BY BRIAN TAYLOR
Partisans of the Irish freedom struggle scored a victory March 27 when a U.S. immigration judge rejected Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) attempts to deport Irish independence fighter Brian Pearson back to Ireland. He was instead given political asylum.

Pearson, now a 45-year-old carpenter, was imprisoned in Northern Ireland for more than 10 years for his involvement in an Irish Republican Army (IRA) attack on a police barracks there.

Upon release in 1988, Pearson immigrated to the United States to avoid government persecution. Now 20 years after the original arrest, INS officials who say Pearson's time was served for a "criminal offense," want to deport him.

Pearson said that he was part of a movement facing "total occupation, where we were fighting for basic civil rights."

London has dominated Ireland for centuries. In 1969, British troops were sent to the northern part of the island in response to the rising civil rights movement by Irish nationalists, directly occupying northern Ireland for more than the last quarter-century.

Judge Phillip Williams ruled in favor of Pearson, explaining that bombings and other campaigns he carried out during that time were "political offense[s]" that were "in the context of a conflict and/or insurrection and was clearly in furtherance of the objectives of that conflict."

"The British lie was exposed today," Pearson said.

Gerry Adams, president of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, said March 28, "Justice has been done in the case of Brian Pearson.... It is the hope of Sinn Fein as well as Irish America that Brian Pearson's case will be the first victory. The other men facing similar legal battles can take heart from this decision. Justice has prevailed and hopefully will continue to do so in the remaining cases to be decided."

Meanwhile, the right-wing weekly The Sunday Telegraph in Britain attempted to slander Sinn Fein, claiming the "Irish terrorist group" supplied the detonator used in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City. The supposed source is a U.S. government informer. Adam called the accusation "preposterous rubbish."  
 
 
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