The Obama administration goes to court today to try to deport an anti-terrorist hero. Why is our government working overtime to persecute Mosab Hassan Yousef, who saved hundreds of lives from terror attacks while risking his own?
Yousef is the son of a founder of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has killed scores of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians. He grew up hating Israel, even throwing rocks at Jewish homeowners. At 18, he was beaten by Israeli soldiers.
Things changed in 1996, after his conviction for buying three illegal guns. Serving 16 months in an Israeli prison, he was impressed with the “humanity” of his Israeli interrogators. He began to see the darker side of Hamas, which his father had shielded him from. From his fellow inmates, he learned that Hamas tortures and kills its own members.
His eyes opened, Yousef agreed to become a covert operative for the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet. “Shin Bet recruited and directed me to act like a terrorist and live like a terrorist,” Yousef said in a sworn statement, “in order to gather intelligence on Hamas and other Palestinian organizations.”
Inside Shin Bet, he was dubbed “the Green Prince.”
One night in Ramallah, Shin Bet was urgently searching for a suicide bomber, but didn’t have his name or photo. Yousef’s handler asked him to go into the crowded Manara square to find the bomber. Drawing on his experience with Hamas, Yousef quickly spotted the man and trailed him to his contact, who was handing him an explosive belt. He alerted Shin Bet, which swarmed in.
In another case, five would-be suicide bombers literally knocked on his door — turning to Yousef for help (because of his family) after their contact was captured. He gave them tea, money and a ride to a Hamas safe house — then tipped off Shin Bet, which encircled the hideout. The terrorists opened fire. When the smoke cleared, one terrorist was dead and four others captured — another mass murder thwarted.
Yousef’s information led to the capture of senior Hamas officials and the murderers of five American students killed at Hebrew University.
While saving the lives of others, he rethought his own. Raised a strict Muslim, he secretly began to study Christianity in 1999. He was baptized in 2005.
In 2007, with Hamas in control of Gaza, he ended his 10-year relationship with Israeli intelligence and sought asylum in the United States. He wrote “Son of Hamas,” a best-selling book about his extraordinary life.
His family publicly disowned him; Hamas has privately promised retribution.
Yousef should be a textbook case for political asylum, but the Obama Department of Homeland Security sees it differently. Its briefs for his deportation allege that he provided “material support” for Hamas — with his book as the main evidence against him.
Yet the DHS’ briefs are laughably incomplete — for example, citing his leading of five Jordanian suicide bombers to a safe house while leaving out the key fact that he was setting a trap for them.
While DHS lawyers insist that Yousef was a Hamas member, Hamas issued a statement: “Mosab was not an active member of Hamas or in any of its military, political or religious branches, or any other body.”
Israeli intelligence agrees. In a sworn statement filed with a federal immigration court, Yousef’s Shin Bet handler said: He “was never a member of any terror group.”
What’s going on? Yousef’s attorney, Steven A. Seick, says that Kerri Calcador, the senior DHS attorney targeting Yousef, told him she’d never agree to asylum, and would appeal if the judge grants it. She said that she had “marching orders from DC,” Seick told me.
Seick believes that Yousef is a pawn in Obama’s Middle East strategy — his life to be traded for better relations with the Muslim world.
Yet Yousef’s problems with DHS began just weeks after Arif Alikhan was sworn in as a top official at DHS. Alikhan recently spoke at a fund-raiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which terror analysts have linked to the Muslim Brotherhood — which also fathered Hamas.
Today’s immigration-court hearing may not decide Yousef’s fate: Lawmakers of both parties are working to save this hero.
Let’s hope they succeed. Deporting Yousef is not just wrong, but foolish: It will discourage others from risking their lives to save innocents. Has the Obama administration no shame?
Richard Miniter is a best-selling author.