In the years following Algeria's aborted January 1992 election, exiled leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) were, if not welcomed, at least tolerated outside their own country. But as the US and EU governments warm to the Algiers regime, Islamists receive ever rougher treatment at the hands of Western justice.
Take the case of Anwar Haddam. The Algerian nuclear physics professor won a seat in parliament in the first round of voting on December 26th, 1991, but chose to flee with his wife and child during the subsequent crackdown on FIS leaders and supporters.
Mr Haddam had studied for six years at Iowa State University, so it was natural for him to request asylum in the US. As head of the "FIS Parliamentary Delegation in Exile", he continued giving interviews and issuing statements criticising the Algerian government.
At least seven times the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) allowed him to leave and re-enter the US. He was one of the main participants in the January 1995 Sant'Egidio conference where Algerian political parties advocated a peaceful solution to the civil war.
The mood turned against Mr Haddam and other exiled Islamist politicians in 1995 and 1996 because of bombings in France that were attributed to Algerian Islamists. In December 1996 he was arrested and imprisoned in the state of Virginia. And although he has been neither charged nor tried, he is still held on the basis of "secret evidence". His writ of habeas corpus, suing US officials for unlawful detention, will be heard shortly in a US federal court.
The US abandoned plans to deport Mr Haddam to Algeria after government agencies concluded he would be tortured and probably killed. Both the Algiers government and the extremist Armed Islamic Group (GIA) have sentenced him to death in absentia.
An immigration judge denied Mr Haddam's asylum application on the grounds that his Islamist views constituted persecution of others. This decision was struck down by the Board of Immigration Appeals for lack of evidence.
Yet the INS refused to release Mr Haddam, gave two arguments for his continued detention, "US national interest" and "flight risk", and attempted to conceal State Department advice that it is in the US national interest to free him. Furthermore, the INS holds his passport, and his wife and four children, three of whom are US citizens, are in the US.
Mr Haddam's US lawyer, Ms Susan Akram, says she is most alarmed by the use of secret evidence in the Haddam case, made possible by 1996 legislation. "It completely undermines the strength of our constitutional protections," she says. Of 25 men now detained in the US on the basis of secret evidence, all are Muslim Arabs.
"Apparently, due process of law is for non-Muslims and non-Arabs only," she says bitterly. Lawyers for Algerians in France, Britain and Germany have made similar comments to The Irish Times. Under recent legislation, Britain also admits secret evidence which is impossible for defendants to counter.
The INS has acknowledged that its evidence against Mr Haddam consists of his taped telephone conversations. "We want those conversations published, because we believe they will prove his innocence," Ms Akram says.
When secret evidence has been declassified in the past, she adds, it was found to consist of newspaper articles. In one case it was testimony of a divorced wife who had bargained with US officials to incriminate her ex-husband in exchange for her own residence papers.
There has been widespread criticism in Switzerland of the treatment of one of Mr Haddam's fellow FIS members of parliament, Mr Ahmed Zaoui, who was deported from Geneva to Ouagadougou with his wife and four children on November 2nd. Before applying for asylum in Switzerland, Mr Zaoui had received a suspended sentence in Belgium after worshippers at the mosque where he preached were found to keep weapons at home.
Swiss journalists believe the expulsion was linked to a state visit by French President Jacques Chirac. France has been more assiduous than any other EU country in pursuing Algerian Islamists and has often criticised what it sees as laxity by its neighbours.