Jabara, Abdeen, 1940-....

New York attorney originally based in Detroit.

Jabara was concerned with issues of civil rights of Arab Americans and the rights of Arabs living or traveling in the United States. He challenged practice of law enforcement agencies to collect information and maintain surveillance of Arabs and Arab Americans. Jabara was involved in the murder trial of Sirhan Sirhan and the extradition case of Ziad Abu Eain.

From the description of Abdeen M. Jabara papers, 1956-1986 (bulk 1968-1983). (University of Michigan). WorldCat record id: 78933771

Abdeen M. Jabara was born in Mancelona, Michigan in 1940 to Lebanese parents who had immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, eventually settling in northern Michigan. Jabara took an interest in Middle Eastern affairs throughout his youth and upon graduation from high school in 1958 decided to attend the University of Michigan, largely because the school offered courses in Arabic and had a prominent Arab student population. During his early undergraduate years Jabara determined that in order to learn the Arabic language properly he would have to immerse himself in that culture and so he spent five months living in Cairo, Egypt. He then journeyed by freighter to Lebanon to visit his father's village, where he met his uncle for the first time.

Upon returning from this trip, Jabara's focus centered more on the completion of his undergraduate education at Michigan than on Middle East issues. However, during his years of law school at Wayne State University in Detroit he gradually became more involved with civil rights issues and founded a local chapter of the Civil Rights Research Council. He graduated from law school in 1965 and returned to Lebanon to further develop his Arabic language skills through additional schooling.

Jabara returned to Detroit in 1966 to open his law practice. In 1967, the Arab-Israeli war and the anti-Arab sentiment it created prompted Jabara to become heavily involved with Arab-American issues. Academics of Arab heritage met at the University of Michigan to discuss the political situation and formed the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) in 1968. The mission of the AAUG was to promote educational and cultural activities and information about the Arab world and the Arab-American community. Jabara served as the first executive secretary and was later elected president of the group in 1972.

In 1970, Jabara joined the law firm of Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakhian, Stickgold, James and Smith in Detroit. For the next decade and a half he would fight for the rights of Arabs living or traveling in the United States as well as political activists in general. He did so by challenging the practice of collecting information and maintaining surveillance of Arabs and Arab Americans by such institutions as the Detroit and Michigan State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Secretary of State. Jabara's own case against the FBI, for which he enlisted the help of the ACLU, finally ended in victory in 1984 with the FBI agreeing to destroy his file and acknowledging that collecting the information found within the file violated his constitutional rights.

Throughout his legal career Jabara would take on nationally prominent cases of Arabs and Arab-Americans. Such cases included Sirhan B. Sirhan, convicted in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and Ziad Abu Eain, wanted for extradition to Israel for a 1979 Palestine Liberation Organization bombing.

Jabara was also involved in the National Lawyer's Guild, an organization founded as an alternative to the more conservative American Bar Association. In 1977 he traveled to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Occupied Territories as part of the NLG's Middle East delegation to report on the condition and treatment of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Jabara became president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1986. The ADC, founded by former Senator James Abourezk in 1980, devoted itself to the protection of the rights of people of Arab descent and promoting their cultural heritage. Jabara now (2002) works for the ADC Research Institute in Washington D.C. He recently worked as part of the defense team for Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman, accused of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Jabara resides in New York City.

From the guide to the Abdeen Jabara papers, 1956-1986, 1968-1983, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)