Friday, December 09, 2005
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out ...
It's about time we took a page from the French and started to get serious about this:
- Imam held after raid is deported
Mohamed Ghorab was arrested on immigration charges in a raid last year at his East Frankford mosque.
An Egyptian cleric arrested during a high-profile federal raid last year on his East Frankford mosque has finally been deported.
Mohamed Ghorab, the imam or spiritual leader at the Ansaar Allaah Islamic Society on Wakeling Street, arrived in Cairo escorted by U.S. immigration agents yesterday morning.
The cleric had sought asylum in the United States, saying he feared persecution in his native country as a member of Dawaa Salafia, an Islamic sect whose members have been repeatedly imprisoned by Egyptian authorities.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled last week that Ghorab had waited too long to ask for asylum.
He came to the United States in 2000 on a tourist visa that soon expired. First he tried to stay by claiming marriage to a U.S. citizen, and then by applying for a religious worker's visa. Immigration judges rejected both petitions.
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