http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cct ... 262120.htm

Posted on Sat, Nov. 26, 2005

Imam is arrested, faces deportation

By Anthony M. DeStefano
NEWSDAY

NEW YORK - The former imam at a controversial Brooklyn mosque was arrested near Cleveland on Friday in the first step by the federal government to have him deported on national security grounds, officials said.

Fawaz Mohammed Damrah, 44, who had spent a combined 6 months in jail and under house arrest for falsifying his citizenship application, was apprehended at his home outside Cleveland, according to officials with the office U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Officials are seeking Damrah's deportation because he is believed to have provided funding and other support to a group considered a terrorist organization, ICE officials said.

Damrah was convicted in 2004 of concealing on his citizenship application the fact that he was involved with the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an organization designated by the United States as a terrorist group, according to court records.

Damrah, who entered the United States in 1984, also didn't disclose on his application that he established an office in New York at Al-Farooq Mosque for the Afghan Refugee Services, Inc., a group that supported Afghan fighters against the Soviet Union, the records show.

A U.S. court of appeals upheld Damrah's conviction earlier this year. He was stripped of his citizenship as a result, officials said.

According to records in his case, Damrah was an imam at the Al-Farooq Mosque from 1986 until 1990, when he moved to Cleveland. Damrah left the Brooklyn mosque in a dispute over how to use funds destined for Afghanistan after the Soviets left the country, the court ruling stated.

The Al-Farooq Mosque has come up in a number of other federal investigations. Neither his attorney nor officials at the Al-Farooq Mosque could be reached for comment Friday.