Detainee tries to force feds’ hand

A man from the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands jailed for more
than two years after the FBI targeted him as a possible
Denver-based terrorist – but never charged him – has begun a
last-ditch legal gambit to resume his life with his U.S.-citizen wife and four kids.

Still in prison in Colorado, Haroon Rashid has filed a motion in
federal court to force the government to prosecute him.

It’s an unusual effort to break out of the legal limbo that has
derailed his life and the lives of others jailed since Sept. 11,
2001, in the government’s war on terrorism.

After charging 441 detainees in terrorism and terrorism-related
cases, federal authorities have won 261 convictions, a new Justice
Department study found. Most of the convictions were for petty
offenses, not terrorism.

An undetermined number of suspects, including Rashid, still are
detained. About 150 cases are pending.

U.S. officials say secret evidence supports a hard-line approach.
Prosecutors are trying “to prevent terrorist acts before they can
occur,” Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said.

But civil-liberties leaders question basic fairness.

“Yes, we want to be safe, but do we want to sacrifice our
liberties in the process? … If you want to always be safe, you
could lock everybody up. But that’s not what our system is based
on,” said Judy Rabinovitz, senior attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union.

Rashid made his move, through his attorney Jeff Pagliuca, after
U.S. Attorney Troy Eid filed a motion Oct. 2 to drop a lesser
immigration charge the government was pursuing as the FBI’s initial
terrorism case evaporated, court records show.

By dropping the immigration charge, Eid had planned to clear the
way for Rashid to be deported back to his native Pakistan for
misdemeanor assault. In 2003, a jury found Rashid guilty of
assaulting a street-gang member he said threatened his kids. He
received a 401-day sentence that was mostly suspended.

Now Rashid’s motion – to block federal prosecutors from dropping
their case – aims to delay his deportation and further clear his
record. He’s been held in federal custody at his lawyer’s request
to avoid deportation until the federal case is resolved.

Rashid comes from Quetta, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, an
unsettled hotbed of anti-U.S. sentiment where Taliban forces are on
the rise. His wife and children say they dread moving there if he
is deported but would do so to be together.

“It doesn’t do anybody in our country any good to have this man
deported back to Pakistan on a misdemeanor,” Pagliuca said. “…
I’d rather have Mr. Rashid here taking care of his children.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock must decide how to handle
this jam – with feds asking to drop their charges and Rashid asking
for a trial to exonerate himself and let his family stay a bit
longer in the country.

Rashid already has served more time in prison than would be
possible if prosecutors won a conviction on the lesser immigration
charge they’re now trying to drop.

He immigrated to the United States legally in November 1997. His
wife, Saima Saima, and her father, Abdul Qayyum, are naturalized
U.S. citizens. Rashid worked driving an airport shuttle as they
raised their kids.

Federal agents began investigating him and his family in 2002 after
President Bush and then- Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to
use every legal tool they could to detain and prosecute possible
terrorists. Rashid had visited Pakistan that year.

Denver-based FBI Special Agent Mike Castro testified at a 2003
detention hearing that there was evidence Rashid bragged he had
fought against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and that he was in
Colorado awaiting orders to carry out violent acts.

Said Pagliuca: “I don’t believe it. Why didn’t they charge him as
a terrorist?”

Castro and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Ross
Godwin, members of a joint terrorism task force, went to California
and questioned Imran Khan, son of Rashid’s father-in-law by a
previous marriage, who had entered the United States in August 1997
with Rashid’s wife.

The agents sought Kahn as a source on Rashid and others. Though
they lacked a warrant, they arrested Khan and hauled him back to
Colorado in shackles, court records show.

In a 2004 court order, Judge Babcock stated that “the terrorism
implications of this case have since evaporated” and that “there
was confusion about how and under what authority an FBI and
(immigration) agent working in concert in a mixed civil and
criminal investigation should conduct their investigation.”

Federal officials recently have rebuffed repeated efforts to
interview Rashid at the Englewood federal prison. He was held
previously at a federal immigration prison in Aurora.

Family members can visit, including a toddler born during Rashid’s
confinement.

The older children regularly ask about their father and beg to stay
in their schools.

U.S. authorities “are breaking this family. We’ve been patient. …
This is very unfair,” Rashid’s wife said in a Denver mosque.
“They still think he’s a terrorist.”