Asylum for People Persecuted for their Political Beliefs, February 2015

An engineer from Libya and his family were granted asylum by the DHS Asylum Office in February 2015 as a result of advocacy by Gregory Chase ’16 and Joseph Brown ’16.  Their client, T—, was a university professor in Libya under the Qaddafi regime.  He came to Connecticut in 2010 to study for his Ph.D.  A year after he arrived, Qaddafi fell and the country descended into chaos.  T—’s Facebook page became a popular discussion forum for the Libyan diaspora.  He frequently posted messages criticizing Islamist militias and defending political and religious tolerance.  As a result, terrifying threats were delivered to his parents and siblings in Libya, warning that T—is marked for death if he returns. 

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