Once labeled a suspected terrorist, Abdul Aziz Naji doesn't have a home or a country. But some officials in Newton are doing what they can to give him both.

Naji has spent much of the past eight years being held as an enemy combatant in Guantanamo Bay, before being cleared for release in May 2009.

Members of Newton's Board of Aldermen are proposing a resolution asking Congress to allow cleared detainees into the United States and to welcome Naji into "into our community as soon as such ban is lifted."

"We're raising our hands," said Alderman Stephen Linsky, who proposed the nonbinding resolution. It unanimously passed out of committee and will go before the full board on Jan. 19.

The 34-year-old Algerian has been connected to Newton for several years -- local lawyers Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell having been working for him pro bono since 2006, trying to appeal his classification as an enemy combatant.

Though he was cleared to be released by the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force -- and was never charged with any crimes -- he's still at Guantanamo because he fears persecution from the Algerian government if he's repatriated to his home country, Lubell said.

Lubell holds no illusions about a municipal resolution changing the minds of congressional lawmakers, but she's delighted that the resolution makes a stand for her client and the principles she's fought for.

"It's a symbolic gesture that really runs counter to what we think as fear-mongering, the fear that has been generated that all these guys are bad and are going to blow us up," Lubell said. "Some of them, including our client, should never have been in Guantanamo in the first place."

Naji was arrested by Pakistani police in 2002 during a house raid and eventually was transferred to Guantanamo.

Most of the evidence against Naji came from torture, both of him and other prisoners, Lubell and Tennant said. The United States government alleged Naji was a member of designated terrorist group Lashkar al-Tayyibi, but Naji said he worked in a legally operated charitable wing of the organization...

...By late Thursday evening, the TAB's online polling on the matter showed that 90 percent of respondents - who only now are hearing of this matter -- disapprove. Of course! This is an extraordinarily foolish exercise that defies common sense, and illustrates the arrogance of our self-chosen moral elites...

...Statistics aside, what about Naji himself? Bob Cerra, a life-long Newton resident and retired state trooper is doing research on Naji. Bob forwarded us declassified documents from Naji's case from the New York Times website. According to the Times, Naji was captured during a raid on a terrorist safehouse in Pakistan. Under U.S. interrogation, Naji confessed that he joined the terror organization Lashkar-e-Taibah (LeT), the group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai Massacres. Naji told his interrogators he pledged to fight in LeT's jihad against India, and was given mine-laying training at LeT's training camps. During a terrorist raid into Indian territory, Naji was tasked with removing Indian mines. One of the mines blew up, injuring him and he was taken back to the safehouse where American soldiers eventually found him.

That, anyway, was the story before he lawyered up. After meetings with Newton attorneys Lubell and Tennant, who claim that his confessions were the result of torture, Naji changed his story. But not, surprisingly, very much. Naji couldn't deny that he left Algeria to join Lashkar-e-Taibah - the U.S. government had records of cash and plane tickets to Pakistan that he'd received from a LeT recruiter. But now he claimed that he had only been a LeT member for one and a half years and knew nothing about laying mines...

Appalled by a Board of Aldermen resolution that would allow a Guantanamo Bay detainee to relocate to Newton, 30 residents met at City Hall this evening to voice their concerns...

..."What is going to set this guy off if he is released into any Western society, where the public and the society treasure freedom of speech?" said Jeff Seideman, who unsuccessfully ran for alderman last year.

"This is a community where we value our diversity of thought as well as religion and race and things like that, and we have people here who have a great diversity of ideas. This is nuts beyond anything I've seen in a long time."

Newly-elected Alderman Charlie Shapiro arranged the meeting to hear the public's opinions. He said he would vote against the resolution Tuesday at the Board of Aldermen meeting and would like to have the resolution voted "resoundingly down."

"There is absolutely no connection between this person and Newton," said Allen Waxman. "There is absolutely no reason he should be allowed anywhere, in my opinion in the United States ... There is absolutely no reason that he should be given the freedoms of an American."...

...Residents applauded Shapiro's initiative to hold a meeting. Many people, like Shapiro,
were dismayed the resolution passed the Programs and Services Committee unanimously.

"It's a complicated process, but every alderman who voted for this should be targeted for recall," said Margot Einstein

Sallee H. Lipshutz said blogs have equated Newton with Amherst. In November, members of Town Meeting in Amherst voted to ask Congress to lift the ban and, if that happened, to resettle two detainees in town.

"We are painted as moonbats. I mean, they look at us like crazies now. I think we really have to combat that image," said Lipshutz...