Lucky to be in the 'Land of the Free'?

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Jailed 4 1/2 Years in Land of the Free

In 2001, a Sri Lankan was arrested at the U.S. border

and labeled a security threat. A court found the case

absurd.

By H.G. Reza

Times Staff Writer

 

April 7, 2006

 

The young farmer from the Indian Ocean country of Sri

Lanka wanted only to get to Canada to escape the

torture. Instead, he has landed in the north Los

Angeles suburb of Lancaster.

 

Accused of being a terrorist in his native country,

Ahilan Nadarajah left in September 2001 and was guided

by smugglers through Thailand, South Africa, Brazil

and Mexico. He intended to sneak into the United

States on his way to Toronto but was arrested at the

border.

 

He was twice granted political asylum by a U.S.

immigration judge, but the Department of Homeland

Security branded him a national security threat. He

spent nearly 4½ years in a U.S. jail while the

government tried to deport him to Sri Lanka.

 

He was freed March 21 after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court

of Appeals called his lengthy detention illegal in a

bristling 37-page opinion that took aim at the Bush

administration's controversial practice of

indefinitely detaining immigrants accused of terrorism

but not charged. The three-judge panel said keeping

him jailed violated a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling

against indefinite detention in immigration cases.

 

The court's unanimous ruling called Nadarajah's

jailing illegal and unreasonable and said the

government's arguments were " patently absurd, "

" implausible " and " baffling. "

 

The 26-year-old postmaster's son remains remarkably

free of animosity toward the United States, despite

having been locked up in solitary for five months.

 

" Although I believe I was jailed unjustly, I'm

grateful because the American government saved my life

by not sending me back, " Nadarajah said in an

interview last week at a Sri Lankan restaurant in

Lancaster. The chances are slim he will be allowed

into Canada, where he intended to seek asylum, and the

U.S. probably will become his home. Much of the

evidence the U.S. government used to label Nadarajah a

member of the Tamil Tigers, which the State Department

has branded as terrorist, came from an informant

working for Canadian law enforcement.

 

The Sri Lankan government has been at war for two

decades with the Tamil Tigers, which seeks an

independent state for ethnic Tamils. Both sides have

committed human rights abuses, including torture,

kidnappings and politically motivated killings,

according to Amnesty International.

 

The 9th Circuit believed Nadarajah's account: that the

Sri Lankan army began jailing and torturing him when

he was 17 to persuade him to admit membership in the

Tamil Tigers. He was repeatedly arrested, beaten,

burned with cigarette butts and hung upside down with

his head inside a bag of gasoline. Twice his mother

bribed army officials to release him, and the family

finally decided he should leave the country.

 

Officials at the Sri Lankan embassy in Washington did

not return calls seeking comment.

 

Nadarajah said his family sold their farm and jewelry

to raise the $17,000 that a smuggling ring charged to

take him to Canada. Although he had no close relatives

there, Nadarajah said he hoped to gain asylum and join

that country's sizable Tamil community.

 

On Sept. 21, 2001, he left Sri Lanka for Bangkok, the

first leg of his journey, where he obtained a Mexican

visa. He was arrested Oct. 27 while trying to enter

the U.S. at San Ysidro with false immigration papers.

 

He remained locked up despite receiving political

asylum from an immigration judge, whose rulings were

upheld on appeal. The government also refused to allow

him out on $20,000 bond, which the appellate court

called an abuse of discretion. In arguing for

Nadarajah's continued detention, the Bush

administration insisted that he was not being held

indefinitely because Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales

would review his case at some point, as the

immigration laws provide.

 

" [but] no one can satisfactorily assure us as to when

that day will arrive, " the appellate court ruled.

 

The U.S. government's evidence that Nadarajah was a

terrorist was based mainly on information from a

secret informant for the Royal Canadian Mounted

Police, who did not testify. Instead, a federal agent

read from Canadian police reports about the informant,

and he testified about his one meeting with him.

 

The 9th Circuit discounted the testimony and

criticized the agent's claim that Nadarajah and a Sri

Lankan woman, also in custody for entering the U.S.

illegally, jointly called Canada to order a slaying.

The court noted that the agent could not explain how

they could have called from a jail where men and women

are not allowed to mix.

 

The agent also could not explain why he had not

subpoenaed the phone records.

 

" Every time I win in court, they're appealing. It's

like a game to them, and they're playing with your

life, " Nadarajah said.

 

Despite dismay over his lengthy incarceration, he

noted an important difference about his experience in

a U.S. jail.

 

" I was not tortured in America, " said Nadarajah, who

was locked up in an immigration detention facility

near San Diego.

 

Georgetown University law professor David Cole, an

expert on immigration law and a frequent critic of the

administration's terrorism policies, said the

appellate court's ruling 10 days after the case was

argued showed the panel was disturbed by the

government's conduct.

 

" This is remarkable, " he said. " It's not unusual to

wait up to two years for a ruling. But the court spoke

swiftly and sternly. "

 

The Nadarajah case was another setback for the

administration in cases where immigrants arrested

after Sept. 11 for immigration violations have been

kept in jail without charges on suspicion of having

terrorism ties.

 

In 2005, the Mirmehdi brothers, four Iranians from the

San Fernando Valley, were released after more than

three years in detention. Their release was prompted

by the Supreme Court ruling blocking the government

from detaining immigrants indefinitely.

 

Last month, a U.S. magistrate cited the same ruling in

recommending the release of Buena Park resident

Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, a Jordanian citizen who has been

incarcerated for 20 months.

 

Immigration judges blocked the deportation of Hamdan

and the Mirmehdis to their native countries because

they would be tortured. It is unlikely a third country

will accept them because the U.S. has tied them to

terrorism.

 

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers in Los Angeles,

who represented Nadarajah, credit the release of

another of their clients to fallout from his case. In

that instance, Saluja Thangaraja, 26, of Sri Lanka was

also arrested while entering the U.S. illegally. An

immigration judge also found that she was tortured and

granted her asylum, but the government kept her locked

up near San Diego for nearly five years until her

release March 27.

 

Homeland Security and Justice Department officials

declined to comment.

 

Although he never intended to live in the U.S.,

Nadarajah said he would make the best of his stay

here. The grant of asylum made the charge of illegal

entry moot. He is free on $20,000 bond, paid for by

Australian relatives, and is required to wear an

electronic monitoring device on his ankle and be home

by 5 p.m. while he waits for Atty. Gen. Gonzales to

review his asylum case.

 

He is living rent-free in an apartment owned by a

member of Lancaster's Sri Lankan community. After

almost five years of jail food, he is enjoying

traditional Tamil meals of rice and curry, and

laughingly said he did not want to see beans or

potatoes on his plate for a while.

 

" I lost hope for a time. I thought about suicide, " he

said " But now I feel like I have been reborn into a

new life here in America, the land of freedom. "

 

 

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