveland and in Damra's hometown of Nablus say no one has heard from him since he was taken.... "Being Americans as we are, we expect a little fairness, to a degree, to the extent they would let him call his wife and children," said Haider Alawan, Damra's friend and member of the Islamic Center of Cleveland's council of elders.
Alawan said Palestinian government officials said they didn't know where Damra is. A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister's office said Sunday that it had no immediate knowledge of Damra's case, either.
"We want to know where the heck he is," said Don Bryant, president of the Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network and another of Damra's friends. "We are outraged with the way this was handled. He was taken away on a witch hunt."... Alawan said it is most likely that Israeli authorities are holding him. The Allenby Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank is under Israeli military control. If that is the case, he could be held in jail, Alawan said.
"You wouldn't let a man in custody say goodbye? And now, he's in a black hole in the Mideast."
Alawan has blamed Damra's conviction & deportation on the Jews. Damra started saying goodbye back when he lied about his ties to Islamic Jihad, and again in '91 when he said on videotape that Muslims should be "directing all the rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews," which was later shown on Cleveland TV. He's had years to say goodbye to his family. If he really didn't want to go back to that black hole, he might have behaved better while he was in the USA.
His lawyer said in the earlier citation "He was just a poster boy for the war on terrorism," Indeed. |