Yesterday, the “Washington Post” ran a column by Muslim activist Tariq Ramadan, in which he lamented the “fear of ideas” among federal officials that has led to the refusal of a visa for him to visit the U.S. in his column, Ramadan said, “After a lengthy investigation, the State Department cited no evidence of suspicious relationships, no meetings with terrorists, no encouraging or advocacy of terrorism. Instead, the department cited my donation of $940 to two humanitarian organizations (a French group and its Swiss chapter) serving the Palestinian people.”
Ramadan asserts he is entitled to a full disclosure of the evidence known to authorities which supported the visa denial. But aliens seeking entry into the U.S. have no rights to that evidence and shouldn’t. As former senior immigration agent Bill West wrote here on September 25, “Especially for visa adjudication purposes under US immigration law, contributing money to a charity determined to be a funding funnel for Hamas could constitute support for terrorism no matter how Ramadan and his supporters might try to spin it. And for visa denial purposes, proof need not be anything close to criminal standards nor even court-use standards...it’s all administrative action with virtually no due process rights accorded the foreign-based alien...something that still drives those apologists crazy.”
We have tracked Ramadan’s repeated attempts to enter the U.S. and hide his past; I last wrote on them on August 30, with links to other entries by Doug Farah, Steven Emerson (who wrote of Ramadan’s support for attacks against the U.S., Israel, and Russia), Olivier Guitta, Lorenzo Vidino, and Bill West. Then, in his post here on September 29, Doug Farah discussed European intel detailing contacts between Ramadan and numerous terrorists, including Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri (when he was still running Egyptian Islamic Jihad), Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the 1993 WTC bombing), and others. Other terrorism experts have provided more details of Ramadan’s statements or publications in support of terrorism. And far from being “humanitarian organizations,” as Ramadan claims, the two groups to which he contributed “have appeared in several terrorist investigations since 1995...”
The State Department doesn’t have to lay out all the evidence needed to keep him out of the U.S., but there is enough out there already to justify the denial.
