In a decision filed Aug. 20 and made public on Aug. 24, the Board
of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ruled that four Iranian brothers
jailed in San Pedro, California, are not a danger to national
security and cannot be deported to Iran because they would be
tortured there. However, the Board said that Mohammed Mirmehdi,
Mostafa Mirmehdi, Mohsen Mirmehdi and Mojtaba Mirmehdi do not
qualify for political asylum because they lied on their asylum
applications in 1999. (According to court documents, two Iranian
immigrants who processed the brothers' asylum applications and
coached them to lie in interviews with immigration officers were
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informants with criminal
records.) The Mirmehdis have been held without bail since Oct. 2,
2001. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is
considering their challenge to Attorney General John Ashcroft's
decision to deny them bail while their immigration case proceeds.

Federal prosecutors argued that the brothers' support of the
Iranian opposition group Moujahedeen Khalq (MEK) made them a
national security threat. The Mirmehdis deny being members of the
group, although two of them attended a June 1997 rally in Denver
sponsored by the MEK at a time when it had wide support among US
lawmakers, before the State Department designated it a foreign
terrorist organization in October 1997. Ashcroft, then a US
senator in Missouri, continued supporting the MEK; in September
2000 Ashcroft and Sen. Chris Bond (R-MO) issued a written
statement of solidarity with the MEK which was read to a crowd of
demonstrators in front of the United Nations in New York,
Newsweek reported in 2002.

The Mirmehdi brothers' attorney, Stacy Tolchin, said the BIA
ruling means they could be freed within 90 days. But Manny Van
Pelt, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) in Washington, said the agency will instead try to deport
the brothers to a third country. "We have a 90-day removal period
to find an alternate country that will accept them," said Van
Pelt.

The brothers lived in the San Fernando Valley and worked in real
estate before their arrests. Mostafa, the oldest, came to the US
in 1978. Mojtaba and Mohsen arrived in 1992. Mohammed, the
youngest, came in 1993. Mohsen, Mostafa and Mojtaba were arrested
in 1999 and freed on $50,000 bail while their deportation cases
proceeded. Mohammed got out on $75,000 bail in September 2000.
Alleging "changed circumstances," authorities re-detained the
four on Oct. 2, 2001, after an FBI investigation into a Los
Angeles cell of the MEK. Mostafa Mirmehdi said the FBI offered to
let him and his brother Mohammed go if they would
"cooperate...and give false testimony" against five Iranians and
two Iranian Americans indicted for fundraising over $1 million
for the MEK. The brothers refused. "Personally, I do not believe
in giving false testimony," said Mostafa Mirmehdi. In June 2002
US District Judge Robert Takasugi of Los Angeles threw out
indictments against the seven fundraisers, saying the State
Department's method of designating terrorist groups is
unconstitutional because members cannot challenge evidence
against them. The government has appealed.
[Los Angeles Times
8/25/04, 6/7/04]

from

Immigration News Briefs

Vol. 7, No. 35 - August 28, 2004

Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; tel 212-674-9499; fax 212-674-9139; wnu@igc.org. INB is also distributed free via email (see below).

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