The Bad Old Days Are Here Again
November 3, 2007
Editorial
End to a Shabby Prosecution
The federal government agreed this week to terminate 20-year-old deportation proceedings against two Palestinian men who were wrongly targeted for their political beliefs and activities. Better late than never, but we fear that there is little hope that the Bush administration will learn any lesson from this shockingly mishandled prosecution.
The two legal United States residents at the center of the storm — Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh — were the remaining defendants in a travesty dating back to the Ronald Reagan administration known as the L.A. Eight case. They were arrested and marked for deportation along with six others in 1987 for supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the government lists as a terrorist group.
. . . they had distributed a magazine published by the Popular Front and raised funds for lawful charitable organizations somehow linked to the group. Yet, fairly early on, the government…