"This would not be a normal attire for obtaining cash for orphans," Knight surmised. "It is one to get cash for guns."
And although he could not read the posters, the agent noticed that some depicted people holding AK-47 assault rifles. This led him to conclude, three minutes into his narration, that "it is obvious that this fundraiser has nothing to do with building hospitals or schools. It is solely for raising money for terrorist activities."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday July 01, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 64 words Type of Material: Correction
The L.A. 8 -- A time chart that accompanied an article in Wednesday's Section A about a long-running terrorism case known as that of the L.A. 8 made reference to a "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fundraiser." Whether money raised at the 1986 event went to the Popular Front organization is a matter of dispute and the central issue in the case.
Finally, there was the business of the American flag. Not only had it been removed before the program, Knight would report, the banner was never returned to its standard. Years later, Knight was pressed in a deposition to explain why he considered this relevant.
Certainly moving a flag off the stage did not constitute a criminal act, did it?
"I've been to other events, and the American flag usually stays in the standard. With this group -- the PFLP, they removed the American flag.... And it makes a statement.... "
"What kind of statement?"
"An observation," Knight responded. "They treat the flag the way they would treat the enemy. And, so, it wouldn't be a part of their event."
The revolutionary rhetoric and perceived slights to the flag, the "martial" music and posters, the khaki clothing -- all of these in time would be presented as evidence of seditious inclinations, part of the government's brief in a pioneering attempt to deport seven Palestinian men and the wife of one of them, a Kenyan.
The "L.A. 8," they would be called.
This is the story of their case. It is a case that has rattled around the courts now, incredibly, for 18 years, and yet remains unresolved. It is also a case that foreshadowed what was to come for many Arab and Muslim immigrants in America years later, in the aftermath of terror.
*
Long before Sept. 11, 2001, and President Bush's subsequent declaration of a "war on terror," long before the Patriot Act and the proactive tactics it licensed, back in a time when the difficult question of how to root out potential terrorists without trampling on civil rights seemed more academic than immediate, there was the case of the L.A. 8.
Since January 1987, when the eight were arrested, the case has bounced from immigration court, through federal district courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back again, with side visits to individual immigration status hearings. Along the way, it tested legal questions that would loom large after Sept. 11.
