by TChris

Fawaz Mohammed Damra is scheduled to go to trial in Akron next week on charges of obtaining U.S. citizenship by providing false information. Federal authorities claim that Damra failed to reveal his connections with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad when he applied for citizenship. But thanks to the wrongdoing of federal agents who searched his house, the government won't be able to use all of the evidence that it intended to introduce against Damra.

FBI agents searched the home after the Palestinian-born imam was arrested there. Agents seized a computer, copies of sermons and political speeches, the manifesto of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and stacks of financial records.

Damra's wife, Nasreen, was instructed to go to the basement during the arrest, apparently because she was upset, and the "uninvited lingering on the premises" by the agents after the arrest meant the search was unreasonable and therefore illegal, [U.S. District Court Judge James] Gwin ruled. "The agents' plan all along was apparently to prevent Nasreen Damra from knowing whether she had the right to ask them to leave," the judge said in a 16-page ruling.

The prosecution had intended to use the illegally obtained manifesto as evidence at Damra's trial, no doubt hoping to inflame jury prejudice by associating Damra with those views.