Max Sawicky details some really horrible treatment of pro-U.S. Iraqi Kurds living in Virginia.

However, four of them have been arrested for transferring funds to their families and charitable organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan without a license, a felony offense under the Patriot Act and the act to keep Cubans from sending money to their relatives in Cuba. One has been convicted in a trial in which most of the evidence was not allowed and in which the FBI suggested that the defendant was a terrorist. These people were cowed into not talking to the media, and now they are all in deep trouble. Their homes have been raided, their money seized, even things like medical insurance cards (with one wife pregnant), applications for citizenship are off, they are facing deportation, and so on. They were assigned a Croatian translator for the court. There is a serious string of outrages associated with this with no coverage by any serious media. The FBI agent in charge even told them, “I know you are not the bad guys, but too much paperwork has gone forward on this.”

Max has contact information for the people being harassed if anyone’s interested in helping them out.

Just another example of how there hasn’t been a single incidence of PATRIOT Act abuse, I guess.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 7:53 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.