Asylum Seekers' Tales Of Rape, Abuse Turned Out To Be Lies

For years, Sacramento's Sekhon & Sekhon law firm in California was renowned as a beacon of hope.

The firm, boasting a 95 percent success rate, helped more than 1,000 immigrants from a half-dozen nations get political asylum in the United States based on a fear of persecution.

Many of those new asylees now stand to be deported, because as many as 700 - coached by the firm's lawyers and interpreters - told phony stories of torture and rape to immigration judges and asylum officers.

In June, following a three-month trial in Sacramento's federal court, three of the firm's lawyers and two interpreters were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. Prosecutors call it one of the most brazen immigration scams in U.S. history.

In the months since, those who work in the asylum system have had to confront serious questions about a time-honored process that is based largely on trust: How did the firm get away with the fraud for so long? And how vulnerable is the process to liars and con artists?

The firm's founders, brothers Jag[rot Singh Sekhon and Jagdip Singh Sekhon, along with attorney Manjit Kaur Rai and Romanian interpreters Iosif Caza and Luciana Harmath, return to court Dec. 17 for sentencing. Each faces up to 10 years in prison.

Between 2000 and 2004, the defendants filed hundreds of claims for Romanians, Indians, Nepalis and Fijians. They made more than $1 million charging clients for bogus addresses, medical reports, notarized declarations and tales of rapes and beatings that never took place, court records show.

The case exposed a vulnerability that experts say is inherent in the system: With tens of thousands of refugees asking for asylum every year, overworked judges often rely on gut instinct about the evidence presented. That evidence frequently consists of little more than the applicant's testimony, so the detailed documentation presented by Sekhon & Sekhon swung the scales in their favor.

Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a veteran judge in San Francisco's immigration court, called the Sekhon case "the worst-case nightmare come true for people who are cynical about the asylum process to begin with."

"My colleagues have said it's very difficult to tell an asylum seeker with a good claim from a good liar," said Marks. "We're death penalty cases in traffic court settings. If somebody tells me he's going to be persecuted when he goes back home and I'm wrong, I'm sentencing him to death."
One-Sided Stories

Marks said immigration judges typically have about 1,200 cases pending and need more time on each "to allow the story to be fleshed out so you can catch inconsistencies and implausibilities."

Often, she said, the applicant offers no supporting evidence.

"What makes asylum cases tricky for immigration judges is people don't get notes from their dictators," said Marks. "You're trying to decide cases without traditional documents that court cases often rely on. We usually get one story from one vantage point."

That can work against some applicants who tell the truth but have no documentation, said Marks. "People can be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that makes them terrible witnesses."

The Sekhon firm became an asylum factory, court records show. Lawyers and interpreters crafted fictional stories of persecution they thought would fly - in some cases even when their clients had true tales of persecution.

The firm's statement on behalf of a 51-year-old Romanian Pentecostal claimed that when he tried to bury a member of his congregation he was arrested, cursed as a "devil," and beaten by police "until I lost consciousness."

A 36-year-old Sikh from Punjab said she watched police beat her father, who had helped hide a member of the Punjabi independence movement. She claimed "police kicked me in my sides, stomach, back, buttocks and legs."

Those stories were fabricated, said prosecutors, but the firm backed up its cases with phony medical records and government documents, which made the stories harder to reject.

The case "reveals a systemic problem," said McGeorge School of Law professor Raquel Aldana. "The judges have heard so many sad stories, it's hard to say who's telling the truth and who's not. They may have liked these cases because they seemed well-substantiated."

Marks would like to see more resources for investigations to ensure "the courts can rely on the documents that are presented."

In the Sekhon case, an alert asylum officer who had worked in Romania thought something didn't seem right about all the claims of religious persecution in the post-communist era. Investigators called doctors and officials in Romania and determined the documents were fabricated.

Some advocates would like to see the government do more investigations in applicants' home countries. But, in some countries, sending an investigator to substantiate claims of brutality could put the applicant's family at risk, said Benjamin Wagner, the Sacramento-based U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Sekhon case.

Camil Skipper, an assistant U.S. attorney who helped Wagner with the prosecution, said the Sekhon convictions in themselves should help strengthen the asylum system: "We believe this case will serve as a deterrent."

One Harrowing Tale Verified

Unlike refugees who generally are granted legal status in the United States after they've fled their homeland to a third country, those applying for asylum ask for refuge after entering the United States.

Applicants must convince asylum officers and judges they've been persecuted or have a well-founded fear they will be based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

In a typical year, U.S. immigration courts receive upward of 50,000 requests for asylum. The percentage of requests granted has risen from about a third early in the decade to almost half from 2006-2008.

Nationwide, more than 420,000 people were granted asylum between 1990 and 2008. Many believe asylum saved their lives.

Among them is Senait Berekete Ghebremariam, a former Eritrean journalist. In one of several windowless immigration courtrooms in downtown San Francisco, Ghebremariam, 38, told her story recently to Judge Loreto S. Geisse.

The judge warned her that if she lied, she would be barred for life from getting asylum.

Ghebremariam nodded, then said she and her five sisters were circumcised as babies, as is the custom of the Tegrinya ethnic group. She described a country hostile for women. While in the army, she said, she was raped by a brigadier general.

She told the judge she was jailed for treason stemming from her dialect. Once released, she fled. Her odyssey took her through Africa and South America. She asked for asylum at the Arizona border and ended up in San Jose, California, where she has relatives.

She testified the circumcision scarred her emotionally. She has no desire for physical intimacy, she said, and wishes she could have children, but "I'm so worried about my physical condition and the pain it creates."

She said she would be killed if forced to return.

Judge Geisse quizzed Ghebremariam about other Eritrean journalists, and she knew them. Prosecutor Scott Gambill had her recall dates and details, and interviewed a midwife about the extent of Ghebremariam's genital mutilation.

Ultimately, the judge granted her asylum.

Gambill said the government's role isn't to block people like Ghebremariam, who are deserving of protection.

"Asylum is a sacred trust, and my role is to weed out the ones who are not deserving and don't have a well-founded fear of persecution," he said.

In the wake of the Sekhon case, the San Francisco asylum office is interviewing each of the 700 people caught up in the scam to decide whether to revoke their asylum.

If the government ends up sending hundreds of cases back to immigration court, they're going to pose a tremendous challenge, Judge Marks said.

"These are going to be hotly contested cases as to whether or not the person who says he was prejudiced by an unethical lawyer deserves a second chance," said Marks. "We're going to have to work through them case by case, judge by judge, and it's the judge's job not to be cynical and burned out."

Lula's Red Carpet Welcome For Ahmadinejad

by Robert Amsterdam

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, affectionately nicknamed Lula, comes as close to being a global rock star as a politician can get. But like any towering celebrity, there are some troubling developments behind all the glamor.

With less than a year to go before finishing his second term in office, Lula is riding a wave of popularity that is virtually unprecedented in Latin American history (75-80% approval ratings). The Brazilian economy, with the swagger of its BRIC status, has swelled over the past decade and survived the crisis, championed by many investors to be the top emerging market for growth over the short term (5% GDP growth speculated for this year). The President himself has been beatified to almost-sainthood in several films, including the latest high-budget biopic entitled "Lula, Son of Brazil," which has many guessing that he's aiming to become Secretary General of the United Nations. All that, plus he just got them the Olympics and the World Cup.

Why then, with so much going for him and his country, should he make such controversial choices in his friends? Lula's increasingly warm embrace of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including an official state visit to Brazil Nov. 23-26, is causing many of his fawning admirers to rub their eyes in disbelief.

For those of us who enthusiastically support Brazil and its people, culture, and economy, the logic of the relationship with Iran is perplexing. There is no overlap in values, for example. This week Iran executed five people (including women), while another 135 juvenile offenders are on death row. Second only to China in capital punishment, Iran has also issued death sentences to five people now accused of fomenting unrest during the post-elections protests - a number which is likely to grow. Brazil, on the other hand, has proudly outlawed capital punishment since 1889, the second country of Latin America to adopt such a law.

The low level of trade between the two countries fails to provide an explanation either. Iran doesn't figure among the top 20 trade partners either for purchasing Brazilian exports or sending imports, and although Ahmadinejad has excitedly said that relations with Brazil have "no limits," even oil minister Azizollah Ramezani has stated that it is too far away to be a potential market for hydrocarbons (though oil and gas technical expertise is an area of interest).

The professed area of mutual interests is in the nuclear sphere. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki describes Brazil as holding a "common position" on rights to nuclear energy, while on Brazil's behalf Lula has repeatedly voiced his opposition to sanctions.

However, the true motivations behind the Brazil-Iranian relationship have very little to do with these statements. For Brazil, the elephant in the room is Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, whose own jovial relations with Iran and the purchase of $6 billion in Russian arms are prompting his neighbors to take action toward containment. What better way to procure information on what Iran is doing with its new "factories" in remote parts of Venezuela than strike up a competing relationship - which could also be the logic of Brazil hijacking the Honduran situation from Chávez's control by housing ousted President Mel Zelaya in their embassy.

During a visit this month to Brasilia, I was repeatedly told that the government believes that Chávez can be most influenced by keeping him close. Hence the hasty vote to confirm Venezuelan ascension to Mercosur today despite their failing to meet conditions set forth in the Treaty of Asunción. Many would call Brazil's decision to incorporate Chávez into Mercosur as naïve, but at the time of this writing President Lula was already boarding a plane for a coincidental visit to Caracas to celebrate Venezuela's entry at a presidential dinner. (I should note here that I came across many Brazilian politicians who were outraged by this coddling of dictators.)

Though there are other explanations for Lula to pursue his Iran policy (his South-South agenda, generalized anti-American goals, or bolstering Brazil's diplomatic clout in the UN), the balancing strategy with Venezuela is the most convincing. He feels that he has to create these alliances as measures of security to catch up with Chávez, which demonstrates once again that the Venezuela's activities cannot just be dismissed as harmless mischief-making by Washington. Testifying before Congress this week, Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, underscored this threat and commented that Brazil is "playing with fire" in bringing Iran into the region.

Venezuela is not only having an impact on foreign policies of neighboring states (Ecuador's Rafael Correa is in Moscow today), but also in the arms race Chávez has kicked off. Lula recently commented, "Everyone knows Brazil is a peaceful nation, but we need to be able to show our teeth if anyone wants to mess with us."

As for Iran's interest in Latin America, their thinking goes that the further they are able to penetrate into Washington's backyard, the safer they become. By increasing the costs of intervention, the Latin American strategy provides a staging ground for a real or imagined threat to the United States, which aims to have a dissuasive impact on the push for sanctions and diplomatic pressure. To boot, after a questioned election, it is always good to receive the congratulations of the global leader of the responsible left.

At the moment it is hard to say whether Lula, despite his celebrity and admirable achievements, is in over his head with Iran. Brazil is an impressive growing power, and one that has changed dramatically in the recent past, so it is understandable that its assertion of international leadership is fraught with challenges and inconsistencies. Soon the country's influence will be too big to simply shrug off issues of human rights and democracy without costs to its reputation.

This may already be happening. The most callous and frightening thing Lula has said with regard to Iran came shortly after the June elections, when demonstrations erupted and the police truncheons came down violently on the heads of protesting students. Quoted in the Brazilian media, Lula described these events as nothing more than the tears of poor "losers." That is not a hopeful message for those brave young men and women who now face show trials and execution for having attempted to change their country. Coinciding with the sports analogy, Fabio Barretto, the director of the latest glowing Lula biopic, was recently quoted saying, "In Brazil, there are no losers (...) only people who keep trying until they succeed."

It would be nice if Lula's own story could mean something more outside of Brazil.

Dawn Now Permanently In Asteroid Belt

PASADENA, CA

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first human-made object to permanently remain in the solar system's asteroid belt.

The space agency said Dawn first entered the belt in June 2008, remaining there for 40 days before its planned orbital path brought below the asteroid belt's lower boundary.

But on Friday, Dawn again entered the asteroid belt and will remain there for the foreseeable future, the space agency said.

"The mission of the 1,098-kilogram (2,421-pound) Dawn spacecraft is to reconnoiter Vesta and Ceres, the asteroid belt's two most massive inhabitants -- the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres," NASA said. "The goal of this eight-year, 4.9-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) mission is to answer basic questions about the formation of planets in our solar system."

Scientists said the unmanned Dawn spacecraft will be the first ever to orbit two planetary bodies on a single voyage. Dawn is about 616 days away from arrival at its first celestial objective, asteroid Vesta.

Tweeters 'capture the spirit' of liftoff

Canadian experiment on board Atlantis

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.–With 100 Internet-savvy NASA fans cheering on the shuttle and churning out constant Twitter updates, Atlantis sailed smoothly into orbit Monday with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station.

The supply run should keep the space station humming for years to come, and the shuttle astronauts in space for 11 days.

Also on board are 24 willow saplings for a Canadian experiment to study how gravity affects the formation of different kinds of wood.

The experiment is led by Prof. Rodney Savidge of the University of New Brunswick and funded by the Canadian Space Agency. Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk will manage the experiment on the space station.

Atlantis was clearly visible as it shot through thin afternoon clouds, to the delight of Twittering space enthusiasts who won front-row seats to the launch. The contest winners splashed news – mostly tweeting "wow" and "amazing" – over countless cellphones and computers in 140 characters or less.

"What's exciting to me is that they've captured the spirit and the excitement that we all feel, and they were able to capture it in a very few number of characters," NASA operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said.

Atlantis is to reach the space station Wednesday.

Venezuela: Colombia detained troops illegally

CARACAS, Venezuela -- A Venezuelan commander contends Colombia wrongly detained four of his soldiers last week along the border separating the South American nations.

National Guard Gen. Orlando Mijares says the troops were navigating the Meta River, which is part of the border, when Colombian soldiers intercepted their boat.

Mijares said Monday that rivers on the frontier are considered international waters under agreements between Venezuela and Colombia, meaning troops from both countries are allowed to use them.

Colombia sent the Venezuelans home over the weekend, saying it wanted to ease worsening tensions. There have been several shootings and slayings the past few weeks along the border.

Egypt launches first Arabic Internet domain

Cairo (Earth Times - dpa) - Egypt is to create the world's first Arabic language internet domain, with registration opening Monday, the country's telecommunications ministry said Monday. Website owners will now have the option of using ".msr" in the Arabic script, which means ".Egypt," instead of the more common ".com" or in the local instance ".com.eg."

Last month, Icann, the organization that regulates the internet, decided to allow non-Latin domain names, opening the way for Chinese, Korean and other scripts to feature at the end of addresses.

Egypt is expected to officially announce the opening of registration later in the day, during the internet Governance Forum (IGF) it is hosting in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, according to the BBC. The forum will last through Wednesday.

According to experts speaking at the forum, some 65 per cent of Arabic Internet users do not understand English. They said this highlighted the need for more user-friendly interface in people's native tongues and the advantages in generating content in all different languages.

However, Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, has criticized the decision to let Egypt host the United Nations-founded forum.

"It is astonishing that a government that is openly hostile to internet users is assigned the organization of an international meeting on the Internet's future," the group said in a statement, citing incidents of alleged police harassment of bloggers.

Philippine president lifts freeze on oil prices

Manila - Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Monday lifted a three-week freeze on oil prices that was decreed to ease the hardship of more than 8 million victims of two devastating typhoons. She cited the proposal of oil companies to provide more focused calamity assistance programmes to those affected by the storms as the main reason for lifting the price freeze.

Business groups had warned that the freeze could result in petroleum shortages as companies could not be forced to sell at a loss.

The order to lift the oil price freeze came as petrol stations in the provinces have resorted to rationing, saying supply was already running low.

In Manila, some petrol stations depleted their stocks, while others closed early to avoid further losses.

Critics said the freeze was contrary to the country's 1998 oil deregulation law.

Nearly 1,000 people were killed and more than 8 million affected by the worst floods in more than 40 years caused by a September 26 storm, and landslides triggered by a second storm one week later.

The two cyclones also caused damages to agriculture and infrastructure estimated at more than 652 million dollars.