DAR AL HARB-U.S.A.-HOLY LAND: DEPORTED IMAM DISAPPEARS, WHO CARES?!?

Friends say recently deported Ohio imam has disappeared
KRISTIN LONGLEY
Associated Press

DETROIT - Friends and family say they didn't know a Muslim leader from Ohio had been deported until his lawyer arrived for a meeting at the jail where he was being held.

Federal authorities there confirmed their worst fears: Fawaz Damra was gone.

And now, days later, they say Damra has disappeared after the U.S. government reported deporting him to his native Palestinian territories.

Damra was convicted in June 2004 of concealing his ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad when he applied for U.S. citizenship in 1994. An immigration judge ordered his deportation one year ago, and he had been jailed in Monroe County, Mich., since then.

Damra served as imam at Ohio's largest mosque, the Islamic Center of Cleveland in Parma. He immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s.

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.

Hamas and Fatah forces in Nablus are engaged in a bloody battle for power. The Hamas deputy mayor in Nablus was kidnapped over the weekend.

"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 reported that 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.

"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."

Bryant said Damra was a peaceful interfaith leader in the Cleveland community who didn't deserve to be "whisked away."

In 1991, Damra made a speech in Chicago in which he expressed anti-Semitism. Damra later apologized and said he made the remarks before he had interacted with any Jews or Christians.
Damra's wife, Nasreen, and his three U.S.-born daughters are "frantic" with worry, Bryant said. He said Nasreen Damra was too upset about her husband to comment.

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 in jail, Alawan said.

"He was concerned about going back to Palestine" for this reason, Alawan said. "He had strong reservations about it."

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