Immigration Judge Rules that Jailed Iraqi
Doctor is Not a Security Risk
May 2, 2000
Los Angeles, CA—An immigration judge in Los Angeles has ruled that an Iraqi doctor, who has been detained in jail for 3 ½ years while the US Immigration and Naturalization Service tried to deport him as a spy, was not a security risk and is eligible to apply for asylum. Ali Karim was one of the “Iraqi Six” whose cases received national publicity. The six, all members of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress that fought Saddam Hussein's troops in northern Iraq, were secretly removed from the country by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1997 -- only to be taken straight to an INS detention center near Los Angeles and held as suspected Iraqi or Iranian spies. At a deportation hearing in 1998, Immigration Judge D.D. Sitgraves, after considering classified government evidence which defense attorneys were not allowed to see, found that the men were risks to national security. The Immigration Service then offered to deport them and their families to a neutral country of their choice, rather than back to Iraq, where they said they faced certain torture and possible death. Five of the group agreed and are now being held under house arrest in Nebraska while arrangements are made for their travel. But Karim refused and appealed his case to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which ordered that he be retried. Niels Frenzen, an attorney for Ali Karim, said his client could be free in about three weeks if the INS decides not to appeal the ruling. Karim has paid a tremendous price for his incarceration. His wife divorced him in 1988, believing the government's allegations, and is now living somewhere in the United States with the two children, and Karim has said he does not know where they are or if he will ever see them again. During the appeal, Karim’s lawyer Niels Frenzen was joined by James Woolsey, former head of the CIA and now a private lawyer in Washington D.C. According to Attorney Frenzen, the government did not present any new evidence. It was the same previously classified evidence presented in 1997. He said that “once they were able to see the classified evidence it became apparent that it was based on rumor and innuendo”. “The INS is misusing its authority to use secret evidence to this day. They are out of control and this is just one compelling example of how ridiculous it is,” said Attorney Frenzen. |
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