Opinion ID: 445617
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Eyewitnesses

Text: 89 The IJ and the majority discounted the testimony of all the witnesses except Laipenieks himself. As to the nine witnesses whose testimony was videotaped in the Soviet Union, the IJ found insufficient guarantees of trustworthiness. The Soviet hearing officer on occasion used prejudicial language, and limited the defense's cross-examination. From these facts, the IJ drew the inference, which the majority endorses, that the testimony was untrustworthy. The BIA, in contrast, held the testimony useful despite these problems at least to establish certain facts, such as the type and treatment of prisoners at the central prison. If this credibility determination were drawn from demeanor evidence, the IJ's interpretation would deserve special weight. The determination, however, was based not on demeanor but on facts about the Soviet procedures as well known to the BIA as to the IJ. Thus, we should defer to the BIA's finding that the deposition testimony credibly showed that people were imprisoned solely on the basis of communist beliefs, unless the shortcomings were so egregious that we can say as a matter of law that the depositions should be disregarded entirely. 90 Obviously it is difficult to find witnesses of events which occurred over forty years ago, at a location now under Soviet control. That the depositions were taken in Soviet-occupied Latvia may be reason for caution in evaluating the testimony. In this case, however, the manner of conducting these depositions does not warrant their exclusion. Under these circumstances, it was for the BIA to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses and the extent upon which their testimony could be relied. 91 Specifically, the BIA found that the following facts were established by the eyewitnesses' testimony and proved that individuals were persecuted by the LPP under the direction of the Nazi EK-2: 92 Edwards Virsis was imprisoned for over one year at RCP because he was suspected of being pro-Soviet. Edgars Rode was an athletics inspector on a government sports committee during the Soviet occupation of Latvia. There is no suggestion whatsoever that, as an athletics inspector, Rode was in any way involved in inflicting harm or violence on Latvians. Yet, he was imprisoned for approximately one and one-half years. Rode also testified that his fellow prisoners at RCP were held because they were Soviet sympathizers. Prisoner Carlis Smekerstans was released from RCP to work near a concentration camp upon the condition that he have nothing to do with communists, Jews, or any political activities. Nikolays Endelis was imprisoned at RCP and Salaspils concentration camp for approximately three years because he had been an activist and a Stakhanovist--working at his bicycle factory to simplify and improve their production methods. Again, there is no indication that these activities were in any way criminal. He also testified that among the prisoners at RCP were Komsomol members [persons who provided Latvian youngsters with training, indoctrination, and socialization to become model Soviet-communist citizens--which activities clearly do not rise to the level of criminal conduct]. Karlis Zvirgzds also was imprisoned at RCP and Salaspils concentration camp for three years. He had been a rural farmer and head of the local agricultural committee. He was arrested as a suspected Communist Party member and Soviet sympathizer, and was interrogated by the LPP as to whether he was a communist or Komsomol member. Juris Beikmanis was a Latvian farmer and communist activist who was a prisoner at RCP for several months. He testified that his fellow prisoners were held because they were communist activist [sic], giving as one example a prisoner who had been a local Party organizer. RCP prisoner Janis Otto Ignats testified that his fellow prisoners were political offenders, including Communist Party members, Komsomol members, Young Communist League members, communist activists and trade union members, as well as former Red Guards and militiamen. He defined activists as those involved with sports or cultural work. 93 The BIA also found that the testimony established that LPP interrogation techniques frequently included beatings with fists, blackjacks, or truncheons. Laipenieks admitted that during interrogation of prisoners he sometimes beat them with his hand to help the prisoners to talk. 94 Communist activity could lead not only to imprisonment at the Riga Central Prison, but also to execution, or to transfer to a concentration camp. One of the eyewitnesses, a Soviet sympathizer forced by a Nazi death threat to work as a Gestapo-LPP informer, testified that the role of the LPP was to liquidate the Communist Party and all other groups that were against the German Order. 95 To impeach the witnesses the IJ and the majority rely heavily on the various witnesses' inability to pick out Laipenieks' picture from a photo spread. The BIA did not draw as great an inference of untrustworthiness from this failure as did the IJ. Rather than discounting all of the witnesses' testimony, the BIA chose not to rely on the testimony as to identification of Laipenieks, but to accept testimony by those witnesses on other relevant issues. 2 96 Even if we were to ignore the standard of review and chose freely between the IJ's and the Board's inferences from the failure to identify, the Board's position is the better one of the two. The inability of the witnesses to recognize a photo of someone last seen forty years previously does not seriously impeach their other testimony. This is particularly true because Laipenieks' prominence as an athlete made him easy to identify at the time of the relevant acts. Moreover, because this is not demeanor evidence, the standard of deference to the BIA requires us to accept its inferences rather than the IJ's. Thus, these witnesses' testimony is also competent to establish that people were imprisoned solely on the basis of communist beliefs.