Security News vom 20.03.2006
Sri Lankan Ordered Freed From Border Jail
By PETER PRENGAMAN
SAN DIEGO (AP) - After more than four years in a U.S. detention center, Ahilan Nadarajah will soon gain the freedom he sought when he fled Sri Lanka and the government forces there that he says repeatedly jailed and tortured him.
He had reached the United States in October 2001 only to be detained on the same accusations that almost got him killed in his home country: He was suspected of being a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
Nadarajah denies the claims, and immigration judges have twice granted him asylum. But the federal government refused to release him.
The latest order came Friday from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, telling the U.S. government it was violating federal law by continuing to hold him even though he wasn't criminally charged and couldn't be deported in the foreseeable future. His lawyers said they now expect him to be freed in a few days.
"I lost my time and my life, and I almost lost my mind, too," Nadarajah said in a phone interview from the Otay Mesa detention center, at the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego. "It's not fair. They put me in jail without reason."
Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson said the decision was being reviewed but would not elaborate. It wasn't immediately clear if the government would appeal the court's decision.
Nadarajah, an ethnic Tamil who turns 26 on Wednesday, came from a family of farmers in northern Sri Lanka, the island nation of 20 million off the coast of India.
In 1995, the Sri Lankan army bombed the area, killing Nadarajah's older brother and forcing the family to relocate. When they later returned, Nadarajah was accused of being a member of the Tamil Tigers, a group that was fighting for an independent state for the ethnic minority on Sri Lanka.
Nadarajah says he was repeatedly jailed and tortured by government forces there that pistol-whipped him, forced his head into a plastic bag with gasoline and left him hanging upside down for hours. Finally, he got a passport and exit visa from a smuggler and traveled through Thailand, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico before he was arrested at the U.S. border on Oct. 27, 2001.
He applied for asylum, arguing that if he were sent back to Sri Lanka he would be tortured and possibly killed.
The U.S. government opposed his application, saying he was affiliated with the Tamil Tigers.
In the 9th Circuit's ruling Friday, Judge Sidney R. Thomas said Nadarajah's detention was "unreasonable, unjustified and in violation of federal law," and called a government argument "patently absurd." The ruling followed a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that immigrants must be freed if their deportation is "no longer reasonably foreseeable," a period interpreted by many legal experts as being about six months.
Nadarajah's attorney described the case as one of the Bush administration's repeated violations of immigration law in the name of national security.
"The government got it completely wrong about whether he was a terrorist, and overreached for detention powers Congress never granted," said Ahilan Arulanantham of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nadarajah is anxious to be free. He wants to improve his English - which he learned in jail after arriving without speaking a word of the language - go to college and get some "good food."
"I'm tired of this place," said Nadarajah. "I want to be outside, you know? But this was worth it because it saved my life."
Bhikkus to stage protest Tuesday
Monday, March 20,2006
COLOMBO: Thousands of bhikkus will take to the Colombo streets Tuesday demanding the immediate withdrawal of Norway from its role as facilitator to the peace process between the Government and the LTTE. "Norwegian involvement in the guise of a facilitator has been proven detrimental and dangerous to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland. The last ten years of history is full of examples of their partiality towards the LTTE. This must be put to an end right now," President of the National Bhikku Front, Ven. Dambara Amila thera told a press conference in Colombo.
“The Maha Sangha has lost the trust on this so-called facilitator, who crossed the line of an assistant to peace negotiation to an aide of one party in dispute.
"We demand that the Norwegians, assisting the LTTE to attain their goal of dividing the motherland, to be banished immediately.
“This will certainly cause losses of political, diplomatic and economic relations. But, can we any further compromise the sovereignty of our motherland to those relations?" Amila thera queried.
The most recent treachery done by the so-called facilitator was to lay out the red carpet to welcome the LTTE delegation when they arrived in Oslo after the Geneva talks.
This welcome elevated the LTTE team to that of a state delegation or amounted to courtesies extended to visiting heads of states, the NBF President said.
"Right from the beginning we told the public and the government that the Norwegians were not impartial but operating according to a hidden agenda to facilitate the LTTE to achieve their goal of separation.
“Norwegian involvement to solve problems in other parts of the world always had resulted in dividing sovereign nations into parts.
Here in Sri Lanka, they are not doing anything different but assisting the division of the country," Ven. Amila thera, who once staged a fast unto death campaign to defeat the controversial P-TOMS during former President Chandrika Kumaratunga's regime, told the press.
The NBF will bring in thousands of Bhikkus to Colombo Tuesday to stage a protest march starting from the Viharamahadevi Park at 2 p.m. and would lead upto the Royal Norwegian Embassy at Ward Place.
