"How can we know who that is?" Mohsen Mirmehdi asked during a telephone interview from jail. "We cannot do our real estate business. We cannot travel to downtown Los Angeles. We have to always look over the shoulder. They can bring us back here anytime for anything. This is not freedom. They were containing us in a 30-mile prison."
It was clear that officials wanted the brothers to sign off on the conditions, Mohsen Mirmehdi said. "Our deportation officer . . . shouted, 'We are being nice to you guys. Now you are blowing your chance.' " Another official, he said, told them, "You could be having lobster tonight instead of peanut butter and jelly."
The Iranian-born Mirmehdi brothers, who have been held since October 2001, are taken back to the detention facility at the San Pedro Federal Processing Center in California.
(Photos Michael Macor -- San Francisco Chronicle)
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But Mohsen Mirmehdi, who had slipped on the brown shirt and gray pants he was wearing when he was arrested in October 2001, slowly took them off and put back on his prison blues. His brothers followed suit.
The Mirmehdis' sojourn in the United States began in 1978, when Mostafa, who goes by the name Michael, arrived as a student. He said he studied mechanical nuclear engineering at several universities, including the University of Oklahoma at Norman. His brothers joined him in the 1990s, and they attended protests against the Iranian government in Washington and Denver.
Their trouble started when they waited until the last possible moment before a 1998 deadline for Iranians to file for political asylum here. The brothers turned to attorney Bahram "Ben" Tabatabai, a U.S. citizen of Iranian descent, who advised them to sign a blank application, which he filled in with misspelled names and false information.
In November 1999, Tabatabai was arrested, accused of being part of a forgery ring that helped Iranians acquire visas and asylum in the United States. A U.S. attorney said one of his more important clients was the MEK.
The FBI said Tabatabai confessed that the Mirmehdis were connected to the MEK. He later recanted, saying agents pressured him into saying making the allegation.
The brothers had a lengthy stay in jail, but after testifying about their dealings with Tabatabai they were released on bond.
They were arrested again in October 2001, after the FBI raided an MEK safe house and found their names on a sheet of paper. Government officials publicized the alleged link at a news conference.
The MEK, which fought on Iraq's side in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department in October 1997. Several members of Congress have tried to have the MEK removed from the list. Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) spoke at an MEK rally the brothers are accused of attending in June 1997, and former attorney general John D. Ashcroft expressed support for the organization in 2000, while he was a senator.
Before leaving Iran, Mojtaba Mirmehdi said, he was arrested and tortured on suspicion that he belonged to MEK. "I said nothing. I said I was innocent, and they let me go," he said. Mohsen Mirmehdi said four cousins -- two men and two women -- were imprisoned and killed on the suspicion that they were part of the group.
"If I had gone to a rally in Iran, my native country, and went to jail, I'm sure they would torture me," he said.
Then he added: "But they wouldn't hold me this long. It's very saddening."
Now the brothers await word from ICE. They have spent about $150,000 on attorneys' fees, exhausting their savings. They sleep on bunk beds in a pod of about 40 people, and sit in front of the television to help pass time.
"During the day, I do some cleanup," Mohsen Mirmehdi said. "I get $1 a day."
He said he and his brothers have no love for the Iranian government but are not terrorists.
The federal government expressed doubt in their court hearings. "Could you tell us why, when you were in the United States, why did you participate in political demonstrations?" a judge asked Mohsen Mirmehdi, according to a transcript.
"I wanted to raise up the voice of the Iranian people in the world against the regime, and also I wanted to share the objection I have to the regime with the other people," he said.
When he leaves prison, Mohsen Mirmehdi said, he wants to speak out again.
"It is my right," he said.
