The former leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Fawaz Damra, has finally been deported: Damra deported to West Bank. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Fawaz Damra, the longtime local imam convicted of lying about his links to terrorist groups, was deported to the West Bank Thursday morning, immigration officials said.

“It happened Thursday morning about 4 or 5 a.m.,” said Tim Counts, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “He was flown into Jordan and from there crossed the bridge into the Palenstinian Territories.”

Damra had been locked up in a Michigan jail for more than year as immigration officials searched for a country willing to take Damra. The former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland agreed to be deported after a trial and conviction where he was linked to terrorist groups.

Damra, 46, was born in the West Bank and came to the United States in the 1980s. In 2004, he was convicted of lying on his citizenship application because he did not disclose links to terrorist organizations. He served two months in prison and two months of house arrest and was stripped of his citizenship.

During their investigation, federal officials obtained a 1991 video of Damra at a Muslim gathering in Cleveland where he disparaged Jews in Arabic as “pigs and monkeys” and raised money for the killing of Jews by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Damra’s arrest and the images on the videotape shocked many in the region, who viewed him as a voice of moderate, mainstream Islam. He was often seen at public events with politicians and leaders from other faiths until the tape surfaced.

Each time one of these faux moderates is exposed and convicted, the rest of them learn how to blend in a bit better.