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The
Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) one week ago
filed five additional deportation charges against
Harbert businessman Ibrahim Parlak. These new
charges are based entirely on his activities in
Turkey in and before 1988, well before Mr. Parlak’s
admission to the United States. The Government
admits that these are the same activities that led
to Mr. Parlak’s arrest and 1990 conviction by a
Turkish Security Court for engaging in separatist
activities, and for which Mr. Parlak was imprisoned
for 17 months before he came to this country in
1991. In these “new” charges, the Government does
not accuse Mr. Parlak of engaging in illegal
activity of any kind since his admission to this
Country over 13 years ago; indeed the Government has
never claimed that he has been anything but a model
American since coming to this country.
The Department of Homeland Security filed these
“new” charges shortly after Mr. Parlak’s legal team
filed an appeal with the Board of Immigration
Appeals (“BIA”) contesting Mr. Parlak’s continued
detention without bond. In his appeal, Mr. Parlak
argued that DHS overstepped the authority granted to
DHS by Congress in the Patriot Act. The appeal also
argued that the charge of deportability as an
aggravated felon was legally indefensible. Had the
BIA agreed with these arguments, the DHS would have
been compelled to release Mr. Parlak. Instead, DHS
is using these new charges as a way to blunt Mr.
Parlak’s bond appeal and rectify their legally
insupportable conduct—ten weeks after taking Mr.
Parlak into custody.
The “new” DHS charges are based on old facts. Mr.
Parlak disclosed his involvement in the Kurdish
rights movement and his arrest, imprisonment and
conviction by the Turkish Security Court when he
applied for asylum in 1991. Mr. Parlak’s conviction
in Turkey was for violating Article 125 of the
Turkish Penal Code—the “crime” of Kurdish
separatism. (This is the same provision Turkey used
to prosecute and convict a member of its parliament
for the “crime” of speaking Kurdish.) Mr. Parlak was
never arrested, tried or convicted for murder,
terrorism, or any crime of violence. Instead, Mr.
Parlak was punished by the Turkish government for
resisting an oppressive and brutal regime, the same
practice employed by early Americans in the
Revolutionary War, and by Iraqi Kurds in their
efforts to overthrow Saddam Hussein (with the
encouragement of the U.S. government).
Mr. Parlak’s arrest and conviction in Turkey were
procured by torture and other human rights
violations that would make his conviction void under
both U.S. Constitutional law, and, at least in
theory, under then-existing Turkish law. Unlike
courts in the United States, however, the Turkish
Security Courts that convicted Mr. Parlak and
hundreds of other members of the Kurdish minority
routinely ignored the use of torture and other human
rights violations by Turkish police and prosecutors.
Bowing to complaints from the European Union and
others about the Security Court’s role in the
persecution of the Kurdish people, the Turkish
Government just this year finally disbanded the
Security Court system.
In 1992, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service (“INS”) properly granted Mr. Parlak asylum,
finding that he had legitimate grounds to fear
persecution if he were forced to return to Turkey.
Twelve years later, the INS’ successor, the
Department of Homeland Security, seeks to renege on
that commitment and send Mr. Parlak back to Turkey
where he remains subject to persecution and possible
death.
Harbert, Michigan
CONTACT: MARTIN DZURIS, 269-469-9957, cell
269-449-0023
More info: www.cafegulistan.com
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