U.S. jails Kurd it had given asylum
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| Thu, 09-02-2004 - 12:18pm |
What's the difference between a "freedom fighter" & a "terrorist"?
Old charges from Turkey haunt Michigan cafe owner.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0409020146sep02,1,6574020.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Follow the Red Arrow Highway up the lip of Lake Michigan, past the diners and the u-pick-'em blueberry patches, and you will find the place where for the last decade a Turkish immigrant has run a cafe with exotic aromas in the kitchen and grainy photos on the wall of a faraway land he calls Kurdistan.
Or so it was for owner Ibrahim Parlak until July 29, when a phone call from the FBI revived an old life he thought he had left behind and unraveled the new one he had built.
"It never crossed my mind that after all those years, this could happen," said Parlak, owner of Cafe Gulistan and inmate #194847 at the Calhoun County Jail in nearby Battle Creek. He is accused of lying to the U.S. government about his alleged criminal history and engaging in terrorist activities 17 years ago in Turkey. "It doesn't make any sense to me."
The tale of how this popular small-town restaurant owner became ensnared in the global war on terrorism is fueling debate beyond this corner of southwest Michigan, a weekend home to many Chicagoans, and crystallizing some of the post-Sept. 11 era's most polarizing questions about the balance of individual rights and security. His case illustrates how the past three years have refocused American suspicions and sympathies, shaping the way the U.S. treats those who arrive seeking refuge.
"It shows the way our traditional American rights and freedoms are being compromised," said film critic Roger Ebert, a cafe regular who vacations in the area. "This man was granted political asylum in America for the same reasons he is now threatened with deportation."
U.S. immigration officials contend that Parlak should be denied citizenship and deported. They accuse him of disguising his role in the killing of two Turkish border guards in 1987 and call him a terrorist for his links at that time with the PKK, an armed Kurdish resistance group opposed to Turkey's treatment of ethnic Kurds. They were alerted to his case in March by a legal notice from the Turkish government.
"I'm sure he's a great host, and he makes a great meal, very gracious in the community, but he is in fact a murderer," said Robin Baker, Detroit field office director for the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Parlak and his supporters dispute that. He maintains his innocence despite his conviction in a Turkish court. He said he abandoned his ties to the PKK a decade before the organization was added to the U.S. list of terrorist groups and that he truthfully disclosed his past to U.S. immigration authorities who reviewed his claims of torture in Turkish jails and granted him asylum in 1992.
Residents rally to his side
His arrest has ignited an outcry from local residents who call him a pillar of their tiny community. More than 50 supporters rented a bus to attend a court hearing in Detroit, and now "Free Ibrahim" roadside signs beside farms and beach cottages stand in testament to the clash of security and civil liberties unfolding deep in the American Heartland.
Civil liberties advocates say the case is part of a trend in which Muslim immigrants have been increasingly subject to aggressive immigration cases.
"In general what we're seeing is that immigrants who are Islamic are under more scrutiny," said Judy Rabinowitz, senior staff counsel of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project in New York. "So if there are technical immigration violations, are much more likely to be aggressive in pursuing proceedings, not authorizing their releases, and in some cases bringing criminal prosecutions."
Last month an immigration judge ordered Parlak held without bail as a flight risk. Parlak now spends his days in an orange prison uniform, while his supporters try to dissuade him from selling the cafe to pay for legal costs.
The path that led Parlak to rural Michigan began on a family farm near the southern Turkish city of Gazientep, where Turkish Kurds had long battled the government in hope of establishing an independent state.
As a student leader at 16, he was arrested by Turkish police and, he later told U.S. immigration officials, was tortured, beaten and shocked with electric current for 35 days.
After his release, Parlak said, he was harassed by police and in 1980 he left for Germany.
Traveling in Europe over the next seven years, he grew more involved with the Kurdish nationalist movement and visited Syria to meet with the Kurdish Workers' Party, or PKK, now known as KONGRA-GEL.
"I knew some PKK people in Europe," Parlak said in one of several Tribune interviews conducted by phone and at the jail. "They were leading pretty much everything. If you wanted to do something for Kurdish, somehow you are going to end up getting involved with them."
Parlak said he next visited a PKK camp in Lebanon and stayed five or six months, studying Kurdish history and culture and doing military-type training.
"How to hide, how to camouflage, how to carry a gun, how to self-defend," he said.
After his passport expired, Turkey declined to extend his passport. He returned to Syria, and one night in May 1987 he set off with a half-dozen other Kurds in an attempt to sneak across the Syrian-Turkish border, he said.
Battle was chance, he says
"Although we had everything set, two soldiers who were not supposed to be there just happened to walk by," Parlak said. "They noticed and started shooting. When the shooting started, a fight broke out, those two soldiers were killed."
U.S. officials say he later confessed to the killing. Parlak denies that, saying he has maintained throughout that he carried only an unloaded gun and never fired a shot.
He successfully crossed the border weeks later but was soon arrested and convicted in connection with the border clash. He received a life sentence that was later reduced, and he was released after a 1 1/2 years.
He sought refuge in the U.S., settling in Chicago in 1991. He was granted asylum in July 1992 after describing his past dealings with the PKK, his conviction and the torture he says he suffered in custody, according to a copy of his application.
That summer he also met Michele Gazzolo, who later gave birth to their daughter, Livia, now 7. They never married but remain close and share the raising of their child.
They spent weekends in Harbert; he liked the area and settled, applying for lawful permanent residency, which would give him an immigration green card, and finding work as a truck-stop cook in nearby New Buffalo.
In September 1994 he received his green card. The same year, he paid $16,000 for a low-slung cafe and tagged it with a Kurdish word that could capture the homeland he loved and the simple new life he had found in America: Gulistan. Paradise.
At the time, "I said, `OK, that part of the life is behind me,'" he recalled. "I'm here for a new life."
Turkey changes mind
But early this year, something changed. Without explanation, the Turkish government informed Parlak and the U.S. that it had resentenced him in the 1987 shooting, though it did not seek his extradition or ask him to serve more time.
Alerted by that notice, the U.S. government reopened his case and concluded that Parlak "omitted material facts" in his green card and citizenship applications, Baker said. Parlak was arrested, charged with fraud and held as an aggravated felon.
Parlak acknowledges that his green card and citizenship applications were marked incorrectly to say he had never been convicted of a crime but he cites a written statement from his former lawyer accepting responsibility for those errors.
Parlak said he ended his association with the PKK in 1987. Ten years later, the group was added to the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations for the "urban terrorism" it adopted "in the early 1990s."
Still, Baker said, Parlak's history with the PKK is only part of the case against him.
"The fact that he is a member of a terrorist organization is certainly relevant, but what is more relevant is that he is in the country in violation of immigration law," Baker said.
The U.S. has not contacted Turkish authorities about the latest proceedings, but Baker said he expects that if ordered to be deported, Parlak would probably be returned to Turkey.
Parlak's next scheduled hearing is Oct. 26. Until then, his supporters will continue to publicize his case and criticize an arrest they say they cannot comprehend.
"This country is founded on refugees from all over the world persecuted on religious and political grounds," said Parlak's friend, Martin Dzuris, who fled communist Czechoslovakia and also settled here. "You come over here looking for protection, and they are saying, `OK, we'll protect you,' and then suddenly they are going to change their minds?"


When civil liberties are curtailed for one they are curtailed for all. Will we never learn?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/national/03terror.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1094184487-s2RBz99SeGGq/REGx2XSdQ
A federal judge threw out the terrorism convictions of two Arab immigrants on Thursday, undoing what the Justice Department once proclaimed was its first major courtroom victory in the war on terror.
The department itself requested the dismissal this week in an extraordinary filing that savaged its own legal strategy against what it had characterized as a sleeper cell plotting acts of terrorism.
The judge, Gerald E. Rosen, acceded to the government's request for a new trial only on document fraud charges, ending the terrorism case against the men, Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38, and Karim Koubriti, 26, both from Morocco.
Judge Rosen was sharply critical of the prosecution of the case, citing a pattern of misconduct, though he did not mention Richard G. Convertino, the former lead prosecutor.
"Although prosecutors and others entrusted with safeguarding us through the legal system clearly must be innovative and think outside the conventional envelope in enforcing the law and prosecuting terrorists, they must not act outside the Constitution," the judge said in his decision. "Unfortunately,'' he added, "that is precisely what has occurred in the course of this case."
While criticizing the government's handling of the case, Judge Rosen praised the prosecutors who recently took it over and moved to disown it.
Mr. Elmardoudi and Mr. Koubriti remain in custody and face a new trial on the fraud charges. A third Moroccan, Ahmed Hannan, 36, convicted of document fraud, was released this year to a halfway house on an electronic tether. A fourth man was acquitted last year.
Three of the men were picked up in a raid six days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The group was eventually accused of forming a terrorist cell based in Detroit and collecting intelligence for terrorist plots.
But Judge Rosen said prosecutors developed early on a theory about what happened "and then simply ignored or avoided any evidence or information which contradicted or undermined that view."
The judge's comments echoed the Justice Department's sharp rebuke of Mr. Convertino, who was removed from the case late last year and is being investigated for possible misconduct. The department said in its filing that Mr. Convertino withheld a substantial amount of evidence from the court that undermined every critical aspect of his terrorism case.
Lawyers for Mr. Convertino, who is suing the department, have vigorously disputed that he knowingly withheld significant evidence and said that the department was retaliating against him for cooperating with a Congressional inquiry into the nation's antiterrorism strategy.
Judge Rosen said in his decision that "the prosecution materially misled the court, the jury and the defense as to the nature, character and complexion of critical evidence that provided important foundations for the prosecution's case."
Though the government's filing, and the judge, found fault overwhelmingly with Mr. Convertino, some observers saw other problems.
"The case fits into a broader pattern of the Ashcroft Justice Department overplaying its hand in terror cases and making broad allegations of terror without the evidence to back it up," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Judge Rosen, who was nominated to the federal court by the first President Bush, praised the prosecutor who led a nine-month post-trial review of the case, Craig S. Morford. Mr. Morford was dispatched from the federal prosecutor's office in Cleveland last year to lead the review, which was ordered by Judge Rosen after the government revealed evidence not disclosed before or during the trial. Last month, Mr. Morford was appointed the top federal attorney in Detroit after Jeffrey G. Collins, who led the office during the prosecution of the case, resigned.
"The position the government has now taken,'' Judge Rosen said, "confessing prosecutorial error and acquiescing in most of the relief sought by the defendants, is not only the legally and ethically correct decision, it is in the highest and best tradition of Department of Justice attorneys."
Congratulations to Judge Rosen for his reasoned judgment. Boo to Ashcroft marches to his own drummer, disregarding the Constitution. He reminds me of an anal retentive bully!