Court saves tortured Nigerian from deportation

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(10-26) 13:18 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Immigration officials who ordered the deportation of a Southern California woman to Nigeria told her she could avoid torture in her homeland - where police had repeatedly raped and beaten her decades earlier - if she refrained from dissident political activity.

That prompted an indignant ruling Tuesday from a federal appeals court in San Francisco, which said the law protects both free speech and the right to be free from brutality.

Josephine Edu "cannot be forced to choose between her conscience and torture," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 decision shielding her from deportation.

Edu, 47, who lives in the Los Angeles area, entered the United States in 1989 and became a legal resident in 1993 after marrying a U.S. citizen. But she was ordered deported after being convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in 2002 for slashing her work supervisor with a piece of glass, the court said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/26/BA0U1G29VG.DTL