Muslim scholar says US has dropped terror-related charges

PARIS -- A prominent Swiss Muslim intellectual said yesterday that the United States had dropped charges against him of supporting terrorism, but had refused to scrap an entry ban.

Tariq Ramadan, now an academic at Oxford University in Britain, said he had received an official letter effectively clearing him of charges that kept him from taking up a teaching post at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

However, the letter from the US Embassy in Bern explained the continued ban by saying he had contributed about 600 euros ($770) to a Palestinian support group, he said.

``This is an ideological exclusion," he said by telephone from London. ``This is the only way they can justify their decision after two years of investigation."

Ramadan, who has been a vocal critic of the US invasion of Iraq and its support for Israel, got a visa in 2004. Washington revoked it on advice from the Department of Homeland Security, which gave no reason for its decision.

He declined the Notre Dame post, but fought to have the ban lifted and his name cleared.

A federal judge in New York criticized the government in June for holding up his visa application and ruled that it must make a decision within three months.

The American Civil Liberties Union had sued the US government in January on behalf of Ramadan and institutes that had invited him to speak, arguing that the government had improperly denied visas to scholars critical of the Bush administration.

The State Department confirmed that it had denied Ramadan a visa, but said the denial had nothing to do with his views.

``A US consular officer has denied Dr. Tariq Ramadan's visa application . . . for providing material support to a terrorist organization," said a State Department spokesman, Kurtis Cooper. ``The consular officer concluded that Dr. Ramadan was inadmissible based solely on his actions, which constituted providing material support to a terrorist organization."

Cooper gave no details about what Ramadan had done to trigger the denial, citing the confidentiality of the visa process.

The ACLU said it was considering an appeal of the decision to deny Ramadan a visa.

Ramadan said his contributions to the Committee for Charity and Aid to Palestinians, which is based in France, were apparently seen as support for the Palestinian movement Hamas, which Washington has listed as a terrorist group.

However, he said he had sent the funds in 2000, long before the United States declared that Hamas was a terrorist group.

Ramadan noted that the Committee for Charity and Aid to Palestinians was legal in France, and that the northern French city of Lille had cooperated with it for several years in charity projects for Palestinians.

In a statement, Ramadan said: ``The contents of this letter clear my name of all the allegations and accusations brought against me since my visa was revoked.

``Everything that was said about my so-called dubious relations, my meetings with this or that terrorist, my teaching, my ideas and writings encouraging or justifying terrorism, my double-speak -- none of that was mentioned."

The views of Ramadan, who condemns terrorism and Islamist violence, have provoked contrasting reactions.

The intellectual, born in Geneva, is popular among young European Muslims for his efforts to reconcile their European and Islamic identities. His reputation in British and US academic circles is one of a moderate specialist .

In France, officials see him as a radical who preaches hard-line Islam to Muslims and moderation to non-Muslims. He has denied the ``double-speak" charge.