US strips off citizenship and will deport a Palestinian prisoner

The US Immigration Authorities have stripped a Palestinian of his citizenship and will deport him to Jordan when his current prison term expires, it was reported on Saturday.

Mohammad Ishqeer arrived in the US in the late 1990s after serving a prison sentence in Israel. According to Maan news agency, he has acknowledged that he lied to the US authorities when he denied that he had committed earlier security offences. He was indicted for making this false statement regarding his prison sentence in Israel.

Ishqeer, 51, was born in a refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison over plans to blow-up a bus, but was released after nine months following the announcement of the Oslo Peace Accords, following which he migrated to the US.

It was also reported that he faced an additional indictment in America for a credit card scam in California, for which he was given a suspended sentence.

READ: PA arrests Palestinian freed from Israel jails