US judge halts deportation to Egypt

A federal judge ordered a halt to the deportation of an Egyptian who says he fears that he will be tortured if returned to his homeland after his release from a Pennsylvania prison.

US District Judge Thomas Vanaskie said on Thursday that Sameh Khouzam made "a credible showing" that he had been tortured in Egypt, and the US government could not deport him on the basis of diplomatic assurances without court review.

"In light of the government's refusal to expose the Egyptian diplomatic assurance to any sort of impartial review, the government may not proceed with the removal of Khouzam," wrote Vanaskie, a judge with the court's Middle District of Pennsylvania in Scranton.

The judge also ordered the release of Khouzam under "reasonable conditions of supervision."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hailed the decision, calling it the first of its kind.

"This is a significant victory for due process and the rights of all people -- citizens or not -- to be free of torture," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said in a statement.

Justice Department officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

EGYPTIAN ASSURANCES

Egyptian officials say Khouzam is a convicted murderer who should be returned to face justice.

US earlier this year agreed to hand him over, saying they had been assured that he would be treated humanely upon his return.

Lawyers Khouzam told Vanaskie in August that such assurances were meaningless and that the Coptic Christian would almost certainly be tortured if sent back to the overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

Government said the court must defer to the executive branch's determination that Egypt's assurances are sufficient.

They also said the case must be put in the broader context of relations between the US and Egypt.

"Not even the president of the United States has the authority to sacrifice ... the right to be free from torture" on the altar of foreign relations, Vanaskie wrote in a footnote in his 53-page ruling.

Khouzam convicted in absentia of killing a woman, but Vanaskie said in ordering his release that such a conviction did not establish a threat to the community in the US.

He cited an affidavit saying that in Egypt such convictions are routinely made after review of a file and are often overturned in a new trial.

Attorneys Khouzam, who is being held in York County Prison, deny that he killed anybody, saying Egypt has never produced a body or an autopsy report.

Khouzam arrested when his plane landed in New York in February 1998 and he spent the next eight years in US prisons. Another federal judge granted him a "deferral of removal" in 2000 under an international treaty that bans deportation to a country where torture is likely.

Khouzam, 38, won a second US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2004 and was released last year. Federal immigration officials took him into custody again in May.

REFUSAL TO CONVERT

Khouzam's lawyers say he was detained, beaten and sodomized by Egyptian authorities after he refused to convert to Islam. They say he escaped from a hospital, went straight to the airport and got on a plane to the US.

While was in the air, Egyptian officials called US officials and said Khouzam was wanted for killing a woman, and the US canceled his visa.

"The issue in this case does not concern any right of Khouzam to remain in the United States," Vanaskie wrote. "The right at stake here is to be free from torture."