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Mosab Hassan Yousef, 32,
had been denied political asylum in February 2009 because the Department of
Homeland Security said he posed a terrorist threat. Yousef, who came
to the U.S. in 2007, has said he feared assassination if he returned to the
Middle East because he spied for Israel and abandoned Islam.
 Yousef told reporters
he was surprised by the outcome of the deportation hearing held in San Diego
this morning. It lasted less than 20 minutes because Homeland Security dropped
its opposition to his asylum request without explanation.
Those close to the case speculate
that support from members of Congress, former CIA director James
Woolsey and Yousef’s Israeli intelligence handler, Gonen ben Itzhak played a part in the decision.
 Itzhak traveled from
Israel to testify on Yousef’s behalf, though no witnesses ultimately were
called. “Basically, I wanted to say that Mosab was not a terrorist,”
Itzhak said, according to Fox News. “He was not affiliated with Hamas.
He’s a great guy, and he should get asylum.”
Yousef is the oldest
son of respected imam Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder of the
Palestinian terror organization Hamas who is serving a six-year sentence in an
Israeli prison. The younger Yousef has been disowned by his father; he became
a Christian in 2005 and later spied for Israel’s intelligence agency,
Shin Bet. He recounts his experience in a memoir, Son of Hamas, that released in March.
In a blog posting last month, Yousef admitted that he
posed as a terrorist and carried a gun while spying for Shin Bet at meetings
with Palestinian leaders.
“Yes, while
working for Israeli intelligence, I posed as a terrorist,” Yousef wrote.
“Yes, I carried a gun. Yes, I was in terrorist meetings with Yasser
Arafat, my father and other Hamas leaders. It was part of my job. And I passed
on to the Shin Bet all the information I gathered during those meetings and
saved the lives of many people-including many Americans.”
In the blog, Yousef also criticized Homeland Security’s
handling of his case, saying the department was looking for terrorists in the
wrong places. “If Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between
a terrorist and a man who spent his life fighting terrorism, how can they
protect their own people?” he asked.
During a conference call today, Yousef said he hoped the
government would learn from his experience. In order to fight the relatively
new threat of individual terrorists, Yousef said Homeland Security and other
intelligence agencies must better understand the religion, culture and motive
of those individuals.
“In my case,
unfortunately, [there was a] lack of knowledge, lack of experience, lack of
distinguishing between who’s terrorist and who’s not terrorist,” he said. “I’m
not criticizing; that wasn’t my goal. I wanted, and I still want, American
public and Homeland Security, FBI, to consider more. This is not just a small
threat, it’s a huge threat, and in order to fight it we need to take different
measures.”
Yousef, who lives in San Diego, said he hopes to become a
U.S. citizen and pursue a master’s degree in history and geography. He
said he will keep fighting the ideology behind terrorists “because I know how
they think.”
This year he will celebrate the Fourth of July without the
threat of deportation, but he said he has long been an American.
“I think I became American when I start to fight for
liberty and freedom,” he said. “At that moment I served the common ground that
gathers every free man and woman in this country. I celebrated always the
Fourth of July. I think independence is a great thing, but what I think is
greater is the liberty that is in the heart of every individual of this
country. I think this is a great country, a great nation, and I will be proud
to be called American.”
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Son of Hamas Founder Shares Faith Journey,
Reveals He Spied for Israel in New Book
‘Son of Hamas’ Threatened With Deportation
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