Johnson: Who committed the real crime? The feds

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 20, 2006 at midnight

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Haroon Rashid, a 35-year-old van driver and car mechanic from Lakewood, has spent the better part of the last three years in both local and federal jails.

What did he do?

From the looks of things now, it appears his only true crime was being named Haroon Rashid. A similarly named man was later arrested in Africa in connection with the 2005 London terror bombings.

Even worse for Haroon Rashid, it also looks as if the United States government - apparently unwilling to admit it made a horrible mistake - is rushing to deport the man, a legal permanent resident, back to his native Pakistan.

On Tuesday, I sat with his wife, Saima, and four children, all of whom, except the baby, wildly sobbed while begging me to plead on their behalf for the government not to deport their husband and father.

It is a wild one, the story of Haroon Rashid. It dates back to the months following Sept. 11, 2001. It reached its zenith on April 17, 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq.

That was the day that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the arrest of Haroon Rashid in a speech called "Success and Strategies in the Effort to Liberate Iraq."

Ashcroft cited the arrests of the couple - Haroon had gotten himself involved in a street scuffle - and four of their relatives and friends as a threat to the nation thwarted.

They supported the Taliban, al-Qaida and jihad, and they were awaiting a signal that "would cause them to harm U.S. interests," according to Ashcroft.

It was good stuff back then. The problem is it more and more appears to be all wrong.

Even though the government is still adamant about deporting him, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver is expected to drop all federal charges against Haroon Rashid and his wife before the week is out, according to the family's attorney.

"And trust me," attorney Jeffrey S. Pagliuca, of Denver, said on Tuesday, "nobody in this country needs to be worried about Haroon Rashid, of Lakewood."

There isn't enough room in this newspaper to tell Haroon Rashid's story. His case file is now more than a half-foot tall. But what seems increasingly clear is that its genesis was rooted in a mixture of post-9/11 fear, government misidentification and, later, the covering of bureaucratic backside.

Cars with tinted windows began following the Muslim couple in the weeks after 9/11, -Saima said.

Neighbors spotted the cars first. And the family telephone began to ring. Yet all that could be heard from the other end were indistinguishable whispers, she said.

Finally, after weeks of it, the phone rang again, and the couple's second-oldest, Talha, now almost 9, answered. The voice threatened to kill him. The family called the police.

Instead of local officers, however, FBI agents arrived at their door, according to -Saima, 35.

"We tried to tell them of our fear, but all they wanted to know was of Haroon."

The agents would stop by at least twice a week for six months, she said. They contacted her father, her brother, her mother.

"They would never ask about who was following us. Only of Haroon."

In late 2002, she and Haroon were on their way to a job interview. They were stopped by an Arapahoe County sheriff's deputy. They didn't have proof of insurance and were told to wait. Two FBI agents came to their car window.

Saima said they were told they wouldn't be ticketed if Haroon would go with the agents.

Haroon did not return that night until almost 11 p.m. He had been questioned again and given a polygraph test. And still the agents came.

On May 13, 2003, Haroon and Saima's brother, Ifram, were at a family member's home in Aurora, working on their cars, when they became involved in an argument with two young men who were shouting obscenities from the street. Haroon asked them if they would take it elsewhere, away from his children.

A fight ensued. Haroon insists he was defending himself. Arapahoe County deputies saw it differently, testifying that Haroon was the instigator.

Haroon spent the next four months in the Arapahoe County lockup. On the front of his case file for months, his wife said, was the notation: "Suspected terrorist."

Saima went to jail that night, too. She said armed officers stormed the home where she was staying, pointing guns at her and her children.

She avoided handcuffs only because she was nursing her infant, Khoulah.

They kept asking about Haroon and her brother, Irfam Kamran. If she lied, she was told, she would go to jail for a long time.

Was Irfam her brother?

"Yes," she replied.

They slapped the cuffs on her right then, she said, calling social services to come collect her infant. She spent three days in jail.

The federal charges that are now expected to be dropped - defrauding the government and harboring an illegal alien - are related to Irfam's situation. He had been adopted by -Saima's mother years ago and brought to the U.S. in the late '80s.

None of those charged - all of whom were children themselves when they first saw Irfam - knew that he was adopted.

"For as much as I knew, he was my brother much as my son is the brother of my daughter," Saima said, sobbing.

She spent three days in jail for not knowing this.

Irfam Kamran ultimately was released after agreeing to return to Pakistan following two years of languishing in jail.

Haroon went to trial on the assault charge.

A jury convicted him of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor. But he stayed in jail for four months longer on an immigration hold, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials tried to have him deported. They argued that his assault conviction amounted to an aggravated felony and was a deportable offense for a foreign national.

A federal immigration judge ruled against that effort. The Department of Homeland Security appealed and won an order to deport Haroon from the Board of Immigration Appeals, according to the case file.

Meanwhile, the similarly named Haroon Rashid Aswat - apparently the man on the government's watch list - was arrested in Africa. He is a British citizen of Indian origin and an alleged al-Qaida organizer said to be responsible for the July 7 London bombings, according to reports of his arrest.

Close enough.

Now, with the federal case of Haroon Rashid, of Lakewood, about to be dismissed, American immigration authorities remain committed to deporting him back to Pakistan.

Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver, says there was full cause to bring the deportation proceeding against Haroon Rashid, that it was heard by a grand jury and that an appeal of the deportation order against him failed a month ago.

"There remains intact an order to remove him from the United States," Dorschner said.

Saima, a citizen since 1995, sits cloaked in an elegant black-with-silver-trim hijab with her four children, all of them gathered around her.

"You can only imagine, after three years, how much stress we have endured, the fear my children have after the guns," she said. "We had a good life, a good living."

She is begging the government to pardon her husband.

"I am deeply, deeply appealing to the government not to deport my husband," she said. "My children need their father so much. He is our only source of support. They were born American. This is our country, too.

"We strongly, strongly appeal on his behalf. He needs to be here."

She clutches her children.

One breaks free. It is Yusuf, 11, the oldest. He leans in and whispers.

"I want my dad home. I am begging," he says. "I miss him so much."

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-954-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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