The Federal government last week charged local Muslim leader Rabih Haddad, who Immigration and Naturalization Services detained last December on immigration charges, with aiding international terrorism. Haddad is also a co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation, a Muslim charity organization whose assets the Federal government froze on Dec. 14, the same day the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided their headquarters in Chicago and the Ann Arbor INS arrested Haddad.

The only evidence to support the terrorism charge up until now that has been publicly disclosed has consisted of a phone record indicating that GRF received a phone call from an al-Qaida operative and a heavily censored memo that references discarded photographs of communications equipment which was found in the garbage of a GRF facility in Chechnya in 1997. Some of the equipment was allegedly of the same design as equipment used in the embassy bombings in Africa. Haddad and his attorney were given uncensored copies of the memos.

According to Haddad's lawyer, the phone call was made to request assistance from GRF and this request they turned down. And the Chechnyan government has filed an affidavit claiming ownership of the items in the picture, which were being stored at a facility they shared with GRF.

These new developments make clear that, from the beginning, the federal government has had no intention of granting Haddad a fair trial; it has tried everything to keep the proceedings closed to the public, only adding the charge of terrorism after Federal District Judge Nancy Edmunds ordered the immigration hearings to be opened for public viewing and presided over by a different judge. Only the flimsiest of evidence appears to support the terrorism charge, unless the prosecutors have more that they are trying to hide.

As Federal prosecutors seek to close the hearings to the public again, it is important that the public fight back; pressure from the outside opened the hearings in the first place and if it eases, the government will surely seize the opportunity to close them again. Haddad's civil rights and civil liberties have been consistently violated since his initial detainment in December.

Initially held in solitary confinement, Haddad has been locked up for about 10 months now, with only limited access to his family and friends. During this time, federal prosecutors have consistently failed to convince the public that there is any plausible basis for his detention. Instead, all we have seen that they are competent to do is to continue playing games to avoid public scrutiny. Haddad and the general public deserve better than this. The government bodies overseeing Haddad's case should either make a clear and public case against Haddad or release him.