Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Refugee escapes Iraq, finds shaky future in U.S. - MSNBC
Man who fled Hussein's regime awaits fate after failed bid for asylum
Hussein Hayal al Zaidi says he spent nearly four years in jail in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, once in a 13-by-13-foot cell with 20 other men. His captors blindfolded him and pummeled his eyes, detaching one of his retinas. He has scars on his ankles, feet and hands from where they strung him up with ropes and beat him. His genitalia bear the marks of electric shock burns.
He was sentenced to death in 1999 for participating in an anti-Hussein riot, al Zaidi said. An uncle paid $7,000 to smuggle him out of jail and out of Iraq. He was flown from Syria to Moscow to Cuba to Ecuador before arriving at an airport in Newark, disoriented and ill. He asked for asylum.
An immigration officer in Newark believed his story and let him stay. But an immigration judge in Arlington County, who heard final arguments on his case 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, did not believe him.
...
Since then, al Zaidi has become part of the largest refugee crisis unfolding in the Middle East in decades, with one in eight Iraqis having fled their homes or the country.
...
So al Zaidi, 39, lives like a dangling man, in limbo between the hell of his past and fears of a hellish future. In the United States, government officials had suspected he might be an agent of Hussein. In Iraq, he fears that his countrymen, suspicious of his long absence, will think he works for the CIA.
"Of course they're going to kill me," he said in accented English. If not the Shiite militia already asking about him, then the Sunnis or Hussein loyalists. "But I am already dead."
Before he was detained, when he still had hope of staying in the United States, al Zaidi saved money. He thought about buying a house and having a family. He listened to English-language tapes. But now, nothing matters. He started smoking unfiltered Marlboros again. He spends his days watching television, not really paying attention. On a whim, he bought a new car.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he said. "Before, I was careful. But now, for what? Let me enjoy."
...
Since his release, he has lived with a friend in a bare townhouse in Vienna, furnished with two white plastic chairs and a TV. The laundromat doesn't want him anymore. Because of his immigration status, the community college he had hoped to attend will not take him. He doesn't eat, except for coffee and nibbles of junk food, such as the packets of Oreos and Mentos strewn on the floor of his room among piles of legal papers. His bed is a sheet on the floor, his pillow a rolled-up winter jacket.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he is seized with the notion that he must see the ocean. He goes to Atlantic City. He watches the waves. He doesn't understand what is happening to him.
...
His first arrest, he said through a translator, came in 1991 for participating in an uprising against Hussein after the Persian Gulf War. When his mother tried to bar police officers from their home, they hit her in the head, he said, and killed her. ...
Man who fled Hussein's regime awaits fate after failed bid for asylum
Hussein Hayal al Zaidi says he spent nearly four years in jail in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, once in a 13-by-13-foot cell with 20 other men. His captors blindfolded him and pummeled his eyes, detaching one of his retinas. He has scars on his ankles, feet and hands from where they strung him up with ropes and beat him. His genitalia bear the marks of electric shock burns.
He was sentenced to death in 1999 for participating in an anti-Hussein riot, al Zaidi said. An uncle paid $7,000 to smuggle him out of jail and out of Iraq. He was flown from Syria to Moscow to Cuba to Ecuador before arriving at an airport in Newark, disoriented and ill. He asked for asylum.
An immigration officer in Newark believed his story and let him stay. But an immigration judge in Arlington County, who heard final arguments on his case 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, did not believe him.
...
Since then, al Zaidi has become part of the largest refugee crisis unfolding in the Middle East in decades, with one in eight Iraqis having fled their homes or the country.
...
So al Zaidi, 39, lives like a dangling man, in limbo between the hell of his past and fears of a hellish future. In the United States, government officials had suspected he might be an agent of Hussein. In Iraq, he fears that his countrymen, suspicious of his long absence, will think he works for the CIA.
"Of course they're going to kill me," he said in accented English. If not the Shiite militia already asking about him, then the Sunnis or Hussein loyalists. "But I am already dead."
Before he was detained, when he still had hope of staying in the United States, al Zaidi saved money. He thought about buying a house and having a family. He listened to English-language tapes. But now, nothing matters. He started smoking unfiltered Marlboros again. He spends his days watching television, not really paying attention. On a whim, he bought a new car.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he said. "Before, I was careful. But now, for what? Let me enjoy."
...
Since his release, he has lived with a friend in a bare townhouse in Vienna, furnished with two white plastic chairs and a TV. The laundromat doesn't want him anymore. Because of his immigration status, the community college he had hoped to attend will not take him. He doesn't eat, except for coffee and nibbles of junk food, such as the packets of Oreos and Mentos strewn on the floor of his room among piles of legal papers. His bed is a sheet on the floor, his pillow a rolled-up winter jacket.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he is seized with the notion that he must see the ocean. He goes to Atlantic City. He watches the waves. He doesn't understand what is happening to him.
...
His first arrest, he said through a translator, came in 1991 for participating in an uprising against Hussein after the Persian Gulf War. When his mother tried to bar police officers from their home, they hit her in the head, he said, and killed her. ...
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