The U.S. Department of Homeland of Security ruled more than a year ago that Mosab Hassan Yousef should be denied asylum because he has “engaged in terrorist activity” and is a “danger to the security of the United States.”
SON OF HAMAS WEBSITEAn immigration judge granted asylum to the son of a Hamas founder who turned his back on his father’s terrorist group and became a spy for Israel. The son of a Hamas strongman, who had provided Israel’s security establishment with valuable inside information for almost a decade, will not be deported from the United States, a California court ruled on Wednesday.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, center, waits to go into his deportation hearing with former Israeli security service agent Gonen Ben-Itzhak at the immigration detention center in San Diego
He had argued that he would be killed if he was deported because he spied on Hamas for Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency and abandoned Islam after becoming a Christian.
However, on Wednesday Homeland Security officials indicated they were prepared to grant Yousef asylum, thus retracting their original intention, after claiming to have received new information which shed new light on the case.
The pro-Israel think-tank EMET, who had aided Yusef in his attempts to be granted asylum, said in a statement following Wednesday’s ruling that they were “enormously grateful to all those who played a part in standing with Mosab during this time, and helping the Department of Homeland Security come to understand what a grave error deporting Mosab would have been.”
“For 10 years, he fought terrorism in secret, hiding what he was doing and who he was,” his attorney, Steven Seick, wrote in a court filing. “He deserves a safe place away from violence and fear.”
“I will keep fighting the ideology that is behind terrorists because I know how they think,” he told reporters in the parking lot. “I know that this is the real danger that is facing liberty, facing freedom, facing humanity.”
He said he loves living in California, wants to become a US citizen and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in history and geography.
The deportation hearing came four months after Yousef published memoirs that say he was one of Shin Bet’s best assets and was dubbed “The Green Prince,” a reference to his Hamas pedigree and the Islamists’ signature green color.
Father of Mosab & Hamas founder
Yousef says his intelligence work for Israel required him to do anything he could to learn about Hamas and that neither he nor Israel knew they were suspects in the suicide bombing when he gave them rides.
“Yes, while working for Israeli intelligence, I posed as a terrorist,” he wrote on his blog last month. “Yes, I carried a gun. Yes, I was in terrorist meetings with Yassir Arafat, my father and other Hamas leaders. It was part of my job.”
Yousef has rallied support from members of Congress and others. Former CIA Director James Woolsey calls him a “remarkable young man” who should be commended for “extraordinary heroism and courage.”
Yousef says he started working with Shin Bet after witnessing Hamas brutalities in prison that left him disillusioned. He gravitated toward Christianity after his release in 1997, joining a Christian study group after a chance encounter with a British tourist at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.
Yousef says he joined his father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, at many meetings with Palestinian leaders and reported them to Shin Bet. His father, a senior Hamas leader who is serving a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison, disowned him in March. HAARETZ
RELATED STORIES/VIDEOS:
update-on-the-obama-regimes-efforts-to-deport-son-of-hamas-leader
is-the-obama-regime-trying-to-deport-son-of-hamas-because-he-spied-for-israel-and-converted-to-christianity
shocking-terrorist-group-hamas-founders-son-worked-for-israeli-intelligence-for-years
son-of-hamas-leader-escapes-to-america
hamas-atrocities-led-me-to-convert-to-christianity
