DOO Process! Our Democracy at work

[Mephisto]

Sometimes you just have to give up liberties to preserve freedom, and sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it.

1 Man Still Locked Up From 9/11 Sweeps

Oct 14, 8:03 PM (ET)

By MARTHA MENDOZA

In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society. But he has been in custody for five years. His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.

Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system. Just this summer, it was reported that an Algerian man, Benemar "Ben" Benatta, was the last detainee, and that his transfer to Canada had closed the book on the post-9/11 sweeps. But now The Associated Press has learned that at least one person - Partovi - is still being held. The Department of Homeland Security insists he really is the last one in custody.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061015/D8KONLJ80.html

[Mephisto]

Doesn't this thread strike anyone as worthy of mention?

A man who has committed no crime is being imprisoned for no reason at all other than the fact that he's a middle-eastern Muslim. What has happened to America? :(

[peptoabysmal]

From the story but not in the exact same sequence as in the story:

...
"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport.
He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement
wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal
government thought he might be a terror suspect," said Curtis Charles Van de
Veld, who was hired by the federal government to represent him.

Partovi was sentenced to 175 days in custody, which he had already served
by the time he pleaded guilty in 2002. Then he was turned over to the
Department of Homeland Security.
...
Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely,"
said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi
from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.
...

As with most of these "innocent victims", if you do just a little digging, you find out they aren't exactly innocent.

This guy was busted for a fake passport and refuses to go home.

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

A man who has committed no crime is being imprisoned for no reason at all other than the fact that he's a middle-eastern Muslim. What has happened to America?

Uh, not quite. From the article:

"Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran."

and

"Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law."

and

"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport. He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal government thought he might be a terror suspect"


So no, he isn't being held for no reason other than being a Middle-Eastern Muslim. He came to the country illegally on a false passport. He pleaded guilty and served time for that. They want to send him back to his home country, but he refuses. Moreover, he is trying to represent himself rather than asking for a lawyer -- his prerogative, but not all that bright, IMHO.

I agree it is lousy that he has been in custody that long and they have not resolved the problem. The article does not go into his case for Asylum, which may shed some more light on his plight and why he refuses to go back to Iran. I am also curious if Immigration has taken any other steps for this guy -- seeing if a third country will take him, for example. The article doesn't address that one way or the other.

I would hope that INS would have been able to come to some sort of resolution for this guy by now. But trying to frame this case as"he is being held for being Muslim" is pretty misleading. He is being held because he came into the country on a false passport, and refuses to return to his home country. So he is very much "in limbo," no doubt partially due to inaction on the part of the authorities, but also partially due to his own choices.