Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2006, pages 42-43

Special Report

After a 19-Year Battle, Judge Rules L.A. 8’s Aiad Barakat Deserves U.S. Citizenship

By Pat McDonnell Twair

“I’M READY TO RULE,” U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson announced June 23, after three and a half days of tedious and sometimes contentious litigation.

Observers in his Los Angeles courtroom sat upright, leaning forward to hear the decision that would make or break the life of Aiad Barakat, one of the L.A. 8, who was suing the U.S. government for denying him citizenship.

It took courage for Barakat, a legal U.S. resident since 1997, to take on the government, which in January 1987 arrested him, six other Palestinians and the Kenyan wife of one of the men for their alleged association with the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Shackled in irons, they were held in federal prison for six weeks.

None of the eight was accused of terrorism, but the government has been relentless in its efforts to deport them. They have remained in the U.S. because of a 1989 ruling by Judge Wilson which found portions of federal law granting deportation for political advocacy or affiliation unconstitutional.

Judge Wilson displayed a sense of timing worthy of a great stage director. Each day, he closed proceedings with a cliff-hanger as he stated to the government or petitioner’s attorneys that he might rule for them if their evidence could convince him.

The suspense and tension were palpable as the Reagan-appointed judge said he had read more than 60 cases dealing with the issue. In each of the three government charges, the jurist declared, he viewed the evidence with the burden of proof on Barakat. Barakat and his legal team overcame that burden, however, and Judge Wilson granted his petition for citizenship.

Outside the courtroom, Barakat was hugged by friends and relatives. “Justice is served after waiting 20 years,” he exclaimed.

Then the 6’ 4” Palestinian phoned his mother in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to tell her the good news.

Barakat’s battle is not entirely over, however. The government has 60 days to appeal Judge Wilson’s ruling.

Commented ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanatham, who represented Barakat along with three other nationally known lawyers: “It was a very fact-intensive testimony that would be very difficult to reverse on appeal.”

“Even if the government attempted to retroactively deport Aiad with a provision in the PATRIOT Act,” noted immigration specialist and National Lawyers Guild attorney Marc Van Der Hout, “it would violate Judge Wilson’s orders. I don’t think they’re going to do that.”

On the first day of the trial Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole, Barakat’s lead attorney, summarized the government’s reasons for denying Barakat U.S. citizenship.

“The government charged that Barakat lied in U.S. immigration interviews when he said he was not a member of the PFLP. In fact,” Cole pointed out, “the petitioner said he only belonged to the CDP (Coalition for a Democratic Palestine), USOMEN (U.S. Organization for Medical and Educational Needs) and GUPS (General Union of Palestinian Students).”

At this point in the proceedings, an unrecognizable name came up: Ali Kased. Many hours were devoted to Kased, whom the government contended was a member of the PFLP because in the May 2005 issue of the PFLP magazine it ran an obituary for Kased describing him as a PFLP member.

Barakat and his attorneys insisted that Aiad only knew Kased as a spokesman for the CDP who made speeches at events in Southern California.

Much time was devoted to the definition of hafles, some of which were attended by both Kased and Barakat. Are they large fund-raising parties, or small gatherings for speeches, singing and dancing? It would have been helpful to have an academic expert on Arabic—but, as became apparent the next day, the government translator was no expert.

On the second day of testimony, a grainy, nearly inaudible tape of a three-day CDP retreat in 1986 was presented to the judge. At the close of the event, the secretly filmed FBI tape showed Kased talking to Barakat and seven other men. The government translation of a statement by Kased was: “We are all leaders [in the PFLP].”

Cole argued that his team of Arabic translators could not identify the statement on the flawed tape. Nor, added Arulanantham, was there any record that the government translator, Harold Cubert, had any basis or certification for understanding Arabic.

This reporter queried Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, who sat with the petitioner’s attorneys. According to Bennis, the government translator studied conversational Arabic for one year at Hebrew University and took another course at Princeton University.

The Washington Report sought to confirm this information with Cubert, who sat in the courtroom throughout the trial, but he said he was forbidden to speak to the press.

The government then withdrew Cubert as a witness, obliging Barakat’s attorneys to withdraw their witnesses as well.

Cole addressed the bench: “Today, the petitioner is a middle-aged man, as opposed to 1987, when he was a young activist. He is the father of a 17-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter. He is the supervisor of as many as 100 workers on construction sites. He helped renovate a church and build a mosque. He wants to be a citizen so he can vote, and be protected by the First Amendment and visit his mother, who is not well. He couldn’t be with his father on his deathbed, because it was unlikely he would be allowed to re-enter the U.S.”

The government’s third charge was that Barakat was untruthful when he said he didn’t remember a four-page note handwritten by someone else about the distribution of the PFLP magazine. The notes were recovered during the 1987 raid of Barakat’s apartment; his fingerprints were on them.

The judge told the government attorney on the third day of testimony: “You’re shooting blanks. Zero plus zero equals zero.”

While this was encouraging for Barakat’s case, the proceedings seemed to favor the government when prosecutors recalled that when an immigration investigator asked Aiad about banners and emblems of Palestinian organizations, he replied, “These are front organzations.”

Barakat’s attorneys then showed the actual interview in which he stated in his heavily accented English: “These are different organizations.”

In addressing the issue of Barakat’s fingerprints on the distribution notes, Judge Wilson noted that others lived in Barakat’s apartment and the notes could have been addressed to any of them.

Providing the government does not challenge his forthcoming petition for naturalization, Barakat could become the first of the L.A. 8 to obtain U.S. citizenship.

The senior members of the eight, Khader Hamidi and Michel Shehadeh, hold green cards but face deportation. Last summer, with no explanation, their scheduled cases were abruptly called off by the government. Hamidi’s Kenyan wife, Julie, has a green card, as does Amjad Obeid. Naim Sharif says he still is living in immigration limbo with a worker’s permit, as is Obeid’s brother Ayman, who is a bank manager. The eighth, Bashar Amer, returned to the West Bank.

Barakat’s formidable team of attorneys represented him pro bono. How much, we wonder, did the government’s legal team cost U.S. taxpayers?

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.

< Prev		Next >