Opinion ID: 2972386
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The hearing on the merits

Text: A hearing on the merits of petitioners’ claims was held before an Immigration Judge (IJ) on April 29, 2002. At the asylum hearing, Mrs. Gilaj testified to a series of events beginning in 1997 and continuing through October of 2000 that she alleges proved a well-founded fear of persecution that would allow her to obtain asylum in the United States. The IJ determined that Mrs. Gilaj was generally credible. The testimony that she gave at the hearing is set forth below. Mrs. Gilaj was active in the Democratic Party in Albania before coming to the United States with her husband. In June of 1997, she was involved in the election campaign for the Democratic Party. She went through the villages in her region to campaign for Democratic Party candidates. She was threatened by the police during this period, as were her husband and son. Her husband was wounded in the neck with a knife during a physical confrontation with Socialists on election day, June 29, 1997. She remained active in politics after the June 1997 election. In September of 1998, the police searched her home for weapons. She was beaten during the search but suffered no serious injury. When she and her family asked the police for a search warrant, they replied that they did not need a warrant and that they could enter the house by force because they were Socialists who were going to make all of the Democrats suffer. At this time, her son was arrested, sent to jail for two days, and beaten. The next incident occurred in early April of 2000. Mrs. Gilaj was the co-organizer of an anti-government protest in the main plaza of the town of Shkoder. She had worked to increase the number of people who attended the demonstration by going around her village, talking to the women, and encouraging them to attend the demonstration. She spoke at the demonstration. Nobody was arrested at the demonstration, but that evening she and her family received phone calls at home from unidentified people threatening that the family would “pay dearly” for her speech at the demonstration. Several days after the protest, on April 11, 2000, two secret police officers came to the Gilaj home to question her about her work in the Democratic Party. Mr. Gilaj was not home at the time. The police started to threaten her and to ask about her son’s address in the United States. The police made “verbal threats like we gonna (sic) kill you right now, we gonna (sic) suffocate you right now.” They searched the house for weapons, tore up some of her notes, and “started to provoke [her] as a woman,” an apparent reference to a sexual assault or molestation. The police were touching her when two relatives came into the house. The police left after having been in the house for approximately thirty minutes. She was not arrested, jailed, or beaten as a result of this incident. No. 03-4307 Gilaj, et al. v. Gonzales Page 3 Another incident occurred on October 5, 2000. On that date, in the town of Koplik, thousands of people participated in a demonstration where Democratic Party members were protesting what they regarded as manipulation of elections by the Socialists. Mrs. Gilaj was one of the demonstrators in the crowd. She was arrested and jailed for two days. She was denied food during her detention. Mrs. Gilaj was one of twelve to fourteen people in her cell, and she heard later that fifty to sixty people had been arrested. Mrs. Gilaj was beaten by the police during this time. She sustained bruises but no serious injuries. While she was in jail, the police grabbed a cross from around her neck, threw it on the floor, told her to step on it, slapped her face when she bent over to retrieve it, and said that the Muslim majority would “disappear” all Catholics from Albania. After being released from jail, Mrs. Gilaj went to the health center in her village and received pills for the pain resulting from the beating. At the demonstration leading to Mrs. Gilaj’s detention, Mr. Gilaj sustained a leg wound when the police, who were beating the protestors, hit him with their boots. Although Mrs. Gilaj testified that her husband was not arrested at this time, Mr. Gilaj testified that he was arrested and jailed for two days. After Mrs. Gilaj’s release from jail, she went home and received a number of phone calls threatening to make her and her husband “disappear.” Shortly thereafter, she arrived in the United States with her husband after obtaining a visitor’s visa. Mrs. Gilaj believes that, if she were required to return to Albania, she would be persecuted, and perhaps killed, as a consequence of her activities prior to leaving Albania.