Abdelhaleem Ashqar
Biography
Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar was a Howard University Professor and Palestinian activist who fled to the United States in 1981 as a college student after being arrested and beaten by authorities for participating in a political demonstration at Birzeit University against Israel’s military occupation. In the United States he finished his education and founded the al-Aqsa Educational Fund which was a charity that funded schooling initiatives in Palestine. Dr. Ashqar would give frequent lectures and speeches about the plight of the Palestinian people. Due to transferring large sums of money to the Middle East the account of his foundation was flagged as a potential money laundering account but was cleared by the FBI, though after consulting Israeli intelligence the FBI was told the money could be being used for terrorism. The FBI bugged Dr. Ashqar’s phone but found no evidence he was involved in terrorism. The FBI set up a meeting with Ashqar where they asked him to become an undercover informant and make statements to them that other Palestinian activists were Hamas members. He refused and in 1998 was subpoenaed Ashqar, to testify in a grand jury as part of the FBI’s investigation into a network of alleged Hamas financiers in the United States, Ashqar refused to testify and spent 6 months held in solitary confinement. In September 2003, he was jailed for civil contempt for two months after refusing again to testify in an investigation One year later, a grand jury returned indictments against Ashqar for obstructing justice, along with indictments against Marzook and Muhammad Salah, a Chicago-based Palestinian activist who had earlier been arrested by Israel and was allegedly tortured into confessing membership to Hamas. Prosecutors also charged Ashqar with being part of a conspiracy to advance Hamas’s criminal actions by financing the militant group. Ashqar was found not guilty on charges of financing Hamas. was convicted for obstructing justice over his refusal to give testimony in November 2007 instead sentenced him to 11 years in prison. After being released he spent the next 18 months in immigration detention finally released in December 2018 But after about six months at home, Ashqar was back in prison. His lawyer feared that ICE still wanted to deport him to Israel. Jurors acquitted Ashqar of racketeering conspiracy, but was still sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury that was investigating money- laundering and non-profits funding “terrorist” organizations. These charges are broad sweeping and are the same types of charges being brought against Dr. Dhafir. http://www.free-ashqar.org/
Documented case history
The district court opinion recounts a separate 1998 New York civil-contempt detention, described in his testimony as six months, and his June 25, 2003 refusal to testify before a Chicago grand jury. It records February 1, 2007 convictions for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice and acquittal of racketeering conspiracy. The November 21, 2007 sentence was 135 months, with a concurrent 120-month term. The earlier civil-contempt episodes are not part of a single uninterrupted 2004–2017 stay; their exact endpoints are not supplied.
The documented case chronology records custody endpoint June 13, 2017. Subsequent ICE custody was a separate stage. Earlier bail/remand gaps are not measured here, so the earlier case-start date is not used to claim uninterrupted imprisonment.
Source 1 ; Source 2 ; Source 3 ; Source 4 ; Source 5 ; Source 6 ; Source 7.
1998 Manhattan civil contempt detention. The source explicitly records actual jailing in Manhattan on February 23, 1998. The exact executed release date is unknown; six months is not converted into an invented endpoint.
2003 Chicago civil contempt detention. The source explicitly records actual jailing on September 5, 2003, followed by actual confinement and later home detention on bail. The home-transition day remains unknown, and home detention is not counted as physical prison time.
2017–2018 post-criminal ICE detention. After actual release from the criminal prison term on June 13, 2017, he was transferred to immigration detention. The source records actual physical release under supervision on December 21, 2018. This separately dated ICE stage supplies a confirmed subtotal; his other custody periods remain incompletely quantified.
2019 renewed immigration detention. The source records actual rearrest on June 4, 2019, an attempted removal flight that returned, and further detention before home confinement with an ankle monitor. Exact initial facility admission and physical release days are not established. Court denials, appeal dismissal and newspaper publication dates are not substituted for release.
