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DETROIT (AP) --
Lawyers for a Kurdish restaurant owner who a
government attorney argued is a "complete terrorist
package" on Monday filed a brief arguing that he
shouldn't be deported to his native Turkey.
Lawyers for Ibrahim Parlak have painted a picture of
a man whose freedoms were curtailed because of his
ethnicity, who was tortured by Turkish authorities
and who has reason to fear for his safety if he
returns.
"Parlak has suffered enough -- in both Turkey and
the United States," his lawyers wrote.
A two-day deportation hearing for Parlak was held
earlier this month in U.S. Immigration Court in
Detroit. Parlak's lawyers did not deliver an oral
closing, but instead filed Monday's brief.
The government can then respond, after which Judge
Elizabeth Hacker is expected to rule.
"Mr. Parlak is literally the complete terrorist
package," Mark Jebson, an attorney for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, said during the
hearing.
The government argues that Parlak, who was granted
asylum in 1992 and today owns Cafe Gulistan in the
Lake Michigan resort town of Harbert, must be
deported because of past ties to the group PKK, the
Kurdistan Workers' Party, now known as KONGRA-GEL.
The U.S. State Department classified the PKK as a
terrorist group in 1997.
Officials say Parlak did not disclose important
details about his separatist activities in his
original asylum application and also omitted his
conviction in Turkey from subsequent immigration
forms.
Parlak has said he attended a PKK training camp in
Lebanon and was part of an armed group that entered
Turkey from Syria in 1988, but said he was not
crossing for any military or terror-related reasons.
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