#Ex-Nazi hunter wants US to deny entry to alleged terrorism sponsor

A Manhattan lawyer famous for hunting Nazis is urging federal authorities to deny entrance into the US to an alleged terrorism sponsor who is scheduled to teach at Harvard University.

In a recent letter to Attorney General Bill Barr, Neal Sher cites “an overwhelming amount of publicly available evidence” to suggest that Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, incited terrorist violence when he helped establish a fund that pays the surviving families of suicide bombers killed during their acts of terror.

“At a time when all nations are working to combat the scourge of terrorism, this ‘pay to slay’ policy does nothing but incentivize and encourage terror,” writes Sher, the former head of the federal Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations, in the Sept. 16 letter to Barr.

Erekat was recently named a Fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for the current academic year, and is scheduled to arrive for in-person classes in the spring semester, according to Sher. The prestigious appointment came shortly after the Palestinian authority donated nearly $2 million to Harvard between 2017 and 2019.

Sher is also representing the families of victims of the Fort Hood massacre. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 were injured in the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, the deadliest mass shooting on a US army base. Nidal Hassan, a radicalized Army psychiatrist, who had communicated with known Islamist extremists, admitted to the shootings at his court martial in 2013.