Ibrahim Parlak's Fate in the Hands of U.S. Court of Appeals

On Monday, it was announced that U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit will determine whether Turkish immigrant Ibrahim Parlak can remain in the United States at a hearing scheduled to be held October 22, 2007 at 1:30 pm in Cincinnati, Ohio.

At the center of the issue surrounding popular Harbert, Michigan restaurateur, who is supported by the Friends of Ibrahim, a grassroots alliance of Southwest Michigan residents, are three fundamental, precedent-setting issues of national importance: should immigration courts rely on evidence from torture-induced confessions; should the Department of Homeland Security be allowed unlimited discretion to designate any group of "two or more" individuals as a terrorist organization; and should a person be prosecuted for membership in a group that is opposed to the government.

During the 1980s, Parlak was involved with an organization that championed the rights of the Kurds in Turkey. After having been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by the allegedly human rights-violating Turkish government for his connections to the group, Parlak was granted asylum in 1992.

After the terrorist strikes of September 11th, 2001, the U.S. government engaged in deportation proceedings against Parlak, on the grounds that he supposedly had terrorist ties. The U.S. government cited evidence attained by way of a torture-induced confession he endured while in Turkey. Parlak was detained in a Michigan jail in 2004 for ten months, but has been free since then, pending this hearing.

In June of 2006, Judge Avern Cohn of the U.S. District Court in Detroit granted Parlak, who has a 10-year-old American daughter, a writ of Habeas Corpus, releasing him from jail. In his written opinion, Cohn sited Parlak as a "model citizen" and "not a threat to anyone or a risk of flight." Michigan's Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Fred Upton have publicly supported Parlak's case and have introduced bills in both houses of Congress that would grant him permanent U.S. residency.

Senator Levin stated, "Mr. Parlak is a good citizen and should be allowed to remain in the United States and continue the honorable life that he has built for his community, his daughter, and himself all these years."

The United States' strictures on defining "torture" have become notoriously lax since the "war on terror" was begun. The nation's war prisoners and terrorist suspects prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have become synonymous with violations of international human rights.

It has been reported ever since the early days of the United States' "war on terror", launched in late 2001, that several thousand people have been arrested and detained with the help of the United States in nations known for their "cruel and unusual" treatment of war prisoners. The Convention against Torture, which the United States government ratified, specifically prohibits torture and mistreatment and the sending of detainees to nations where such torture is likely to be engaged in. According to the U.S. State Department's annual human rights report, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Jordan, and Morocco are all such nations, and the United States has allegedly sent detained prisoners to all of them.

The CIA allegedly set up a global network of "black sites" a mere six days after September 11th of 2001, where suspected terrorists, mostly Muslims, are said to be taken by the thousands and subjected to vicious torture regimens in order to be coerced into giving up secret information. Vice President Dick Cheney in particular has been labeled an "advocate of torture".

The Bush Administration and the Justice Department have been severely criticized for accepting very narrowly defined torture definitions, in the name of giving the President "enhanced powers" to secure the national defense by combating terrorist tactics, that allow such interrogation techniques as head-slapping, simulated drowning, and subjecting detainees to extended periods of exposure to frigid temperatures.

Former White House Counsel and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez allegedly drafted the first narrow definitions of torture and wrote that only actions that resulted in "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death" constituted torture.

Source:
Free Ibrahim (PR Newswire), "U.S. Court of Appeals Will Decide Ibrahim Parlak Fate"
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-15-2007/0004682106&EDATE=