Detained

Ohio was supposed to be their first taste of freedom.

All Israelis enter the military at 18, and getting out of the service is generally their first experience away from the authority of parents and ranking officers. Traditionally, many Israelis take a year or so to travel and let off steam before starting college or a career, working and playing their way through interesting places like Thailand, Brazil, and ... Findlay, Ohio.

In a small city in northwest Ohio, 11 twentysomething Israelis, recently discharged from the military, would have made for exotic neighbors: sharply dressed, their hair styled in wild curls and long sideburns, their speech a tangle of gutturals, their various complexions ranging from pale and freckled to dark Sephardic olive. Eleven of them in three apartments would not have helped the impression they may have made in this rural corner of the state, that they were possibly a terrorist cell.

Or maybe they somehow spooked shoppers at the malls at which they worked, since Americans had been warned that malls were potential terrorist targets. Who tipped off the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) -- if it was in fact a tip-off -- is not known, but on the morning of October 31, only a few weeks after the Israelis had come to Ohio, the FBI and INS raided their apartments.

"We figured it was a mistake, so we sat really calm," says Ori Ben Tur, a 22-year-old from Haifa who was in Findlay with his girlfriend, one of two women in the group. They were told not to bother bringing a change of clothes or anything to read, and then whisked away to INS district offices in Cleveland.

The INS "had lots of paperwork to do," says Liran Diamant, a ponytailed 24-year-old from a small town north of Tel Aviv. "It wasn't interrogation. It was just a few questions. It seemed like they already knew what they had to know."

For most of that first day, the Israelis were under the impression that they would be able to return to Findlay soon enough. Ben Tur says that he didn't get nervous until after a night in Broadview Heights city jail, when they were all given orange jumpsuits to wear and then cuffed at the wrists and ankles. The restraints remained in place even in the holding cells and for meals.

"No one was protecting us," Ben Tur says. "No one knows we are there." They also were not allowed to make international calls home with their calling cards.

It was the worst kind of limbo. They weren't given bond, nor were they going to be deported. "They said they needed to keep us in jail for some reason, and didn't say why," says Ben Tur. In their frustration, the detainees begged to be asked questions, but for Ben Tur and Diamant, at least, the FBI interrogations were brief, 15 minutes to half an hour.

"We just wanted to do everything in order to help," says Diamant. "If the FBI looked for something, we wanted them to find it."

Allegedly, the Israeli 11 violated their visas by selling toy helicopters and other holiday gift items at nearby shopping malls for Quality Sales, a Miami-based retail company. Tom Dean, an attorney for Quality Sales, says the year-old company, owned by a young Israeli couple, covered living expenses. In exchange, the Israelis would work at mall kiosks as unpaid "trainees" for six months, with the ability to transfer to other cities where Quality Sales operates.

While the INS said that this kind of work was out of bounds, it also designated their cases "special interest," indicating that the arrest was related to the domestic terror sweep.

The Israelis were brought to the Federal Building in Cleveland for processing, where the INS deviated from custom and refused to grant them bond. After two weeks in local jails, a federal immigration judge ordered their release, citing a lack of any evidence that they presented a threat to the community. Despite the order, the INS succeeded in holding two of the Israelis for a full month.