Ins Focus Of Review, Reno Says Investigation To Look At Policies That Let Alleged Bomber Into U.S.
The Justice Department is investigating immigration procedures that allowed alleged bomb-maker Ghazi Abu Mezer to live in the United States several months after he admitted Israeli authorities once had arrested him as a terrorist, senior department officials said Thursday.
Abu Mezer and his roommate in a Brooklyn tenement house, Lafi Khalil, are accused of plotting to explode bombs in the New York City subway system as an act of terrorist revenge for U.S. support of Israel. Both men were shot and wounded during a police raid Aug. 7. A federal complaint alleges that five explosive devices were found in their apartment.
Attorney General Janet Reno said Thursday the Justice Department’s inspector general has started an investigation of how the immigration system operated in this case and she has asked her staff for a detailed review of the events. Finally, Reno also said she had asked the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service “to look at the process and to see if there is anything that needs to be done to strengthen the appropriate exchange of information” between the two agencies.
Abu Mezer, a Palestinian, was caught last January sneaking across the U.S.-Canada border and allowed to remain here on bond. In April, he applied for political asylum on grounds that he would face persecution if forced to return to Israel. He said Israeli police had arrested him for being a member of Hamas, a radical Palestinian group, a charge he denied.
Abu Mezer later withdrew the asylum request and, on June 23, an immigration judge gave him 60 days to leave the country voluntarily. During that time he moved to New York City.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani criticized the immigration system at a news conference last week, saying, “I think it is appropriate to question just why it is that this person was allowed to come into the country announcing that he is accused of being part of a terrorist group. Maybe in the future we can learn something from it.”
Last year, Congress enacted major changes in asylum procedures and other aspects of the immigration system with the intent of making it more difficult for terrorists to enter the country.
The legislation was prompted in part by the realization that key figures in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had slipped through the immigration system.
Among other things, Abu Mezer’s case raises concern about the apparent lack of control over people ordered out of the country but who are not incarcerated, said Michael R. Bromwich, the inspector general.
“This is a chance to conduct a case study of how the INS operates in a vital area that needs more attention,” Bromwich said. A recent study by his office found that as few as 11 percent of aliens under orders of deportation leave when they are scheduled to.
Abu Mezer was under an order of voluntary departure, which involves even less compulsion than deportation.
Roommate Khalil had entered the country legally on a tourist visa and then remained here illegally after the visa expired.
In the week following the raid, federal investigators tried to determine whether Abu Mezer and Khalil were solo operators or members of a larger plot.
The probe has yet to reach any conclusions, officials said.
The investigation grew more confused this week with discovery in the apartment of a copy of a letter sent to a State Department program providing rewards for information that helps combat terrorism, officials said.
The letter has led to speculation that the explosive devices could have been part of an elaborate ruse to get reward money rather than a terrorist operation.