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| 5/24 |
| 2004/6/30-7/1 [Politics/Domestic/911, Politics/Domestic/Immigration] UID:31089 Activity:high |
6/30 Nepal buddhist put in solitary confinement for 24/hr * 3 month for
unknowingly videotaping outside a FBI building.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/30/nyregion/30deport.final.html
And recently a NYT photographer was prevented form taking picture
of Times-Warner building. Will it now get someone in trouble if he
takes pictures on the street with major landmark or government
building in the line of sight? It doesn't matter if he will
eventually get out.
\_ Four more years! Leader Bush is teh greatest!
\_ And this will change under kerry because..?
\_ I don't want Iranian nationals taking pictures of landmarks in my
country. -allenp
\_ Why not? --iranian national.
\_ While we're rattling sabers with each other. -allenp
\_ Better just ban all tourists from taking any pictures. You
never know who might be our enemy tomorrow. Thank goodness
Eastasia is our ally.
\_ w00t!
\_ Now, _that_ was a funny edit. Nice.
\_ "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, for it can always be
faked." That said, the real problem here is the unbelieveable
bueracuracy that infests our government. Look at the INS.
Just ridiculous.
\_ He was on an expired visa. That's life. Maybe he can tell
his friends to obey our immigration laws and then there's no
problem. We should have forced him to refund US taxpayers
the cost of jail and trial before release. I'm sure FBI
agents have more important concerns than this twit.
\_ Not only that. He was *working* with an expired *tourist* visa.
\_ So deport him. If you want him punished, work out a treaty
the law, and staying of a tourist visa is too.
with Nepal where they punish their citizens for violating
your immigration laws.
\_ That's what the FBI agent in charge was trying to do,
and he eventually got him out.
\_ Are you a tax lawyer? Then you've almost certainly committed
tax fraud and mail fraud. When they come to lock you up, please
remember what you've written today.
\_ Bad analogy. This guy knew he was breaking immigration
law wide open. You don't have to be an immigration
lawyer to know that working on a tourist visa is against
the law, and staying of a tourist visa is too.
\_ straw man. The penalty for working on an expired visa
is deportation, not 3 months of jail. -tom
\_ Wrong-o, Tom-o. Or at least you're responding to
the wrong question. I didn't say anything about
the punishment being just. I just pointed out
that this fellows analogy was wrong. That's not a
straw man.
\_ 'Wrong-o, Tom-o'? What the fuck is wrong with you?
\_ I get too much fun out of life.
\_ No analogy being made here. If you're not a tax lawyer,
you have almost certainly violated some minor part of the
byzantine US tax codes. If you show no sympathy for a man
who was put in solitary confinement for 3 months for
working on an expired visa, expect no sympathy when the
powers that be arrest and detain you on the pretext of
tax and mail fraud.
\_ "No analogy?" Your whole argument us based on a bad
analogy, That purposely breaking a well known low
in 2 different ways is somehow analgus to breaking
an extrememly obscure law unintentionally.
\_ Here is the correct article non PC title: Greedy Nepalese
Flaunts US Laws and Distracts FBI from Pursuing Terrorists.
He is responsible for his decision to
break our laws when we are under terrorist attack.
He is lucky to have gotten off as easy as he did.
BTW this is classic NYTimes bias.
\_ Wait, so its only an objective headline if its worded like a
news report in Starship Troopers?
\_ Motd Poster is flaming asshole and rabid propagandist!
Click here to learn more!
\_ Do you want to see more?
\_ I think, what you are saying is, he was lucky because:
(1) He was kept in solitary, he wasn't raped, he was only
strip-searched
(2) It was only three months, could have been a year+
(3) He could be in Guantanamo, he was in Brooklyn
(4) He eventually got to talk to a lawyer
(5) He had a senior FBI agent helping him
(6) He got a free ticket back to Nepal, didn't have to pay
any fines, and did manage to send $37K back to his family
(7) He broke important laws during a very sensitive time,
he should accept the consequences
\_ If rape is inevitable, sit back and enjoy it! |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.nytimes.com/2004/06/30/nyregion/30deport.final.html Piers Benatar/Panos for The New York Times Purna Raj Bajracharya, who is home in Katmandu, Nepal, remained imprisoned in Brooklyn long after the FBI found he was no terrorist. Business What type of ad will you see if your Weather Channel forecast calls for rain? Find out how TV advertisers can use regional conditions to make minute-by-minute advertising choices. He was a Buddhist from Nepal planning to return there after five years of odd jobs at places like a Queens pizzeria and a Manhattan flower shop. He was taping New York street scenes to take back to his wife and sons in Katmandu. And he had no clue that the tall building that had drifted into his viewfinder happened to include an office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yet by the time Mr Wynne filed his FBI report a few days later, the Nepalese man, who spoke almost no English, had been placed in solitary confinement at a federal detention center in Brooklyn just because of his videotaping. He was swallowed up in the government's new maximum security system of secret detention and secret hearings, and his only friend was the same FBI agent who had helped decide to put him there. Except for the videotape "a tourist kind of thing," in Mr Wynne's estimation no shred of suspicion attached to the man, Purna Raj Bajracharya, 47, who came from Nepal in 1996. His one offense staying to work on a long-expired tourist visa was an immigration violation punishable by deportation, not jail. But he wound up spending three months in solitary confinement before he was sent back to Katmandu in January 2002, and to release him from his shackles, even Mr Wynne needed help. The clearance process had become so byzantine that the officer who had set the procedure in motion could not hasten it. Unable to procure a release that officially required signatures from top antiterrorism officials in Washington, Mr Wynne took an uncommon step for an FBI agent: he called the Legal Aid Society for a lawyer to help the jailed man. Now, for the first time, the FBI agent and the Legal Aid lawyer, Olivia Cassin, have agreed to talk about the case and their unlikely alliance. Their documented accounts offer a rare, first-hand window into the workings of a secret world. The secrecy left detainees with little access to lawyers. Visa violators would be held indefinitely, until the FBI was sure the person was not involved in terrorism. As a visa violator under suspicion, Mr Bajracharya was among hundreds placed in the special interest category, and his case was wiped from the public record. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said that though he was unfamiliar with the case, the system of secrecy Mr Bajracharya encountered is lawful and necessary. "The idea that someone who has violated our immigration laws may be of interest on a national security level as well is an unfortunate reality, post-9/11," he said. Closed hearings are legal as long as due process is provided, he said, and all abuses will be dealt with. But Ms Cassin, of Legal Aid, argues that under this secret practice, there is no way to know whether other noncitizens are even now being unfairly detained. "By its very nature," she said, "it can happen again without our knowing about it." By then he had spent almost three months in a 6-by-9-foot cell kept lighted 24 hours a day. The unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he was kept has become notorious for the abuses documented there by the Justice Department's own inspector general, who found a pattern of physical and mental mistreatment of post-9/11 detainees. Videotapes showed officers slamming detainees into walls, mocking them during unnecessary strip-searches, and secretly taping their conversations with lawyers. |