ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A northern Virginia man who says he fears torture at the hands of Israeli authorities is back in the U.S. after a judge's order forced immigration authorities to reverse his deportation and bring him back from Israel before he ever got off the plane.
Abdelhaleem Ashqar recently served 11 years in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating his relationship to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
According to court papers and interviews, U.S. authorities arrested and deported Ashqar Tuesday after misleading him about his need to report to an immigration office to process paperwork.
Ashqar's lawyers filed an emergency appeal, and at a late-night hearing a federal judge intervened, saying Ashqar could not be released to Israel because his deportation order specifies he be deported to Jordan.
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