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Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Saudi princess pleads guilty to immigration violations
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
A Saudi princess pleaded guilty today to federal immigration violations involving two Indonesian women who worked long hours for meager wages at her Winchester home. As a part of a plea deal, however, federal prosecutors agreed to drop more serious charges of domestic servitude and forced labor.
Hana Al Jader, 41, admitted that she brought the two women from Saudi Arabia to the United States in February 2003 to cook, work as housekeepers, and care for her family while her husband, Prince Mohamed Bin Turki Alsaud, was receiving medical treatment in Boston following a car accident that left him paralyzed. Today, Al Jader pleaded guilty in US District Court to visa fraud and harboring aliens for financial gain.
Assistant US Attorney S. Theodore Merritt said Al Jader falsely claimed on visa applications that she would pay the women $1400 or $1500 a month and require them to work no more than 40 hours a week. Instead, Merritt said that she paid them $300 a month for working long hours seven days a week. He said the women continued to work for Al Jader for 11 months after their visas expired.
US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay scheduled sentencing for Dec. 12.
Defense lawyers said federal sentencing guidelines recommend a sentence ranging from six to 12 months in prison for Al Jader, but they will urge the judge to order probation.
"It's obvious that the government no longer feels that the case is anywhere near as serious as they thought it was when they initially arrested her,'' said Al Jader's lawyer, Joseph Balliro, noting that the government had agreed to drop six counts involving domestic servitude and forced labor.
However, Assistant US Attorney Brian T. Kelly said prosecutors will urge the judge to sentence Al Jader to a year in prison, order her to pay a $40,000 fine and then deport her.
Posted by the Boston Globe City & Region Desk at 01:09 PM _________________ Need Law Enforcement Information? Click here for the Alipac Action Panel
TCV News
Wife of Saudi Prince Faces 10 Years Imprisonment in US
September 05, 2006 07:14 PM EST
by Jim Kouri - BOSTON -- The wife of one of the Saudi royal family living in Winchester, MA, pled guilty on Tuesday in federal court to charges of visa fraud and harboring of illegal aliens relating to her employment of two domestic servants. She faces 10 years in federal prison.
Hana Al Jader, age 40, of Winchester, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty before US District Judge Reginald J. Lindsay to two counts of visa fraud and two counts of harboring illegal aliens for private financial gain in connection with her employment of two women from Indonesia as domestic servants.
At today's plea hearing, the prosecutor told the court that Al Jader, who has resided in Winchester and Arlington since the mid-1990's with her invalid husband, Prince Mohamed Al Saud, brought the two Indonesian women to the United States in 2003 to work as domestic servants. In order to obtain visas for the women, she was required to submit to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia a copy of a work contract guaranteeing that the women would be paid $1,500 a month and would work no more than 8 hours daily.
However, when the women arrived in the United States, they were required to work -- cooking, cleaning, serving meals, caring for the severely disabled Prince, and serving at frequent parties -- routinely in excess of 8 hours per day. Al Jader paid them only $300 a month, which, at their request, was wired to their families in Indonesia.
In July 2003, Al Jader, through an attorney, filed applications with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services ("BCIS") for a six-month extension of the visas for her domestic servants. In connection with the extension application, she submitted another employment contract, which again represented falsely that the servants were each being paid $1,500 per month and working only eight hours per day.
Based on the false information provided in the contracts, the servants' visas were extended; however, when those extensions expired, Al Jader failed to apply for or obtain any additional extensions. Despite the fact that the servants' legal status had expired, Al Jader continued to employ them for the next 11 months at the same pay rate of $300 per month.
In exchange for Al Jader's plea of guilty to these charges, her agreement to pay restitution of approximately $98,000 to each of the servants, and her acceptance of a stipulated order of deportation to her native Saudi Arabia, the government agreed to dismiss pending charges of forced labor and document servitude against her.
Judge Lindsay scheduled sentencing for December 12, 2006 at 2:30 p.m. Al Jader faces a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison, to be followed by 3 years supervised release, and a fine of $250,000 on each of the four counts. _________________ Need Law Enforcement Information? Click here for the Alipac Action Panel
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