WASHINGTON, 12 March 2003 — Abdulraouf Batterjee is a Saudi caught up in the red tape of America’s new system of justice.
Despite a valid US visa, the INS detained him for almost three months before releasing him on bail.
He is also awaiting sentencing for a “felony” offense, which occurred when he bought a firearm. His crime? He filled out the wrong document given him by the storeowner trained and licensed by the federal government on firearms laws and regulations.
News of his release came suddenly to Abdulraouf’s wife Malak.
“I guess the INS had decided not to file the appeal, so he was released on $20,000 bond. Another court date is set for May,” Malak told Arab News.
After bailing him out with the INS in Texas, the couple left for Arizona, where he purchased the firearm, to attend a hearing in the felony case.
“After the initial trial for his felony case, our attorneys filed additional motions with more information, just to basically help the judge better understand the situation,” Malak said.
As a result of this information, the judge told the court that Abdulraouf was innocent and had committed a “status crime.”
“Say, for example, there’s a street corner in town where it is illegal to loiter. You’re in town visiting and just happen to stand at that street corner. It’s illegal to stand there, but you don’t know that because you’re just visiting,” said Malak.
“Nonetheless, it’s still illegal to stand there. The police come and arrest you. You’ve committed a crime, but didn’t know you were committing a crime and didn’t intend to commit the crime. That is a ‘status crime.’”
“The judge also told Abdulraouf and his lawyers that if he had been given the information available in the post trial motions, Abdulraouf would never have been found guilty. But he said that since we gave him this information after the trial, and after he had rendered his guilty verdict, Abdulraouf had to be convicted,” said Malak.
The judge gave Abdulraouf a sentencing date for the end of March, when he will be convicted and sentenced.
“We don’t have a clue what the sentence could entail; it could be anything from Abdulraouf serving probation to a 10 year prison term,” she said.
Malak said the injustice was especially hard to swallow after their local news station reported on “a truckload of 14 illegal Mexican immigrants who had been detained and let go by the INS because they are not on the terrorist list. They just let them go, they didn’t even deport them, because the INS said they’re too busy fighting the war on terrorism.”
Abdulraouf spoke about his detention. “What was it like there? It was difficult, because a lot of people there committed crimes. I was being treated as a criminal, even though I am not.”
For three months, Abdulraouf was bounced between INS detention in Houston, Texas, and his detention for a felony in Phoenix, Arizona.
Asked how he passed his time while in detention, Abdulraouf said it was mainly “in a huge room, with about 60-70 other men. There were a few TVs for us to watch.” He also had to use communal showers, “which for me as a Muslim was very degrading.”
Although the majority of the detained were Hispanic and Vietnamese, he said, other Muslims included Pakistanis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and some from Africa — Sudan, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania and Iraq.
His detention could have been a lot worse, he acknowledged. It was bearable because some of the guards were decent. “They treated us as human beings, which made the situation easier on us.”
“They weren’t Muslims, but they were good men,” he added.
Abdulraouf said many of the men he met in detention were less fortunate.
“I saw a 14 and 18-year-old there,” said Abdulraouf. “One was from Liberia and the other was from Tanzania. They came to the US by hitching a ride on a ship, and they didn’t know where the ship was going, or what the destination was, they just wanted to get out of Africa.”
Abdulraouf said the boys didn’t speak English well, and they didn’t have the money for legal representation.
The 18-year-old has been in detention for several months.
Abdulraouf said he and Malak are visiting her family until his upcoming court cases, but were only able to travel after they were granted permission to leave the state. “And I need another permission to go home to Houston.”
In principle, Abdulraouf still has a job in Houston, provided his paperwork is legal. But because of his tenuous position, Abdulraouf said he has not contacted his employers.
“I didn’t have any satisfactory answers to the questions I know they are going to ask me.”
“It is not a situation that is easy for me to talk about,” he said, after a long pause. “I’ve lived here since 1991, and I never felt a foreigner until about a year ago. Now I feel that I have been unjustly accused and unjustly convicted.”
He felt a mixture of anger and disbelief, he said.
“I really thought the US justice system was what I had been taught, which is ‘you’re innocent until proven guilty.’ But for whatever reason, I was not. I was basically treated as a felon, classified as a convicted felon, and treated as a criminal before the trial even started.
“There’s no justice, that’s basically what it comes down to. If you’re Muslim, or from one of the countries that the US has designated a ‘terrorist country’, then, as a Muslim, and/or a Saudi citizen, there is no justice.”
Pausing, Abdulraouf added: “I’m not asking for anyone to favor me because of my nationality, I would view that as another form of injustice. All I am asking for is justice and fairness. We, as Muslims or Saudis, do not follow or teach terrorism. I don’t believe any Muslim or Saudi who loves his religion, his country and his government, could do such a thing.”
