In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 08-1093

SALEEM MUHAMMAD JAN,

Petitioner,

v.

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., Attorney General

of the United States,

Respondent.

On Petition for Review 

from the Board of Immigration Appeals. 

No. A95 925 138

ARGUED JULY 7, 2009—DECIDED AUGUST 6, 2009

Before POSNER, KANNE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. Saleem Muhammed Jan, a native of Pakistan, entered the United States in 1999 and overstayed

his visa. When immigration officials initiated removal

proceedings, Jan requested asylum and withholding of

removal based on his membership in a particular social

group, which he describes as Pakistanis who are threatened by government officials bribed to settle private
2 No. 08-1093

disputes. He also sought relief under the Convention

Against Torture (“CAT”). An immigration judge denied

his application and ordered him removed. The Board of

Immigration Appeals concurred in the IJ’s conclusion

and dismissed Jan’s appeal. Because the Board’s decision

was supported by substantial evidence, we deny Jan’s

petition.

All of Jan’s troubles began after a major customer of

his fabric exporting business, Musaib Fabrics, refused

to pay for a large shipment of fabric, citing poor quality.

Musaib, located in Karachi, had contracted in 1998 to

sell $1 million U.S. dollars worth of fabric to Prestige

Apparels, located in Qatar. The initial shipments of

fabric passed inspection, and Prestige’s bank in Qatar

released payment to Musaib’s banks in Pakistan after

each shipment. But around October 1998, after receipt

of the final shipment, Prestige rejected the fabric as substandard and refused to make further payment.

The following month Jan met with the management of

Habib Bank, one of Musaib’s banks in Pakistan, to discuss

his outstanding debts to the bank in connection with the

Prestige transaction. According to Jan, Habib’s management threatened to use their connections to corrupt

Pakistani officials to have him arrested for the debts he

owed the bank. But after further discussion, Habib’s

management backed off of their earlier threats and

decided to join a lawsuit that Jan brought in Qatar

against Prestige to collect payment. Jan and Habib Bank

in fact won their case in 1999, but two years later the

decision was reversed by Qatar’s highest court, which
No. 08-1093 3

ordered Musaib to refund $365,855 to Prestige for the

substandard fabric it sold. Shortly thereafter, Habib sued

Jan in Pakistan, seeking more than $200,000 for Musaib’s

outstanding debt from the Prestige deal.

After Prestige stopped payment to Musaib, Jan became

unable to pay his business debts, leading to indirect

threats instigated by his creditors against him. For instance, sometime in fall 1998, one of Musaib’s contractors,

Latif Textile, filed a complaint over an unpaid bill with

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (“FIA”), the

country’s national law enforcement agency. Jan in turn

was summoned to FIA’s Karachi office. At the FIA office,

Jan testified, he heard screams for help and saw bruised

and beaten people being led out of offices. According to

Jan, he met with an FIA agent named Baloch for half an

hour, during which time Baloch placed his revolver on

the table and told him to pay Latif Textile the $50,000

he owed. Jan testified that he interpreted Baloch’s

gesture as a threat. Two days after his meeting, Jan

visited Latif Textiles’s director, who agreed to stop complaining to the FIA as long as Jan demonstrated that he

would pay off his debt. But the Latif director parted

with the words “I will see you”—an ominous phrase,

according to Jan, that reflects a serious threat or warning.

The nature and scope of the FIA’s activities were addressed at Jan’s removal hearing by Kamran Rizvi, a

former Pakistani political activist now living in the

United States. Rizvi had served as a human-rights consultant to the Pakistani government for four years and

later founded a non-profit organization in Pakistan pro-
4 No. 08-1093

moting tolerance and nonviolence. Rizvi testified that the

FIA runs detention centers and has been implicated in

the torture of prisoners at those centers. He stated that,

because police corruption is rampant, individuals with

FIA connections pull strings by having agents use intimidation or threats of detention to coerce their adversaries to settle private disputes. When asked what

would happen if a person called into the FIA office did not

comply, Rizvi responded that the agent could place

that person in a detention center and order beatings or

torture. Without explanation, Rizvi went on to say that

90 percent of the people called into FIA offices are

detained and that Jan was lucky to avoid trouble after

his meeting with Baloch.

Jan’s business debts led to another unsettling incident in

late 1998, when his family members were allegedly ambushed by armed men while driving in Karachi. According

to Jan, the men demanded $12,000 in payment for

Jan’s business debts and threatened to kill him if they

were not paid. Jan’s family submitted and turned over

money and jewelry. The men’s identities were unknown,

though Jan suspects that they worked for Latif Textiles

or perhaps another of Musaib’s creditors. And the harassment continued. Jan claims that in the first half of 1999

he received threatening phone calls from people working

for Latif Textiles and other creditors. He said that

Musaib’s creditors also dispatched thugs to his house

and office to threaten him and his family with harm

unless he settled his debts.

In May 1999 Jan fled to the United States. He says

he overstayed his visa to avoid further confrontations
No. 08-1093 5

with his creditors in Pakistan. The following month his

wife and children moved to the United Arab Emirates to

live with her parents. Sometime later, after Jan had departed Pakistan for the United States, the manager of

Habib Bank went to Jan’s house in Karachi and told his

father that if Jan did not pay the money he owed to the

bank, “we will send the army people to your house

and take you away.” In 2000 Jan’s cousin visited him in

the United States and told him that the FIA was still

looking for him. Jan also points to country reports and

news articles as evidence that his creditors would

bribe officials to detain, torture, or even kill him upon

his return.

After a hearing, the IJ found that Jan did not qualify

for asylum because his fear of persecution arose from

a purely personal dispute and not on account of

any ground protected by the INA. The IJ also found

Jan ineligible for CAT relief because he failed to

establish that it was more likely than not that the FIA

would torture him if he returned to Pakistan, especially

in the absence of any harm after his meeting with

Baloch. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) subsequently dismissed Jan’s appeal. The BIA found Jan

ineligible for asylum because he failed to adequately

describe a particular social group. And because Jan

failed to satisfy the statutory burden required for

asylum, the BIA concluded that he could not meet the

higher standard for withholding of removal—a clear

probability of persecution. Finally, the BIA upheld the

IJ’s conclusion that Jan was not eligible for CAT relief

because he had not shown that he would be tortured if

he returned to Pakistan.
6 No. 08-1093

In his petition for review, Jan first argues that the

BIA and IJ erred in concluding that he would not be

tortured by Pakistani government officials upon his

return. In support, he points to the 1998 ambush on his

family, the documentary evidence of police corruption

in Pakistan, and portions of Rizvi’s testimony. As further

evidence that he would be tortured if returned to

Pakistan, Jan notes his encounter with Baloch, as well as

Pakistan’s “systematic problem” of police torture.

To receive protection under CAT, an individual must

prove it more likely than not that he would be tortured

if he returns to the country of removal. See 8 C.F.R.

§ 208.16(c); LaGuerre v. Mukasey, 526 F.3d 1037, 1040

(7th Cir. 2008); Prela v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 515, 519 (7th

Cir. 2005). Torture must be inflicted by or with the

consent of a public official. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.18(a)(1);

Boci v. Gonzales, 473 F.3d 762, 768 (7th Cir. 2007).

Here Jan did not prove a likelihood that he would be

tortured upon return by Pakistani government officials.

There is no evidence that the government was behind

either the 1998 ambush of Jan’s family or the other

threats made against Jan at his home and office. Further,

the country reports and news articles on police corruption in Pakistan are too general and vague to suggest

that Jan in particular would face torture. See Ayele v. Holder,

564 F.3d 862, 871 (7th Cir. 2009). The only concrete

example of government intimidation was Baloch’s brandishing the gun in his meeting with Jan, but even in

that case Baloch had no further contact with Jan. Nor is

there any evidence that Pakistani government officials
No. 08-1093 7

contacted Jan or his family during the past ten years.

Thus, the evidence does not compel a finding that Jan

would be tortured if he returns to Pakistan.

Jan next challenges the BIA’s conclusion that he did not

identify an appropriate social group. He characterizes his

social group as “persons threatened by corrupt officials of

the [FIA] in Pakistan.” This court has explained that “a

characteristic that defines a ‘social group’ within the

meaning of the immigration laws ‘must be one that

the members of the group either cannot change, or

should not be required to change because it is fundamental

to their individual identities or consciences.’ ” Orejuela v.

Gonzales, 423 F.3d 666, 672 (7th Cir. 2005) (internal citation

omitted); Lwin v. I.N.S., 144 F.3d 505, 512 (7th Cir. 1998).

Jan’s indebtedness, however, is not an immutable characteristic because it is not innate or fundamental to his

identity. See Cruz-Funez v. Gonzales, 406 F.3d 1187, 1191-92

(10th Cir. 2005) (“Being indebted to the same creditor

(unscrupulous or not) is not the kind of group characteristic that a person either cannot change or should not

be required to change.”).

The petition for review is DENIED.

8-6-09