MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2002
NEWS
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
Germany won't extradite terror suspect Asylum seekers wrangle with INS
KARACHI, Pakistan — Germany dropped its request for the extradition of Ramzi Binalshib yesterday, opening the way for the suspected Sept. 11 plotter to be handed over to the United States after his arrest last week by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence.
Interior Minister Moinuddun Haider told The Associated Press yesterday that Binalshib and the others had "done nothing wrong on our soil" and that if another country wanted them "they will be sent there."
Haider also said there was no doubt that the Binalshibh was among those taken into custody in raids here tomorrow and Wednesday, despite claims to the contrary by an Islamic militant Web site in Arabic.
Earlier, the Pakistanis had refrained from publicly confirming his identity because of uncertainty over the name of his father, information routinely used in the Middle East a means of identification.
Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, had said Saturday he would seek Binalshibh's extradition to Germany, which had issued an international arrest warrant for him. Binalshibh was a
member of the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg that U.S. and German investigators believe planned and carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Sunday, however, Schli said that given that the "terrible attacks of Sept. 11" on U.S. soil, "it goes without saying that Americans have priority for his extradition."
Haider said Binalshibh and the others were still in Pakistan and that Pakistani and U.S. officials were discussing details of his extradition to the United States
"Oh, we will be working with the Pakistani officials to make certain that he gets to the right place," Condoleezza Rice said on ABC's "This Week." "There's no doubt that the United States will want to have access to him and to have him, because this is an important breakthrough."
On Sunday, President Bush's national security adviser made clear the United States wants custody of him.
Binalshibh and at least nine other al-Qaida operatives remained under interrogation by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence agencies, four days after they were captured in a shootout in a residential area of this port city, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
U. S. authorities were primarily responsible for questioning the suspects, he said, but they technically remained in Pakistani custody.
Germany's interest in the case stemmed from Binalshib's membership in the Hamburg cell, which also included Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the hijackers. Binalshib, who was Atta's roommate in Germany, has claimed to be the coordinator of the four simultaneous hijackings.
No public indictment has been issued against Binalshibh in the United States. But he has been named as an unindicted coco-spirator in the case of Zacharias Moussaoui, the designated 20th hijacker who was arrested before Sept.11.
Binalsibh could be charged in a U.S. court, or the government may ask Pakistan to hand him over as an enemy combatant, which would bypass stringent U.S. legal requirements.
Pakistan said a second highlevel al-Qaida figure aiso was captured last week, but have refused to identify him by name or nationality.
Speculation had focused on one of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenants.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was believed to be in Pakistan. He was interviewed recently in Karachi along with Binalshibh by the pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera.
However, Haider said Sunday that Mohammed was not in custody.
The al-Qaida suspects were arrested in three raids on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Binalshibh was apprehended during a raid at an apartment house in an upscale neighborhood, in which two Islamic militants were shot dead and seven policemen were wounded.
The Web site claimed Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are "in a safe place." It was not clear whether the reference was to Pakistan or Afghanistan.
An Islamic militant Web site that focuses on developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan carried a statement Sunday denying the arrest of Binalshibh.
News about Binalshibh's arrest "is nothing but fabrications and lies and an obvious show by those Crusaders and their agents in the apostate Pakistani regime," it said. On Saturday, the same site said it could not confirm reports of Binalshibh's arrest.
Britain's Prince Harry to take up charity work
LONDON — Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, marked his 18th birthday on Sunday promising to take up the charity work his late mother, Princess Diana, was unable to finish.
Newspapers praised the handsome young prince as they carried specially commissioned photographs and excerpts from his first official interview to mark his coming of age.
The reports were a far cry from the press coverage that the son of Prince Charles and younger brother of Prince William was accorded in January after he was
The Associated Press
caught drinking underage and smoking marijuana.
Then, royal commentators discussed Harry's difficult position as the "spare, not the heir" but on Sunday they suggested he had finally found his place in the royal family.
Harry said his mother had "more guts than anybody" and had inspired him to carve out a role for himself battling little-known causes. Her death on Aug. 31, 1997, came just two weeks before his 13th birthday.
"The way she got close to people and went for the sort of charities and organizations that everybody else was scared to go near,
such as land mines in the Third World. She got involved in things that nobody had done before, AIDS, for example," he said in the official interview given to the British Press Association.
"She had more guts than anybody else. I want to carry on the things that she didn't quite finish. I have always wanted to, but was too young."
In a series of photographs taken by Mario Testino - his mother's favorite photographer — Harry appeared relaxed and confident.
Earlier in the week, the prince walked in his mother's footsteps by visiting sick children at Great
Ormond Street Hospital, the London hospital that Diana remained president of even after shedding most of her royal duties after her divorce from Prince Charles.
The visit on Thursday marked Harry's first royal engagement alone. He has in the past been accompanied by his father and brother at public appearances.
"It was quite difficult at first, being younger and not as experienced as some of the people I was meeting," he said. "I have seen my mother doing it so many times and she was so good at it. But the more I do it in the future, the better I hope to become."
Now, that's the last place he wants to go.
The Associated Press
POTTSTOWN, Pa. — Bernard Lukwago says he was forced to serve as a human shield for rebel forces in his native Uganda when he was 15, and all he wanted at the time was to return home.
"I'm very scared for my life." Lukwago said.
Lukwago, 20, is one of thousands of people trying to win asylum with an Immigration and Naturalization Service made more cautious by the Sept. 11 attacks.
His supporters say the terror attacks have created a climate of fear that has caused immigration officials to reject asylum-seekers with legitimate claims.
"Everybody is kind of generally afraid. So as a result they're taking that fear, concern for safety, out on immigrants," said Michele Pistone, who advised Lukwago at her legal clinic for asylum seekers at Villanova University.
For the first nine months of fiscal 2002, asylum rejections jumped 24 percent from 9,318 to 11,509 compared with the same period the previous year, according to the INS. Approvals were down 3 percent from 15,213 to 14,701. Total asylum applications rose 3 percent from 49,346 to 51,060.
"Asylum seekers were very vulnerable even prior to Sept. 11. They've become even more so in the post-9-11 enforcement climate of the INS," said Eleanor Acer, director of the Asylum Program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. She is not involved in the Lukwago case.
Lukwago arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport on Nov. 22, 2000, carrying a passport given to him by a friend in Holland. He immediately applied for asylum.
He spent 21 months in illegal immigrant detention wards at Pennsylvania prisons as the INS
considered his bid. An immigration judge denied his request in August. He was released and is awaiting a federal appeals court decision.
Lukwago, who is being given shelter by a humanitarian group called the Fellowship Farm, said soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army came to his family's farm in 1997, kicked in the door and gunned down his parents.
"They shoot my mother, she fell on the floor; she never wake up. And then, my father was on the floor, but he wasn't dead," Lukwago said. "I run to my father and he tell me, 'Bernard, run, run, go, go.' I don't know where to go, and then these rebels they just got me from there."
The rebels took him to their camp and threatened to kill him if he didn't follow their orders, he said.
"When we see the government soldiers, we shoot. And the children who don't follow their orders, they kill the children," he said.
After four months, Lukwago said he escaped.
U. S. Immigration Judge Walter Durling decided in August that Lukwago's testimony wasn't credible, based on allegedly inconsistent statements and his demeanor in the courtroom, which included a lack of eye contact.
Lukwago's lawyers say the inconsistencies were the result of communication problems and that lack of eye contact is a sign of respect for authority in Uganda.
When the judge asked Lukwago how he felt when his parents were shot, the answer, repeated several times, was: "Nervous." Durling found that suspicious.
But he wrote in his opinion that credibility judgments are subjective.
"In many cases all it comes down to is the judge's opinion of whether credibility has been established, or not," Durling wrote.
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