Fawaz Damra, the Cleveland imam who signed the Fiqh Council of North America’s 2005 condemnation of terrorism, has finally been deported. He won’t be missed.
“Damra deported to West Bank,” by Mike Tobin for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, with thanks to Broon:
Fawaz Damra, the longtime local imam convicted of lying about his links to terrorist groups, was deported to the West Bank Thursday morning, immigration officials said.
“It happened Thursday morning about 4 or 5 a.m.,” said Tim Counts, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “He was flown into Jordan and from there crossed the bridge into the Palenstinian Territories.”
Damra had been locked up in a Michigan jail for more than year as immigration officials searched for a country willing to take Damra.
The former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland agreed to be deported after a trial and conviction where he was linked to terrorist groups.
Damra, 46, was born in the West Bank and came to the United States in the 1980s. In 2004, he was convicted of lying on his citizenship application because he did not disclose links to terrorist organizations. He served two months in prison and two months of house arrest and was stripped of his citizenship.