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Trapped by his past

Insisting a young man who robbed a bank in London 32 years ago had links to a guerrilla group, the powerful U.S. Homeland Security sends him packing to Eritrea - for good.
By JANE SIMS, FREE PRESS JUSTICE REPORTER


It's not every day a special agent from U.S. Homeland Security calls the Middlesex Crown attorney's office at the London courthouse.

Or that he would be asking about a 31-year-old crime.

Middlesex Crown attorney Geoff Beasley was intrigued when the caller was patched to him in March 2005 concerning a 1974 bank robbery.

A special agent wanted information about Berhe Mahrai, a 54-year-old Eritrean who had three businesses in the Los Angeles area. Homeland Security had detained him in Los Angeles. The agent wanted to check for possible terrorist links.

When Mahrai was a student in Dayton, Ohio, he had been convicted of robbing a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce branch in downtown London, the agent explained.

The money, the agent said, was earmarked for an insurgency called the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which was fighting for independence from Ethiopia during a lengthy civil war.

Mahrai had been sent back to Ethiopia by Canadian authorities but with a bit of skill and luck had ducked out of his deportation.

Instead, he had been living in the United States, establishing successful businesses and returning periodically to his home country, the now-independent Eritrea.

But his luck ran out on Feb. 17, 2005, when he was identified in a routine computer background check as an immigration offender while re-entering the U.S. at a Los Angeles airport.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needed to build a case to have Mahrai removed from the U.S., primarily because of his alleged involvement with the guerrilla organization. And with the added might given to the agency in the days after 9/11, it had Mahrai in its crosshairs.

Beasley promised to check the records, but there was nothing left in the Crown's office. He called both London and Ottawa police -- Mahrai had also robbed a bank in Ottawa-- and federal parole officials.

All that London police had were a few notebooks and some vivid memories.

By the time Beasley had approval to get more information, Mahrai had already waived his rights and agreed to return to his homeland.

And for the next few months, the Los Angeles businessperson would sit and wait in jail for his chance to go home.

* * * *

Mahrai was put on an airplane last September from California and sent back home to Eritrea for good.

With two American immigration officials with him, he was flown back to Eritrea after seven months in custody.

Homeland Security pointed to the arrest and removal as evidence that its enhanced security measures since the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, are keeping America safer.

"The lesson in this is that those who fail to reveal their true past can expect to experience the full weight of the law," John Salter, chief counsel for ICE in Los Angeles, said in a news release.

Homeland Security believed Mahrai had been part of the ELF. That was still a relevant piece of evidence in its investigation, even though Eritrea had become independent in 1991.

Bank robberies involving Mahrai in London, Toronto and Ottawa were linked to the organization's fundraising activities. But from the California detention centre where he was held, Mahrai denied any connection to the insurgent group.

"It (ties to the Eritrean guerrilla organization) was a lie. Nobody say that. It was the media or one person (who said) that," he said before his extradition.

"It was just crazy. We (he and Benian Kifle, the co-accused in the London robbery) wanted to get rich."

His frustration with the deportation process was palpable.

"Am I in America or a Third World country?" he asked. "I thought I was in Ethiopia and the Sudan."

* * * *

If Mahrai was worried about his residency status once he escaped deportation in 1976, he never let it stop him from continuing with his life in the U.S.

In 1976, he stepped off an airplane at LaGuardia Airport in New York and headed back to Dayton, Ohio.

His American wife had divorced him while he was serving his sentence in a Kingston prison.

He picked up a job at a Stop-N-Go convenience store, called himself James and worked there until 1979.

Then, he said, he pulled up stakes and went to Los Angeles.

He worked in a liquor store, then opened a restaurant. He was able to secure a liquor licence for the establishment.

His business grew and soon he had secured two liquor stores with the restaurant. His reputation grew within the Eritrean community. Jordan, his now 35-year-old daughter from another relationship, worked with him.

In 1987, he applied for a re-entry permit because his mother was ill in Eritrea and he needed to ensure his residency status should he leave for six months.

"They had a lot of documents on him from 1975, but they didn't have their file in order," said his lawyer, Jesse Moorman.

Instead of checking his background, his application was simply processed without question.

He was also able to renew his green card.

In 1991, with Eritrean independence, he began to travel back and forth more freely to his former country, spending several weeks at a time there.

The same year, he applied for naturalization in the U.S. Because of a staggering backlog of applications, he would wait 11 years before finding out he would be turned down.

In the meantime, he travelled freely. He married in Eritrea and has three young children there. He even took them to the U.S. several times.

Moorman said that, in theory, U.S. officials should have caught up with Mahrai long go.

"Now they did catch him and they're making a big fanfare of it," he said. "He's a nice man. He just did a crazy thing when he was young."

* * * *

In a letter sent to Mahrai on June 12, 2002, he was advised by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service his application for citizenship was denied because of his criminal convictions.

In June 2004, he tried again. This time, his case was sent to ICE.

The government agency knew where Mahrai was living and where he was working.

"We eventually would have got him," said Lou Rhodi, assistant special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the U.S. "He was one of the next on our list."

But it was Mahrai's February 2005 arrival in Los Angeles from Eritrea that lit up the computer screen. He was taken into custody and questioned about his alleged terrorism links.

Mahrai chose not to fight extradition and waived his rights.

In May 2005, just hours before he was to leave the U.S., he was arrested while in detention related to an assault charge laid against him in December 2004.

Jordan said her father had been in a scuffle with an unruly customer. He was supposed to appear in court in April, but missed the court date because he was incarcerated.

It took three more months before that charge was processed and his flight home was arranged.

* * * *

Unlike many illegal immigrants who find themselves on the way home, Mahrai is lucky. He has started businesses in Eritrea. He has a home and a family there

"This one is not so sad," said Moorman, who has represented countless immigration cases. "I'm really sorry to break up his life (in the U.S.), (but I've) had much more disturbing than this."

Jordan, who was frustrated with the time it took to remove her father from detention, said her father has paid for his crimes of 30 years ago.

"I don't like him to go this way," she said. "But in a way, (I'm) happy. He has friends and family."

* * * *

A telephone conversation with Mahrai while he was in custody awaiting deportation was brief and left many questions.

He didn't have a chance to say if he knew what happened to his fellow bank robbers in London, Ottawa and Toronto. He recalled the police officers in London had treated him well. Canadians, he said, "are beautiful people."

He sounded philosophical about his plight.

"I really love my country (Eritrea). It is a new country and I want to help build my new country, so I'm not really crazy to stay here (in the U.S.)," he said.

"Even though I love America -- don't get me wrong, I love this country, it gave me opportunity -- I always loved (Eritrea) and I just want to go there."

As for the robberies in London and the alleged ties to the ELF, he continues to deny them.

"I was a young man doing crazy things," he told The Free Press.

"I never wanted to hurt anybody. I'm a good human being."

The Series

Saturday: Two U.S. university students, originally from Ethiopia, are arrested after pulling off a bank job in London in April 1974. They claim to be linked to the Eritrean Liberation Front, a guerrilla group fighting for independence from Ethiopia.

TODAY: One of the robbers, Berhe Mahrai, serves time for his crimes in Ontario and gets on with his life in the U.S. Decades later, U.S. Homeland Security catches up with him.