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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.
(AP) -- A Turkish immigrant whom the government
accuses of terrorism has been ordered deported in
part because when he applied for asylum in this
country, he didn't reveal his 1988 conviction in a
Turkish court that the U.S. government itself has
said was unfair.
Ibrahim Parlak's supporters say the state security
court tortured Parlak, a Kurd, and threatened his
family to force him to falsely confess, without
legal representation, to crimes they say he did not
commit.
"There is overwhelming evidence that the security
courts generally used torture to extract coerced
confessions to things that people didn't do, and
there certainly is strong evidence that that
occurred in this case," said Jay Marhoefer, a
Chicago attorney who is the lead counsel for
Parlak's appeal.
Turkey decided last year to dissolve the courts,
which handled terrorism cases and had military
officials preside as judges, as part of reforms to
qualify for membership in the European Union. It
also abolished the death penalty and adopted a
"zero-tolerance policy" toward torture.
But U.S. immigration officials who sought to have
the southwestern Michigan restaurateur returned to
Turkey say they are prohibited by federal law from
accepting a conviction in a foreign court at
anything other than face value.
"The way the laws are written, the immigration laws,
there's no fact-finding process that allows us to go
back and determine the legitimacy of the court that
tried him," said Rob Baker, Detroit field office
director of detention and removal operations for the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.
"It's for obvious reasons," added Mark Jebson, a
Homeland Security attorney who successfully fought
for Parlak's deportation order. "You could imagine
how many people in this country who are convicted of
crimes and, later, when we tried to deport them,
they'd claim, "Well, it wasn't fair, I pled guilty
because my attorney told me to.' We're simply not
permitted to look behind those."
Jonathan Sugden, a European and central Asian
researcher for Human Rights Watch in London, said
Wednesday the advocacy group supported the abolition
of Turkey's state security courts. Around the time
Parlak was convicted, they were known for
interrogating detainees for 30 days or more to
extract false confessions and witness statements
used at trial.
"I couldn't say whether or not the allegations
(against Parlak) were properly founded, but the
European Court of Human Rights found the SSCs (state
security courts) to be an unfair tribunal," Sugden
said. "So, inevitably, there must be considerable
doubt about any convictions in state security
courts."
In a 2003 report on human-rights practices in
Turkey, the U.S. State Department wrote:
"Prosecutions brought by the government in state
security courts reflected a legal structure that
favored government interests over individual
rights."
Parlak was stripped of his Turkish citizenship after
he was convicted in 1988 of engaging in separatist
activities. The Turkish government said he was
involved in a fire-fight on the Syrian-Turkish
border in which two Turkish soldiers were killed.
Parlak maintains he played no role in the shootings
and was a peaceful political activist.
Parlak was given political asylum in the United
States in 1992 and, two years later, opened a Middle
Eastern restaurant called Cafe Gulistan in Harbert,
a village near Lake Michigan about 10 miles north of
the Indiana border.
The government last year demanded Parlak's
deportation because of his past ties to the group
PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, now known as
KONGRA-GEL. The State Department classified the PKK
as a terrorist group in 1997.
During a two-day deportation hearing in December in
Detroit Immigration Court, Jebson argued that Parlak
did not disclose important details about his
separatist activities in his asylum application and
also omitted his conviction in Turkey from
subsequent immigration forms.
On Dec. 29, immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker ruled
that the charges against Parlak were proven and
ordered him removed from the country. About three
weeks later, Parlak's lawyers filed an appeal with
the Board of Immigration Appeals.
The board, which is the highest administrative body
for interpreting and applying immigration laws, is
not expected to rule until sometime this summer on
the petition.
If the board denies it, Marhoefer said the next step
would be filing an appeal with the 6th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. If unsuccessful
there, the lawyer said he would take the case to the
U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.
Parlak has been jailed since his July 29 arrest.
Marhoefer said he plans to file a motion this week
asking that Parlak be released from the Calhoun
County Jail during the appeals process.
Jose Sandoval, a Grand Rapids attorney who
specializes in immigration law, said the case could
take 2 1/2 to three years for the Circuit Court to
hear arguments, then another two to three years for
the Supreme Court to hear the merits of the case.
If Parlak loses his appeals, the U.S. government
will ask the government of Turkey to issue a travel
document to return him, said Baker, the immigration
official in Detroit.
Parlak's friends, who raised money for his defense,
argue that he suffered discrimination in Turkey
because of his Kurdish ethnicity and was imprisoned
by authorities there for political reasons. They say
he has reason to fear for his safety if he is forced
to return.
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