United States v. Uzair Paracha: Predatory Prosecution
In March 2003, FBI agents interrogated Uzair Paracha without a lawyer for days in their offices and in a hotel room in New York City. They then arrested him on a material witness warrant. Months later, the U.S. government charged Mr. Paracha with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, alleging that he had attempted to help a member of al-Qaida return to the United States. At trial, Mr. Paracha was denied the opportunity to seek live testimony from individuals imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay or otherwise cross-examine them, including the individual the government alleged he had helped. A jury found him guilty and the court sentenced him to 30 years.
In 2008, Mr. Paracha filed a motion for a new trial based on exculpatory statements made by those same individuals, which came to light after his trial. A decade passed, with no decision from the court. In January 2018, Mr. Paracha handwrote a letter to the court, asking it to take action on the long-pending motion. In July 2018, the court granted Mr. Paracha’s motion for a new trial, holding that the post-trial statements could have made a difference to the jury in determining Mr. Paracha’s guilt and that allowing his conviction to stand would be a “manifest injustice.”
In February 2019, CLEAR joined Mr. Paracha’s defense team at the request of family members. After months of negotiations led by CLEAR attorneys, the government dropped all its charges against Mr. Paracha, who agreed to relinquish his lawful permanent resident status in the United States. On March 13, 2020, Mr. Paracha flew home to Pakistan, where he now lives with his family, a free and innocent man after having spent seventeen years in the harshest federal prisons.