Israeli treatment left detainees dazed, say witnesses for imam

BY BRIAN DONOHUE

A popular New Jersey Muslim leader was one of thousands of Palestinians detained and convicted under an Israeli military court system that left detainees battered and baffled over what had happened to them, defense experts testified at the Paterson cleric's immigration trial yesterday.

Mohammad Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, faces deportation for allegedly failing to disclose on his 1996 green card application that he had been arrested on the West Bank and had pleaded guilty to aiding the terrorist group Hamas.

His attorneys argue that Qatanani was detained, not formally arrested, was subject to brutal interrogation tactics and was unknowingly convicted in absentia.

Testifying on behalf of Qatanani yesterday, Lisa Hajjar, a professor at the University of California who has studied and written about the Israeli military courts, said "huge numbers" of Palestinians were "swept up" in the Israeli occupied territories during the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in the early 1990s.

Interrogation techniques that were widespread at that time were outlawed in 1999 by Israel's top court, which equated them with torture.

Typically, Hajjar said, detainees would be forced to sit on a small, two-legged chair that dug into their backs, be subjected to loud noise and hot and cold temperatures, and fitted with a "smelly burlap sack" over their heads.

Department of Homeland Security attorney Christopher Brundage pressed Hajjar as to how Qatanani could have been unaware of his 1993 conviction when he filled out his green card application three years after he was released.

"Many people really don't completely know what happened," Hajjar said. "A lot of people are completely baffled by what's happening to them and by the system."

A second witness called by Qatanani's lawyers, Jonathan Kuttab, a Jerusalem-based attorney who defended many Palestinians detained in the military court system, said the cleric's 30-day sentence seemed "incredibly lenient" for someone convicted of assisting Hamas.

DHS attorney Thomas Callahan asked Kuttab whether the sentence may have been more lenient than most because Qatanani had also agreed to provide information on Hamas. "It's possible," Kuttab said.

The trial, originally scheduled to last three days, has been extended, with testimony now scheduled for next Monday and June 1.