But if he was, why didn’t he say so on his green card application, and come clean then? And what about his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, which is just as much an Islamic supremacist group as Hamas (which defines itself as a branch of the Brotherhood)?
An update on this story. “Imam’s defense: He was tortured into ‘confessing’ he joined Hamas: Deportation trial under way for respected Passaic cleric,” by Brian Donohue for the Star-Ledger, May 9 (thanks to Twostellas):
The deportation trial of a popular North Jersey Muslim leader began yesterday with the lead government witness testifying that the cleric pleaded guilty in an Israeli military court to being a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas from 1989 to 1991.
That arrest forms the core of the case that U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorneys are bringing against Mohammad Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County.
Federal agents, however, knew nothing of Qatanani’s arrest until the imam contacted the FBI and told them about it in 2005, an FBI agent testified later in the day. That was 12 years after Qatanani moved to the United States, and he was seeking the agency’s help with his stalled green card application. […]
On the sidewalk outside the Peter Rodino Federal Building in Newark, hundreds of supporters gathered in a noisy but peaceful demonstration that lasted more than five hours. Throughout the day, Qatanani sat alongside his wife and six children, his youngest son reading the Koran while his daughter studied for her Advanced Placement U.S. history exam. His wife and three oldest children also face deportation; the younger children are U.S. citizens. […]
Testifying for the Department of Homeland Security, Amos Guiora, a professor at the University of Utah School of Law and a former judge and prosecutor in the Israeli-occupied territories, read from Israeli court records showing that Qatanani pleaded guilty in 1993 to aiding and being a member of Hamas. He was sentenced to three months in prison.
Qatanani has denied making such a confession or having any ties to Hamas, saying he was tortured while in detention and convicted in absentia.
During cross-examination, Qatanani’s attorney, Claudia Slovinsky, homed in on discrepancies in the Israeli court documents — including the lack of any specific mention in the court records that Qatanani was present at his conviction.
She also attacked the credibility of the Israeli military court system, reading from reports by Human Rights Watch and other groups that found the Israeli military had routinely used tactics like sleep deprivation, hooding and exposure to cold temperatures on detainees during that time period.
“The judges were soldiers, the prosecutors were soldiers,” she said.
Conviction rates for Palestinians detained in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during that period ranged from 90 to 95 percent. And the military’s interrogation tactics were later banned by a 1999 Israeli supreme court ruling that equated them with torture.
Guiora conceded that, subject to such conditions, a detainee like Qatanani “no doubt will tell an interrogator what he thinks he wants to hear.”
Qatanani, 44, has been praised by some law enforcement and elected officials here for forging close ties with authorities while leading one of the state’s largest mosques. And testimony revealed that federal agents might not have learned about his arrest if Qatanani had not turned to them for help.
Angel Alicea, an FBI special agent serving on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, said he met with Qatanani after mosque officials called the bureau to discuss his green card application.
Qatanani was frustrated, his lawyer said, because he was unable to get an interview with immigration officials and his work visa had expired, forcing the loss of his driver’s license. “He thought we had something to do with it,” Alicea said.
During that February 2005 interview, Alicea said Qatanani told him he had been arrested by Israeli soldiers a week after he crossed from Jordan to the West Bank in 1993 and that he was detained for three months, kept in a cold room and chained to a small chair.
But on his green card application, Alicea said, Qatanani had answered “no” to a question asking applicants whether they had been arrested, fined, charged or imprisoned.
Qatanani, he said, also admitted being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a controversial organization that is banned by the governments of Israel, Egypt and Syria, which argue that it has ties to terrorists. It is not on the U.S. State Department’s list of known terrorist organizations. After that interview, Alicea said, he obtained the Israeli court records of Qatanani’s arrest….