Arlington imam, wife accused of marrying others to get U.S. citizenship

10:42 PM CDT on Monday, October 18, 2010

By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
jtrahan@dallasnews.com

A prominent Islamic scholar who has battled accusations of extremist beliefs has been arrested along with his wife on federal charges that they married other people to get U.S. citizenship.

Ibrahim Abdelrahman Dremali and Safaa Rashad Eissa were arrested by immigration agents, Arlington police and the FBI on Oct. 6 on a warrant out of Des Moines, Iowa. They were released on their own recognizance after appearing before a federal judge in Fort Worth the same day.

They are scheduled to enter pleas Nov. 12 in Iowa on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which can carry a five-year sentence, and procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully, which can result in 10 to 25 years in prison.

Dremali, who earned degrees in geology and Islamic law in Cairo, immigrated to the U.S. in 1989 and has served as an imam, or Muslim spiritual leader, in south Florida, Iowa and Austin and worked at Islamic schools.

This summer, he and his wife moved to a house on Virginia Lane near the Islamic Society of Arlington, where he helped lead a local Islamic school.

"They're a very nice family," said Guy Snodgrass, who owns the home the couple rents and is mayor pro tem of Dalworthington Gardens. "Having to go through all this, it has to be hard for his wife and two young children."

Delayed by illness

Reached by phone this past week in Arlington, Dremali said he was too sick to talk. He was originally supposed to report to court Wednesday in Des Moines. His attorney, Alfredo Parrish, sought a delay because doctors treating Dremali, who has hepatitis C and is awaiting a liver transplant at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, said he cannot travel.

Parrish declined to talk about the marriage fraud allegations or accusations that his client is an extremist. "I don't think it's appropriate to comment on what's taken place in the past," he said.

He also declined to elaborate on meetings he has had with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about Dremali and whether they result in additional charges.

Saeda Aljurf, director of the Madinah Academy early child development center, which is affiliated with the Islamic Society of Arlington, said Dremali had made a positive impression in the more than two years he has been consulting at their school. "He's really inspired the children here."

She said he is not an extremist. "I've heard his lecture," she said. "I haven't heard him speaking out against the United States. We all love this country, and we're against anybody who would say anything bad. We all live here."

The U.S. attorney's office in Des Moines declined to discuss the case against Dremali and his wife.

After Dremali emigrated to the U.S., he co-founded the Islamic Center of Boca Raton in 1998. In 2000, the Gaza native, participated in a pro-Palestinian rally in Miami that featured the burning of Israeli flags and a mock funeral for Palestinians killed in the Israeli conflict. According to a published report, Dremali told the crowd "not to be sad for those who were martyred, and to not be afraid to die for what they believe in."

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dremali denied making the statement amid criticism from conservative bloggers about his role in the rally and other associations.

In 2002, Adham Hassoun, a Palestinian activist and computer programmer in Florida, was detained on immigration charges. Dremali was one of four people called to speak about Hassoun's "peaceful and generous character" at a hearing, a court record shows.

Hassoun attended the same Fort Lauderdale mosque as Jose Padilla and was thought to have helped convert him to Islam. Padilla was later accused of planning a dirty bomb attack in the U.S., but authorities ultimately convicted him, and Hassoun, of coordinating aid to al-Qaeda.

Ties to terrorists?

Dremali later said he barely knew Hassoun.

"You can judge a person by the company they keep," wrote Joe Kaufman, a conservative activist in southern Florida, in one of several blog posts accusing Dremali of being a radical Islamist. "Will our government sit back and let things happen, or will it begin to take action, so that the next 9/11 never becomes reality?"

Last week, Kaufman said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News that he is not surprised to hear of Dremali's arrest. "Regardless if they prosecute him on terrorism or immigration, I think it's a good thing to take him off the streets," he said.

Kaufman has also highlighted a more than $16,000 donation by Dremali's Islamic Center of Boca Raton to the Global Relief Foundation, one of several Muslim charities shut down by the Bush administration for funding international terrorism.

Dremali has said that he did not know Global Relief had terrorist ties when the donation was made.

He has long denied being an extremist and has never been charged with any terrorism-related crimes. He has spoken out several times about how he and his family have been threatened and harassed since 9/11.

Citing anti-Islamic harassment, Dremali left Florida around 2005 and became the imam at the Islamic Center of Des Moines. In 2006, he gave an interview to a local television station that was reporting on outrage in the international Muslim community over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Physical depictions of the prophet are considered offensive in Islam, but Dremali condemned violent protests that had erupted in Europe.

"Violence is not Islamic," Dremali said.

By 2009, Dremali was the director at the Islamic Center of Greater Austin. He also taught Islamic studies at the Austin Peace Academy, a Muslim school.

In May, a grand jury in Iowa accused Dremali of marrying an American citizen in Broward County, Florida, shortly after coming to the U.S. in 1989. Dremali swore on government forms that he was single at the time, even though he had married Eissa in 1987 in Egypt, the indictment states. He divorced his American wife in 1994, the indictment states.

The indictment alleges that in 1991, Eissa came to the U.S. In 1994 she married a man in Fort Lauderdale and divorced him March 26, 1997. A week later, she married Dremali a second time in the U.S., according to the indictment.

During a December 2009 interview with a customs official in San Antonio, Eissa said she had never been married before her first U.S. husband.


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