By Yona Sabar
I saw the documentary film “Good Kurds, Bad Kurds”
by Kevin McKiernan which was reviewed by Sandy Yang in the Daily
Bruin (A&E, May 4). The movie shows the struggle of the Kurds
for civil, national and cultural liberties in Turkey and Iraq. But
even the Kurds who manage to escape persecution in their homeland
continue to be oppressed in other countries. This includes the
United States, where Kurds continue to be prosecuted, if not
persecuted, like the members of the Kurdish family in Santa Barbara
shown in the McKiernan’s film.
I am especially appalled by a recent case not mentioned in the
film but covered a few weeks ago by many newspapers, including the
Los Angeles Times. The incident involved an Iraqi Kurd, Dr. Ali
Yasin Mohammad Karim. Karim has been held in a California prison by
the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI for more
than three years without any concrete evidence of wrongdoing
whatsoever. He is assumed to have been a spy “for Iraq and/or
Iran and/or Syria.” Which one, exactly?
On April 24, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “One FBI agent
thought that Karim might be a spy for Iran, while another agent
thought he was a mole for Iraq.” It is quite unlikely that a
physician ““ and a Kurdish patriot at that, who worked with
the Iraqi opposition for many years and who was chosen by American
agencies to be granted refuge in our country, should be treated so
poorly.
The picture is very clear to me: The INS and FBI had an initial
suspicion and they arrested Karim, but never succeeded in
establishing any concrete evidence. Instead of saying,
“Sorry, our initial suspicion produced no evidence,”
they continue to hold Karim in jail out of fear that they might be
proven wrong. I am reminded very much of the recent case of Dr. Wen
Ho Lee, the Taiwanese American nuclear physicist suspected of
spying.
It seems that we are hurting those who help us. I’ll bet
that Saddam Hussein is gloating that the INS and FBI are punishing
the same person that he tried to kill on more than one occasion.
Don’t we already have enough criminals in jail? The
government should save the taxpayers’ money for imprisoning
real criminals, and release those who came to this country to be
free and against whom no evidence has been found.