Border Patrol arrests cleric

SAN DIEGO – U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents.

Said Jaziri, the former imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden inside a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego. Jaziri allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a “safe place anywhere in the U.S.”

The arrest marks the unexpected resurfacing of the 43-year-old cleric, whose protracted legal battle to avoid deportation drew headlines in Canada. A Tunisian immigrant, Jaziri was deported for failing to disclose a criminal conviction in France while applying for refugee status in the mid-1990s.

But Jaziri’s supporters said he was targeted for his fundamentalist views: Jaziri backed Sharia law for Canadian Muslims and led protests over the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

Jaziri is being held as a material witness in the criminal case against the BMW’s driver, Kenneth Robert Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling.

In Quebec’s large Muslim community, Jaziri stood out for his outspoken views, and though his mosque was small, he drew outsized media attention for his strict interpretation of the Quran. Jaziri labeled homosexuality a sin and pushed for government subsidies to build a large mosque for Montreal’s growing Muslim population.

Jaziri opposed his deportation to Tunisia because of fears he would be tortured by the government. His case drew support from Muslim organizations and Amnesty International. It’s unclear what his treatment was like in Tunisia.

According to the court documents, a Mexican foot guide led Jaziri and a Mexican immigrant over the fence near Tecate and he trekked overnight through the rugged back country, to a road where drivers frequently pick up immigrants for smuggling runs into San Diego.

Border Patrol agents, alerted by firefighters who saw the immigrants get in the trunk, pulled the car over near the Golden Acorn Casino, about 50 miles east of San Diego. He told agents that his journey to the border had been a long one. He took a flight from Africa to Europe, then to Central America and Chetumal, Mexico, on the Mexico-Belize border, where he took a bus to Tijuana.