probably from either tucson citizen, or arizona daily star
Government's secret evidence overruled
Judge rules for alien
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - A federal judge yesterday ordered the government to release a Palestinian accused of plotting to kill Attorney General Janet Reno, ruling he had been unconstitutionally detained for 19 months by secret evidence.
U.S. District Judge William H. Walls is the first federal judge to reject the government's longstanding practice of detaining or deporting immigrants based on evidence it refuses to share, lawyers who follow immigration say.
The government's argument "ignores the axiomatic constitutional premise that aliens, once legally admitted into the United States, are entitled to the shelter of the Constitution," Walls wrote yesterday.
David Cole, the Georgetown law profes- sor who represents Hany Kiareldeen, called the ruling "a substantial victory, not only for or all immigrants, but for fairness in government proceedings."
Walls ordered the immediate release of Kiareldeen, 31, of Passaic, who was arrested for overstaying a student visa, then detained on suspicion of plotting to kill Reno.
But the Immigration and Naturalization Service obtained a stay of Walls' order last night from a federal appeals court. Arguments. were scheduled for today and Kiareldeen remained in federal custody for another night at the Hudson County Jail.
"We've maintained all along that he is a danger," INS spokesman Bill Strassberger said yesterday.
Kiaraldeen, who has been jailed since. March 1998, was never charged with a plot on Reno's life. But the government has detained him and has been trying to deport him based on the secret evidence.
Summaries of the evidence given to immigration judges said Kiareldeen. made a 11 credible threat" to kill Reno because of her role in prosecuting the bombers of the World Trade Center and that he is a suspected member of an unnamed terrorist organization.
Kiareldeen has testified that he does not know any of the men convicted in the Trade Center bombing and did not know who Reno was until he was arrested.