Federal immigration authorities held Adham Amin Hassoun
... a computer programmer and recruiter/fund raiser for Al Qaeda, et al, who was originally arrested in 2002 for “immigration violations“ and at one point while imprisoned attempted to hang himself with a bedsheet. His wife and three kiddies fled back to Lebanon while he was in jail...
until Tuesday at a detention facility in Batavia, New York, ... a very pretty small town in Western New York state between Buffalo and Rochester...
since his release from prison in 2018. Previously, they had argued in court that they had the authority to detain him indefinitely under the Patriot Act until they could find a country willing to accept him.Hassoun, 58, is a Paleostinian born in Leb
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers.... In 2007, he was convicted along with Jose Padilla, who is still imprisoned, of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country.
Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was initially detained as an enemy combatant in 2002 on suspicions he planned to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb," but those allegations were ultimately dropped in favor of charges that he, Hassoun and another conspirator
...that would be Mr. Hassoun’s school administrator friend Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a U.S. citizen of a similar age but Jordanian descent...
sent money, recruits and supplies to Islamic holy warrior groups.Prosecutors said Hassoun recruited Padilla at a Florida mosque to attend a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
Authorities did not disclose Hassoun's destination after he left the country on Tuesday, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.
Padilla's expected release date from prison is 2026.
Earlier this summer, federal prosecutors had argued at a hearing that Hassoun remained a threat to national security, but ultimately withdrew testimony from another detainee at the Batavia detention facility, who claimed Hassoun told him about plans to commit crimes upon his release. Hassoun's attorney said the claims were fabricated, the Observer Dispatch reported.
U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford ruled against the government and ordered Hassoun's release.
Hassoun immigrated to Florida in 1989, married and had three children, all of whom are American citizens. His family moved to Lebanon after his arrest, the Buffalo News reported.
One of Hassoun's attorneys, Jonathan Manes, told the Democrat and Chronicle in an email: "After 18 years of imprisonment and nearly 1 1/2 years detained unlawfully under the Patriot Act, he is now a free man."