Ahilan Nadarajah, right, detained under false accusations of terrorism, celebrates with ACLU/SC staff attorney Ahilan Arulanantham upon his recent release.
Two Longtime Detainees Ordered Released; A Third Pending
Ahilan Nadarajah, a Sri Lankan native detained for more than four years in the United States under accusations of membership in an organization the state department has branded as terrorist, has been released by order of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Federal officials insisted Nadarajah, 26, was a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist group in Sri Lanka. With these accusations of terrorist activities, federal officials kept him detained in a facility outside of San Diego without criminal charges. The government refused to release him despite immigration judges twice granting him asylum.
Nadarajah, was released from a detention facility on March 21, three business days after the circuit court gave its order requiring his immediate release in a decision that called the government’s basis for his detention “patently absurd.” He was accompanied by Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, who has been working on this case for over two years.
The victory is one of the first successful challenges to the administration’s policy of holding detainees indefinitely.
“This case is a sharp rebuke to the government’s policy of detaining immigrants for years and years while their immigration cases are pending, even when they don’t pose any danger or flight risk,” Arulanantham said. “The government said he was a national security risk and accused him of being affiliated with the LTTE, but every court that examined the evidence found that there was no basis whatsoever for this accusation.”
Ironically, Nadarajah fled to the United States seeking to escape the of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which repeatedly jailed and tortured him. In their decision unanimously ordering his immediate release, appellate judges stated that the federal government was in violation of the law by holding him without charges while at the same time disallowing his deportation.
“This case is about a torture victim who sought our country’s protection but was locked up for years by the Department of Homeland Security even though he kept winning his asylum case,” Arulanantham said. “The court’s ruling strongly confirms that the government cannot lock up people for years indefinitely and without good reason.”
Nadarajah was raised on his family’s farm in Sri Lanka, and worked alongside his family as a farmer. The family was uprooted in the mid-1990s when the Sri Lankan army invaded the area as part of a long period of civil unrest and turmoil. Nadarajah and his family fled, and thus began his ordeal of kidnap and torture by representatives of the Sri Lankan army, who persecuted him because of his ethnic minority status and falsely accused him of being a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. After one torture session – where he was hung by his ankles and had gasoline poured over him – Nadarajah was told he would be killed the next time.
In October, 2001, he managed to escape Sri Lanka, planning to get to Canada, where he had relatives. But United States immigration officials grabbed him as he crossed the Mexican border and threw him into detention.
Since then, despite an immigration judge twice rejecting allegations that Nadarajah is a national security risk and ordering him protected under the Geneva Convention Against Torture, decisions that were affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals, the government refused to release him.
The appellate court decision had immediate impact. In late March, Saluja Thangaraja, 26, another victim of torture in Sri Lanka detained by federal authorities when seeking asylum in the United States, was ordered released after more than four years in detention. Also a member of the Tamil minority ethnic group, Thangaraja and her family lived in displaced persons camps in Sri Lanka for many months due to the civil unrest. In July, 2000, she was kidnapped by Sri Lankan army officials, imprisoned and tortured on false accusations she was part of the LTTE. Only a hefty bribe paid by her family secured her release. After she was kidnapped a second time, her family, fearing for her safety, arranged to have her smuggled out of the country. U.S. immigration officials stopped her as she attempted to cross the Mexican border in October, 2001.
In its 2004 order granting her eligibility for asylum, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted that her brutal treatment at the hands of the Sri Lankan army amounted to political persecution, and it would be “exceptionally unfair” to subject her to additional factual investigation. Based on her testimony and corroborating human rights violation reports, the judges concluded she would be subject to persecution if returned to Sri Lanka. The court ordered immigration officials to review her asylum application.
Although the Ninth Circuit granted her final relief from deportation in August, 2004, the government continued to detain her for almost another two years
The court decision releasing Nadarajah and Thangaraja could also could result in one other detainee represented by the ACLU/SC finally being set free. Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan is a Palestinian who lived in Buena Park until his arrest and detention in July, 2004. Homeland Security insisted he is a national security risk, but so far have failed to charge him with any terrorism-related crime . He was charged only with violating immigration law by overstaying his 1979 student visa. Hamdan graduated from USC with an engineering degree. A U.S. District Court judge is set to review his case and decide if he should be freed.
