U.S. CITIZENS?: No (seven Palestinians and one Kenyan)
CHARGE: Distributing magazines for a Palestinian group
TWIST: First material-support case in history
OUTCOME: 20 years later, the L.A. Eight finally cleared.
In the early 1980s, an FBI agent was investigating a handful of men in Los Angeles who he believed were supporters of a Marxist Palestinian guerrilla group known as the pflp. The agent never turned up evidence of criminal activity. The only thing he found was that the men had distributed magazines for a charity linked to the group. That didn't stop the feds. On January 26, 1987, immigration agents stormed their homes. "They came in with a subpoena for a magazine," Khader Hamide told the Los Angeles Times. "No baseball bats, no guns, no whatever. Because they knew: I ain't got none."
At first, the government tried to deport the men under a dusty McCarthy-era law that allowed immigrants to be deported if they were members of a communist organization. The courts soon declared that law unconstitutional. But the defendants—who became known as the L.A. Eight—weren't in the clear. In 1990, Congress repealed most of the anti-communist law but passed one that banned any immigrant who "affords material support" to "terrorist activity." The terms were broadly defined, and the government, in its inaugural use of the law, went after the L.A. Eight for supporting terrorists by...handing out magazines.
The case wound its way through the courts for 20 years. The L.A. Eight almost got off time and again only to see Congress tighten the material-support laws and prosecutors refile the charges. Last year, a judge threw out the case for the final time, citing the Bush administration's refusal to hand evidence over to the defense. His sum-up of the saga: "an embarrassment to the rule of law."