by John Wheat Gibson
The Albanian who publicly announced the names of the assassins who killed Albanian Democratic Party leader Azem Hajdari will be deported to Albania, said Carl Rusnok, public relations officer for the Dallas district of the Department of Homeland Security.
The assassins will be waiting for him with sharpened knives, because on 5 September 2007 the Albanian newspaper Korrieri in Tirana, the capital, on its front page announced that Rrustem Neza, whom the headline called a “Witness of Murder of Azem Hajdari,” had been denied asylum in the US and was about to be returned to Albania. Additionally, reports were broadcast by Albanian television stations.
Rrustem Neza fled to the United States, but was prevented by his previous attorney from presenting the facts of his case when he appeared before an immigration judge to ask for asylum. As a result, the immigration judge denied his asylum application and he now is in immigration custody under a final order of deportation. His two brothers Xhemal and Ismet, who subsequently presented their cases to an immigration judge, both were granted asylum.
BICE deportation officer Kevin Czechowicz took Rrustem Neza to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport to deport him to Albania, but he pleaded for his life so loudly that airline officials would not let him board the plane. Czechowicz said that he will take Mr. Neza to the airport again, and will deport him. At present, Mr. Neza is detained by the DHS at the contract prison in Haskell, Texas.
To date, Mr. Neza never has been allowed to present the facts of his case to an immigration judge. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied his motion to reopen on account of his previous attorney’s ineffectiveness. The BIA did not doubt that Mr. Neza will be killed for his political affiliation when he is deported to Albania. Instead, the BIA said it would not reopen his case because more than 180 days had passed since its first decision.
A petition for review is pending in the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, but DHS could deport Mr. Neza before the 11th Circuit makes a decision. Another problem is that in the 11th Circuit Mr. Neza must prove by clear and convincing evidence that he would win his asylum case if it is reopened. But the Court of Appeals cannot receive any evidence except what the previous attorney submitted to the immigration judge. Yet, it was the previous attorney’s failure to submit the abundant evidence that the Court of Appeals now will not look at which prevented Mr. Neza from receiving a fair hearing and being granted asylum in the first place!
Desperately trying to save his brother’s life, Xhemal Neza has been talking to everyone who will listen about the danger to Rrustem. It was Rrustem’s brother Xhemal who told him the names of the killers, after Xhemal personally witnessed the machine-gunning of Hajdari and his bodyguards. At least one of the assassins was a police officer. Rrustem told the names of the killers to a crowd at a meeting in the Albanian city of Tropoje while Xhemal was unconscious in a hospital in the capital city Tirana, after Xhemal was injured by police fire during a demonstration protesting the assassination.
The assassins were associated with both the ruling Socialist Party and Hajdari’s rival for Democratic Party leadership Sali Berisha. Xhemal and Rrustem hid from the police with two of their cousins, both of whom were murdered before they could flee from Albania.
At the hearing on Rrustem’s asylum application in Miami, the immigration judge doubted that the cousins had been murdered. The official death certificates of both cousins and a newspaper account of the murder of one of them were available to prove the truth, but Rrustem’s attorney was unaware of them and did not show them to the immigration judge.
All pleadings, affidavits, and other evidence are available for inspection and copying at the office of Rrustem’s present attorney John Wheat Gibson. They include a detailed, sworn, account of the murder of Hajdari, and the course of Rrustem’s asylum application in the immigration court.
Attorney John Wheat Gibson’s telephone number is (214)748-6944. Xhemal Neza may be reached at (936)676-8460.
Texas Civil Rights Review 