Nasser Ahmed

Nasser Ahmed became a prominent figure in late-1990s civil-liberties disputes over the use of “secret evidence” in immigration detention. An Egyptian immigrant living in Brooklyn, he became linked—through community and legal work—to the orbit of the high-profile prosecution of Omar Abdel-Rahman, and U.S. immigration authorities treated him as a national security concern.

He was detained in 1996 and spent years in solitary confinement while the government relied on classified allegations that he and his lawyers could not fully review or rebut. The case drew sustained organizing and legal challenges, and immigration adjudicators later concluded that, once a declassified version of the allegations was available for meaningful rebuttal, key claims did not hold up. He was ultimately released, and his detention became a central example cited by critics of secret-evidence procedures.