In a ruling yesterday that could put an end to the nine-month detainment of Ann Arbor Muslim leader Rabih Haddad, a federal district judge yesterday ordered Haddad released within 10 days unless the government grants him another deportation hearing before a different federal immigration judge.

Haddad has been incarcerated since federal immigration authorities charged him with overstaying a six-month visa. The charity he co-founded, the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, Inc., had its offices raided last year and the government contends it has funneled money to terrorists.

Haddad's rights to due process were sidestepped because of a Justice Department's classification of the case as "special interest," wrote Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The classification was made when the government considered an open immigration hearing a threat to national security with investigations into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ongoing.

That classification biased Haddad's immigration judge against the Lebanese native, Edmunds said. The infringement of Haddad's rights warrants either a speedy immigration hearing or a speedy release, Edmunds added.

Under direction from Attorney General John Ashcroft, Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy, a Justice Department official, ordered any case connected with the investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks classified as special interest. Edmunds ruled in April that the hearings have to be open in order to keep the government publicly accountable, rebuffing the national security rationale for closed hearings provided by the government.

"This classification inevitably suggested a link between Haddad and terrorists and terrorism or, more specifically, the attacks of September 11," Edmunds wrote in Haddad v. Ashcroft.

"We stand by our statement that Pastor Haddad has never been a threat to national security," Haddad attorney Ashraf Nubani said.

Richard Rossman, a former U.S. attorney and top official in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said Edmunds' decision has a good chance of review from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals because it is a legal interpretation rather than a factual determination.

Michael Steinberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Michigan branch, praised Edmunds's decision.

"Her ruling was consistent with her early decision that the Creppy memo violates the First Amendment," Steinberg said. "The courts right now are standing up to the Ashcroft administration at this stage and they're saying that executive power is going to be checked."

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the government has not yet decided whether to appeal Edmunds' latest decision.

"We are reviewing the judge's order, and we have not made any other determination at this time," he said.