Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

Soliman Biheiri
In June 2003, the FBI arrested as a material witness Soliman Biheiri, then a U.S. citizen
with three U.S. citizen children. The Justice Department suspected Biheiri of doing
financial work for Abu Marzook, a well-known leader of Hamas. It informed the court
that it intended to bring Biheiri in front of a grand jury investigating terrorist financing
networks in Chicago. For two months, the government never called Biheiri to testify in
front of a grand jury but continued to argue in court that his detention was necessary
because of his alleged connections to terrorist suspects. 109
Just as the court was going to order Biheiri released, after he had been held without
charges in high-security jails for more than two months, the government charged him
with an obscure non-terrorist related crime: unlawful procurement of naturalization
based on a false statement he had made in 1990 immigration applications. 110 In 1990,
Biheiri had listed himself as the vice president of his company on immigration
documents, when in fact he was the president. The government used this misstatement
to allege that Biheiri committed fraud on his 2000 naturalization application, when he
answered “no” to the question of whether he had ever committed a crime for which he
had not been convicted. According to his attorney:
It’s not a coincidence that they held him and never put him in front of a
grand jury and then dismissed him as a material witness when they had
built up charges against him. … My sense is that they had nothing on
him to hold him as a material witness. They were just trying to buy time
to find something. The irony is that he was completely innocent of any
terrorist allegation. The government was never able to find a credible
ground to bring terrorism charges—they never produced enough proof
to even charge him. Instead, they charged him on a completely unrelated
immigration charge, which they based on a visa application they dug up
from 12 years ago. And even then, when the government couldn’t
obtain an indictment on Biheiri for terrorism charges, the government
sought a ten-year enhancement for terrorism associations during
109
HRW/ACLU telephone interview with James Clark, lead criminal defense attorney for Soliman Biheiri,
Alexandria, Virginia, April 8, 2004 (Interview with James Clark).
110
HRW/ACLU telephone interview with Nina Ginsberg, criminal defense attorney for Soliman Biheiri,
Washington, D.C., April 8, 2004. According to Ginsberg:
During his material witness detention, the government did not put him on the witness stand
or charge Soliman until the judge finally after two months told the government that he was
going to release him unless the government charged him. The government then criminally
charged him with immigration fraud—lying on his naturalization application.
Ibid.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G) 34