Is This Man a Terrorist? (Pittsburgh Pulp Magazine Cover Story)

Is This Man a Terrorist?

Beaten, drugged and jailed: the strange story of Getu Berhanu Tewolde

By Jonathan Barnes
Photos by Shawn Brackbill

"Freaks!" yelled some passersby in Ozzy Osbourne t-shirts, hanging out the windows of their car and gawking as they drove by in rush-hour traffic. Cars screeched and halted, spewing out fumes that simmered in the humidity. Pedestrians walked around and at times walked through the peaceful protest of about two dozen people, and at least one passerby seemed angry that the collection of clerics, labor leaders, African-Americans and other activists had the temerity to assemble.

A slight breeze didn't take the edge off the protest, and maybe it was the heat that made the authorities so antsy. The group had been assembling across the street from the Greyhound bus station for 10 minutes when Vista Hotel security guards approached them.

Asking the organizers what was going on, the guards were given polite responses and went on their way. That left the few dozen activists to their protest of what they feel was ugly treatment by the Pittsburgh Police of Getu Berhanu Tewolde on his arrival in Pittsburgh on February 1. While traveling from Washington, D.C. to Denver, Getu, an Ethiopian immigrant, was arrested at the Greyhound station downtown. He was charged with making terroristic threats, causing and risking a catastrophe and aggravated and simple assault. This all occurred as a result of an incident during a layover in Pittsburgh.

Gathered downtown around the corner of 11th and Liberty on Thursday, June 13 during the dinner rush hour, activists from nine organizations and three churches toted signs reading "Free Getu," and chanting the same. By turns, they stood at a makeshift podium on the sidewalk to hammer the message of the grave wrong done to Getu.

"There's an old saying in labor -- that an injury to one is an injury to all," said John Lambiase, president of district six of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America. "Getu is different from the authorities, he is not different from the people. People of integrity do not beat people, do not drug people and abuse power."

As the speakers took their turns at the podium, the obvious theme of freedom of speech and the less obvious notions of freedom of space and movement emerged.

During what should have been a brief stop in Pittsburgh on February 1, Getu brushed against a Greyhound employee, Angela Street, while returning to his seat at the end of the stop. Street yelled accusations at him and the driver told Getu to get off the bus, according to Getu. Once he was inside the bus station, someone ordered Getu to sit. He refused to sit and tried to calm the crowd that was gathering around him. A police officer was called and asked Getu to sit, but because he didn't identify himself as an officer and Getu didn't see any badge, he refused. The policeman attacked and beat him, according to Getu, "disarming" Getu of the pen he was holding in his palm.

This story has been told several times, but in the beginning many just saw quick clips of Getu on television and no doubt many thought he must be guilty. He was yelling crazy, terrorist-sounding stuff on a Greyhound bus, reportedly things like "I'm Jesus" and "the Lord of Lords asked me [to choose] life or death" and "Americans are going to die." He'd had the crap kicked out of him by the police. He was a foreigner, and an African at that. If we got a dozen more like him, some people certainly thought, it'd be a good start.

But such knee-jerk reactions to this gray situation, where it seems there's plenty of blame to spread around, might be potentially as destructive as accepting carte blanche Getu's version of events.

At the busy corner last week, the rumble of traffic and windy conditions intermittently drowned out the unamplified voices of the speakers, and at times it seemed they were preaching to themselves, as protesters sometimes do.

Amnesty International Pittsburgh's Pamela Jordan strode to the podium and declared Getu had been denied due process and subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. "The conditions of Getu's confinement were egregious," she said. "Given only two hours a week to leave his cell. The [forced] medication, in combination with his solitary confinement" constitute cruel and unusual punishment, she said.

While many go to jail because of drugs, Getu was detained partly through the aid of mind-altering substances. Local authorities intentionally hopped him up on goofy pills, he said.

After his beating, Getu was placed on Disciplinary Housing Status at the Allegheny County Jail. He was tucked into the Mental Health pod under 24-hour solitary confinement and given eight pills a day without a behavioral clinic examination. He was allowed only two hours per week to leave his cell and shower and couldn't meet with a public defender because he was in solitary confinement, according to the Free Getu Coalition's web site, www.freegetu.org.

The incident that led to Getu's arrest might have been avoided if a few jingoistic idiots hadn't felt threatened by this 5-foot-2-inch, 125-pound stranger, others in the rally said. Mary Zimmerle, an organizer of the gathering and a member of the Zi activist organization, called Getu's arrest "an example of unrestrained hysteria. When we treat people who are different as the other, we dehumanize them. This leads to horrible consequences."

Just after she spoke the words, a third carload of hecklers passed by. This group was wearing dirty workmen's clothes, and they sounded like they'd been drinking. "You suck!" they yelled, flipping the protesters the bird.

Pittsburgh NAACP president Tim Stevens wasn't swayed by the catcalls. "Part of patriotism is a commitment to make our nation better than it is," he said. "It is trouble when someone comes to our city and their first experience is handcuffs. That is a sad commentary."

As if to underscore the point, a couple of Pittsburgh Police officers rolled up in a car and started asking questions. "Everybody has a right to assemble, as long as people can pass by on the street," one of the officers said, and the two left.

Stevens picked up where he'd stopped without missing a beat, jumping back into his solo riffs with a jazzman's flair. "Obviously we have to be about protecting our nation. But we also have to protect what we are as a nation. We don't have to be intimidated because a couple people sat on the cement."

Getu's trial was postponed until March 15 because he had to be cleared by the behavior clinic due to the felony charge. After getting pressure from the Free Getu Coalition and the ACLU, Getu received an exam and a lawyer visited within the week of his preliminary hearing. He passed the exam, moving his case forward and leading to his release on bail.

The "simple assault" charge was dropped at the March 15 preliminary hearing. The "causing and risking a catastrophe" charge was dropped as well, but a second "terroristic threat" charge was added before Getu's formal arraignment on May 20. A pre-trial conference was scheduled before deadline, on Wednesday, June 19, during which Judge John Zatolla was to set a trial date.

In the meantime, Getu is sorting out his feelings.

Meeting Getu gives you a sense of who was wronged. The soft-spoken man bears little resemblance to the images of him captured on the local "breaking news" television segments, his face puffy and his eye blackened from the beating. He said last week that he was amazed by the support of so many Pittsburghers. On the one hand, he said in soft, sometimes halting English, Pittsburgh has some aggressive people by which he clearly means the officers who arrested him. On the other, he added, "I didn't expect that Pittsburgh had such kind people" as his supporters.

He attributed the ordeal to the fact that he looks different from many Americans. "On the bus when the woman swore at me, it was because I looked different," he said. "I even said sorry."

Why charge Getu with making terroristic threats? Contacted after the demonstration, Allegheny County district attorney's office spokesman Mike Manko would not speculate on what led police to charge Getu, deferring questions to Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "It was a police investigation, you'd have to ask them," Manko said.

Getu's supporters have asked the district attorney to drop the rest of the charges against him, but Manko was guarded on the question. "I'm not going to discuss whatever strategy we have before a case goes to trial," he said.

And though the tide of media opinion has turned in favor of Getu, Pittsburgh Police officials tell a far different story of the incident that led to Getu's arrest.

"In essence, Mr. Tewolde was in a bus station and there was an incident between him and another person on the bus," said Zone 2 commander Bill Valenta. "At some point in time, Mr. Tewolde said everybody on the bus is going to die. The police officer arrived in full uniform and Mr. Tewolde proceeded to attack him with a pen. It was the behavior of Mr. Tewolde that dictated his response. He chose to act in an aggressive manner and attacked our officer."

The incident led police to evacuate the bus station building, to search the building for bombs and to call in the FBI's local counter-terrorism team, Valenta said. "We probably had the involvement of 50 to 60 personnel hours, all because of this guy becoming upset on the bus."

Valenta said he is bothered by the media attention that has depicted Getu as an innocent. He also takes umbrage at the suggestion that he would allow his officers to brutalize anyone. "We have written statements by 10 people who witnessed [Getu] going off. I oversee 120 police officers and ensure that they follow the law the right way. I'm very comfortable with what we did, from start to finish."

Given the fact that the Pittsburgh Police Department is under a federal consent decree instituted in 1997 due to police misconduct, it's easy to see why African-Americans in Pittsburgh might be wary of what police say. Many citizens aren't aware that the consent decree is in place, though it is meant to help them, and others don't believe it will work. Despite widespread resentment of the decree among police officers, and rampant mistrust of police officers among African-Americans, city officials are negotiating an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that would end the consent decree this summer, though there is a backlog of cases that the city's Office of Municipal Investigations has not dealt with.

The office was created from the former Office of Professional Standards and was physically moved out of police headquarters to facilitate the filing of complaints. But given that the consent decree was forced upon the city due to a long history of local police abuses that resulted in the deaths of Johnny Gammage, Maneia Bey and others, many people have little patience for OMI's backlog of cases. To the injured party, justice delayed always seems to be justice denied.

Even if what Pittsburgh Police officials say about Getu's case is true, the fact that he was detained for several weeks and drugged in a prison mental health facility should be cause for alarm, even among those officers who say Getu was treated fairly. It seems axiomatic that people, native or non-native, shouldn't get lost, Josef K.-like, in a trial put off forever by inscrutable bureaucrats.

Comments:

 

Although this article is very thorough and discusses some of the history of Pittsburgh's police brutality problems, one important detail was left out: Getu was cleared by the FBI, but arrested anyway because of the “totality of the circumstances”, according to Commander Valenta (Fox 53 10 O'clock News broadcast on February 1).

Bus-ted (Pittsburgh City Paper Feature Story)

(available at https://web.archive.org/web/20021027115742/http://www.pghcitypaper.com/nz61902.html)

NEWS FEATURE

Bus-ted
Post-Sept. 11 paranoia may be what landed Getu Tewolde in jail for six weeks over a bus-station fracas

Getu Tewolde is able to laugh -- a little -- today about his six weeks in the Allegheny County Jail this past winter, where he says his mistreatment included being medicated against his will. On June 19, he will finally learn his trial date on charges of making terroristic threats, aggravated assault and resisting arrest, all for a February incident that was, he says, a simple misunderstanding -- one that, in post-Sept. 11 America, can get a legal Ethiopian immigrant with heavily accented, uncertain English imprisoned.

On the early morning of Feb. 1, Tewolde was traveling from his home in Washington, D.C., to surprise his uncle in Denver with a visit. His carry-on luggage was four pieces of pita bread and a pen. But during a 12-minute layover he bumped into the night manager at the Greyhound station Downtown and hasn’t been able to leave the city since.

Today, Tewolde has difficulty understanding some questions and answering others. He looks American, in a jean jacket, dress pants, brown shoes and a button-down shirt with two pens in the breast pocket -- much the same as he looked on the Greyhound bus. But listening to him, it is hard to imagine how well he was able to communicate during an incident that eventually drew a crowd, the police, the bomb squad and the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Tewolde’s shoulder and chest struck Greyhound employee Angela Street as he re-entered the bus during a layover, he explains. He is a small man -- 5’2”, about 130 pounds -- but the bus aisle was crowded. “I just asked her right away to forgive me,” Tewolde says. “She left the bus and right away the driver told me to get off the bus. I was very shocked why he said it.”

Asked to sit down inside the station, Tewolde refused; he felt he had done nothing to warrant ejection or suspicion. Confronted by a crowd, he protested and tried to explain himself. Witnesses told police Tewolde mentioned religious topics or threats against America. “I actually say something to calm them down,” he counters. He is not certain of his exact words. He might have spoken about religion, he allows; born to an Orthodox Christian family, Tewolde now believes in a Creator although not in a particular faith, but the subject interests him. He was trying, he says, to allude to the atmosphere of suspicion in America today.

Attempting to duplicate what he said at just past 7 a.m. that February morning in the bus station, he stumbles over words in English, though he is perfectly calm: “Why we are hating each other since there is life?” he says he told the crowd. “Why are we choosing the way of [these] days?” But there is still one phrase he says he told the crowd that is unmistakable: “Why are you hitting?”

When the first police officer, Brian Sellers, arrived, he had already received two calls about Tewolde -- the first, according to his police report, about a “disorderly male,” the second that “the male was getting more violent.” Street, he says, claimed Tewolde had pushed her “several times.” Sellers found Tewolde “irritated and yelling,” saying “that people were going to die.” The officer hip-tossed Tewolde to the ground after he refused to put his hands behind his back. Then, Sellers says, Tewolde pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and attempted to stab him. Sellers punched Tewolde several times in the head and face, handcuffed him and placed him in the police car.

Tewolde, for his part, says he did not recognize that Sellers was a police officer -- saw no badge, no belt with gun and handcuffs, and no hat; he never heard Sellers identify himself. “I was unconcentrating,” Tewolde says. “I[t] was a very short time” for an officer to have arrived, and Tewolde was surprised. He was trying to protect his pen, he adds, not wield it as a weapon. “That’s when I knew he was police,” he says, “when I was handcuffed.”

Even though the bomb squad determined the bus wasn’t in danger and the FBI’s terrorism task force ruled the threat from Tewolde “negligible,” he was on his way to jail.

ANOTHER THREAT” read the caption under the Fox 53 news video of a small, dark man being led into a police van on Feb. 1. Carnegie Mellon University engineering researcher Saleh Waziruddin was watching the news that night and remembers the image. Waziruddin, 24, of Shadyside, is a member of the CMU activist group Zi, which has tried to assist in several other local post-Sept. 11 arrests involving terrorism accusations. He contacted Tewolde in jail and formed the Free Getu Coalition of local groups working for his release (www.freegetu.org).

The coalition is also led by Peter Shell, 38, of Squirrel Hill, a self-employed computer musician and former CMU employee who describes himself as “a campus troublemaker from way back.” Shell met Waziruddin in 1995 while working on a campus campaign seeking justice for Jonny Gammage, the black motorist who had died during a traffic-stop encounter with white Brentwood Borough police.

Seated beside Tewolde in an empty CMU classroom, Shell and Waziruddin still seem amazed at what happened to Tewolde.

“All he had was four pieces of pita,” Waziruddin marvels.

“And a very dangerous pen,” Shell adds. The Coalition is hoping the pen is mightier than the sword: They posted his bail and are holding pickets and gathering letters urging District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. to drop or at least explain the charges. Waziruddin says the DA’s office is considering a meeting; Mike Manko, Zappala’s spokesperson, says he has never heard of the coalition’s request.

“When I was in prison I was waiting [for] just a kind of help that came from anywhere,” says Tewolde. Without money even for stamps and without a single relative realizing he had set out on a journey (or knowing which state Pittsburgh might be in, Waziruddin says), Tewolde nearly missed learning about the coalition, too. It took weeks for him to connect with the group formed to help him, especially since he claims that he was placed in isolation in the jail’s mental health ward, given several kinds of drugs and let out for only two random hours each week to shower and attempt a phone call -- when the coalition’s contact person may or may not have been home.

Waziruddin finally got on Tewolde’s official visitors list and saw him at the end of February. Even then, Tewolde wasn’t able to communicate very well. His memory of jail is still not clear, thanks to the medications he says were given to him involuntarily.

“They force me to inject” once, Tewolde says, “four or five polices were over there and they force.” He was later given pills for about two weeks -- antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, according to the misspelled drug names he was given by a prison worker -- but he says he never knew what they were, or why he had to take them, and they made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach. “I was afraid to refuse because of my experiences with the injection,” he says. He was able to stop taking the pills only when a magistrate ordered him to be seen by the jail’s behavioral clinic, in time for him to plead not guilty at his March 15 hearing.

Bruce Dixon, head of the county Health Department, which oversees mental health care at the jail, is unfamiliar with the case but says, “Nobody has a legal authority to force anyone to take medications” in county prison. “In all honesty [prison workers] may have been dogmatic in what they said to [Tewolde]. There may have been a communication problem.” It is unusual but not unheard of for someone to have been evaluated by the jail’s behavioral clinic, Dixon adds; usually the unit, an arm of the courts, evaluates prisoners’ competence to stand trial.

Tewolde’s pro bono lawyer, Mike Healey of the Downtown firm Healey, Davidson and Hornack, is “concerned that [the case] is a reflection of some post-Sept. 11 hysteria or overreaction. Does it reflect a tendency to target immigrants or persons of color for arrest and suspicion of detention?” Tewolde is hoping the charges can be dismissed, if not at his June 19 hearing then sometime before the trial, but he realizes one factor may have caused his arrest in the first place and may be driving the process still: He may have been mistaken for an Arab or a Muslim.

His native country, Ethiopia, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia, is neither. It is a place whose military government he tried hard to escape, efforts that landed him in jail several times, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and forced to join the military before escaping to a Yemen refugee camp for nearly eight years.

“It’s about the same experience here,” he says, turning away to smile.

At least a dozen local social justice groups form the Free Getu Coalition. A recent coalition press conference in front of the Greyhound bus station finds Tewolde standing anonymously in the circle of supporters as speaker after speaker calls for justice. He seems delighted at the speeches, and can hardly repress a smile at the mention of his name, or when a sign calling for his freedom is lifted. If he notices the disappointing lack of television coverage, he doesn’t mention it.

“At every court date we’ve had a picket,” Waziruddin tells the group defiantly, “and at every court date we’ve had a charge dropped.”

“What happened to Getu has made none of us safer,” adds a fellow member of the CMU activist group Zi, Mary Zimmerle. Molly Rush, head of the Thomas Merton Center, notes that when Tewolde visited her East Liberty organization she left him alone in the building’s kitchen and returned to find him sweeping the floor.

As Tim Stevens, head of the local NAACP chapter, moves forward to speak, a police wagon pulls up behind him. Three officers get out. The crowd eyes them warily as they shoo protestors off concrete planters owned by the office building next door and ostensibly make certain the sidewalk is passable.

“I didn’t know if we were being intimidated,” Stevens says as the police leave. “It is troubling when somebody comes to our city, their first 12-minute experience is [being] handcuffed.” Stevens hopes, he says, “we don’t have to feel intimidated when we assemble to talk about intimidation, because a couple of folks are sitting on some cement -- please!”

Then Stevens realizes that Tewolde has been standing silently in the crowd for the past 45 minutes. “I didn’t know it was him!” Stevens says. “He looks threatening as hell to me. I thought I was a small guy.”

Finally, Tewolde himself gets a chance to speak. His voice is entirely drowned out by buses and another police motorcycle passing. But he continues speaking. He doesn’t seem to notice the irony. And he has yet another pen in his shirt pocket the entire time.

writer: MARTY LEVINE

Comments:

 

1. Receptionists at DA Zappala's office acknowledged on Monday, June 10, that the DA's office did receive the Coalition's letter requesting a meeting, and that the DA would have seen it by the next morning.

2. Getu was given pills for five weeks, from sometime during or after his first week in prison until his release on bail, even after Getu had successfully passed the Behavior Clinic exam.  The Behavior Clinic exam was ordered on February 11, and is supposed to be administered within 72 hours.  As of a month later, at the Coalition's formation on March 11, there was no sign that Getu would be getting the exam or be allowed to see a lawyer.  The Coalition's intervention through the ACLU lead to an exam on March 13 (two days before his March 15 preliminary hearing) which he passed. Getu was still given drugs after the evaluation, but he was successfully able to refuse them at that time.  At other times he felt pressured to take the drugs because of the force used with his initial injection, because of guards accompanying the nurses, and because he was ordered to swallow the pills by staff.  From the beginning of the administration of the pills Getu doubted that the pills were justified, felt sick from taking them, and did not want them.

3. What Getu told the crowd was “Why are you hating?”(the last sentence on paragraph #6) not “hitting”.

Zi Position Statement on Case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde

Delivered at the Free Getu Coalition Press Conference on June 13, 2002:

 

Since September 11, Americans have been asking themselves about the need to choose between “homeland security” and civil rights, between suspending the judicial process and using reason to distinguish actual danger from imagined threats.  The case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde shows that this is a false choice – what is being done in the name of counter-terrorism today has nothing to do with security or vigilance, because what happened to Getu has not made any of us safer.  Instead, it has everything to do with fear and hysteria, because we convince ourselves to be afraid of people who we think are different from us.

All Getu had to do to be considered a threat to “civilization” and “democracy” was accidentally brush up against a manager on a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh.  When Getu apologized, the manager immediately treated Getu as a threat, and the police were called.  The situation was labeled a Class I Bomb Threat, and the Bomb Squad, SWAT Units, and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force were called.  Getu left the bus when ordered by the driver.  At the station he was approached by a police officer who did not identify himself or show a badge.  Getu says that the man looked like he was out to attack someone rather than investigate the facts.  When the man ordered Getu to sit, Getu refused -- the officer's first actions were to physically attack Getu, giving him a black eye and “disarming” him of a pen he was holding away from the officer.

               

Of course, the police did not find any bomb at the Greyhound station, and the FBI cleared Getu and refused to charge him.  The Pittsburgh Police arrested him anyway -- because of the “totality of the circumstances,” according to Commander Valenta.  This admission shows that what really happened here is not vigilance against terrorism, where objective facts are used to find criminals.  Instead, people feared Getu because he seemed different from them.  They thought they would be safer if Getu was beaten up and locked away in jail.  So what has happened here is not an example of reasonable security measures, but unrestrained hysteria.  Getu maintains he neither said nor did anything threatening.  Even though no explosives were found, and the FBI cleared him, the Pittsburgh Police thought he should be arrested anyway.

 

When we treat people who we think are different from us as the “other” and as the “enemy,” we dehumanize them.  This leads to horrible consequences, where we treat others in ways we would never tolerate for “ourselves.”  In prison, Getu was treated as less than human.  He was kept in 24-hour solitary confinement, forced to take heavy doses of psychiatric drugs that were unjustified, and denied visits from a lawyer until the Free Getu Coalition and ACLU intervened.  This is not meting out justice or incarcerating a criminal -- it is abuse.

 

The courts, which we are told weigh the evidence and offer due process, were going to let Getu slip deeper into this nightmare.  They've done it twice before here in post 9/11 Pittsburgh.  An art student who was arrested at the airport for having an Exacto knife went through a similar experience and had to plea bargain to leave the country even though there is no evidence that he is a terrorist.  Another man was arrested at the train station for asking why bags were not being checked by security as someone could bring a bomb -- he faced similar charges as Getu, but plead guilty because he thought he would be treated worse if he fought what was happening to him. A system that can allow these people to be victims in this way is not a system of justice, but a system bent on prosecuting and persecuting as much as possible those who look or act “different.”

 

If we in Pittsburgh, and in the US, do not see that what is happening today is not about security but about racial fears and war hysteria, and that criminalizing people based on fear does not make us any safer, then there will be more Getus.  Zi asks that you join the Free Getu Coalition in spreading awareness of this case and the pattern of abuse it exposes, as well as in demanding that all charges against Getu be dropped.  Work with us to change our society.

(From Pittsburgh Tribune-Review https://archive.triblive.com/news/ethiopian-pleads-not-guilty-to-charges/)

Ethiopian pleads not guilty to charges

THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW | Tuesday, May 21, 2002 12:00 p.m.

An Ethiopian immigrant accused of threatening people and fighting with police at the Greyhound bus station, Downtown, in February pleaded not guilty Monday at a formal arraignment.

Getu Tewolde, 35, pleaded not guilty to charges of making terroristic threats, aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. A charge of risking a catastrophe was dropped.

During the arraignment, about 15 members of the Free Getu Coalition rallied outside City Court on First Avenue, said Saleh Waziruddin, co-organizer of the coalition.

Tewolde was traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to Denver on Feb. 1 to visit his uncle when he was involved in an altercation with a Greyhound manager. Pittsburgh police accused him of saying, "People are going to die," when he reboarded his bus following a stopover here.

At the terminal, a Greyhound manager confronted Tewolde, who became violent, police said. Tewolde also struggled with police and pulled a small pocket knife, according to police. An officer, Brian Sellers, punched Tewolde in the face to disarm and subdue him. FBI agents questioned Tewolde but didn't file charges.

Tony Norman's Four-Part Series in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette About the Campaign to Free Getu Tewolde

 (Four-part series in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Tony Norman covering the Free Getu Coalition's campaign to defend Getu Tewolde)

Misplaced vigilance greets a stranger to our city

Friday, April 26, 2002

Getu Berhanu Tewolde never intended to take advantage of Pittsburgh's hospitality suites at the Allegheny County Jail. When he boarded a cross-country bus in Washington, D.C., for Denver, the Ethiopian immigrant didn't even know Pittsburgh was one of the stops along the way.

As fate would have it, what was supposed to be a 12-minute layover at the Greyhound station Downtown on the morning of Feb. 1 became a six-week stay in the psychiatric ward of the county jail.

Held without benefit of either psychiatric examination or legal representation until the final week of his internment, Getu -- who has never read Kafka -- became the embodiment of the author's fictional character in "The Trial." Like Kafka's Joseph K., Getu was accused of terrible things in the vaguest way possible.

When Getu was released on bail on March 16, it was because of the activism of the Free Getu Coalition, a local group that had organized on his behalf.

The image of the 35-year-old, sporting a newly minted black eye, his wrists bound behind his back, made an indelible impression on those who watched the 10 o'clock news on Fox that night as he was unceremoniously escorted to a waiting paddy wagon.

For those who assumed that Getu was obviously guilty of something that imperiled the nation, or else he wouldn't have been forced to do the "perp" walk on Fox 53, it was confirmation of the value of stepped-up vigilance against terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11.

For others, the expression of helpless puzzlement on Getu's face was proof that Pittsburgh -- like much of America -- was in danger of becoming a place where an unwary soul with an alien name can land in jail by simply not fitting the local profile of what constitutes an "acceptable" stranger.

Getu, like Kafka's Joseph K., was about to find out what happens when civil liberties are jettisoned in favor of shifting definitions of guilt and innocence when the state deems it expedient.

"I didn't expect this from a big, civilized place like USA," Getu said in broken English when I interviewed him a few weeks ago. "Being called a terrorist doesn't fill me with confidence," he added wryly. It was a sign that six weeks of confinement hadn't deprived him of a sense of his situation's innate absurdity.

The refugee camps of Yemen where he spent nearly a decade before immigrating to America are more humane than a modern prison cell in the heart of Pittsburgh, Getu insisted.

He was so relieved to be released from 24-hour lock-down in a 5-by-4 mental health pod where he was fed anti-psychotic pills and mood-altering drugs all day, he said he felt like hugging even his jailers.

Freedom tasted so good to him that he said his heart was big enough to accommodate the evil he believes was done to him by police and Greyhound officials on Feb. 1, when he was accused of making "terroristic" threats at the bus station.

Getu's sojourn into Pittsburgh's criminal justice system began when he reboarded his bus after its layover. Due to the narrowness of the center aisle, Getu inadvertently brushed against a female passenger who happened to be the bus station's night manager.

"The lady right away complained something which I didn't understand and retreated [from] the bus," Getu said. Moments later, an agitated driver ordered Getu off the bus, a request he complied with immediately.

Back in the terminal, Getu was surrounded by several of the woman's angry colleagues. The only thing he understood for sure in all the shouting was that they believed he was a criminal of some sort. Minutes later, a man approached the group and ordered Getu to sit in a terminal chair. This time he refused.

"I was upset because I wasn't guilty of anything," he said. The man, later identified as a Pittsburgh police officer, moved quickly to disarm Getu of the pen he was holding. At 125 pounds, Getu struggled to keep his pen and his dignity, but was no match for an officer who had yet to identify himself. How he got his black eye and into a heap of trouble that landed him in a mental ward will be explored over the next several columns.

What put Getu in jail: his own zeal or over-reaction?

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Part two of a series

On the morning of Feb. 1, Getu Berhanu Tewolde reboarded a Greyhound bus after a 12-minute layover at the Downtown station. He was eager to resume his journey to Denver, the city he had called home before moving to D.C. three months earlier.

The Ethiopian immigrant wanted to surprise his uncle, who didn't know he was crossing the continent for an impromptu visit. Getu's plan was to reclaim the clothes he'd left behind when he moved.

	First in the series: Misplaced vigilance greets a stranger to our city

Traveling without a suitcase, Getu hadn't been in Pittsburgh long enough for the town to make an impression, good or bad. He'd been in the Greyhound terminal once before during a layover from Denver to D.C. last fall. Twelve minutes wasn't enough time to get the feel of a town, so he stretched his legs and wandered the terminal.

Later, an off-duty police officer would recall seeing Getu "talking to himself" that morning, though he didn't consider it particularly remarkable. Bus stations are usually full of eccentrics. He decided there was nothing threatening about Getu.

For his part, Getu recalls talking to a few people at the station. And there are indications that the 35-year-old's religious fervor manifested itself during his stroll through the terminal.

Later, Getu told one of his friends he had spoken generally about religion with some folks and that he'd even had a brief conversation with a police officer about atheism and God. He doesn't recall muttering to himself, though. Other than heightened religious feelings that morning, Getu doesn't believe there was anything unusual or obnoxious about his behavior.

No one, including those who mistook him for a terrorist on the Greyhound bus, has accused him of proselytizing or shouting his faith at passers-by. With only pita bread in a plastic bag for his trip, Getu had no Bible to thump even if he'd wanted to.

"I read the Bible, but I didn't take it [with me] that day," he said.

When Getu reboarded the bus, he struck up a conversation with another passenger sitting two or three rows behind him. They discussed spiritual matters, a topic Getu relishes. "I asked if anyone on the bus had a Bible," Getu recalls. "It was no problem and no one was upset. Nothing happened."

This was before Getu bumped into the Greyhound station's night manager, a woman named Angela Street who was on the bus that evening. Accounts vary as to what happened next, though everyone agrees it had terrible repercussions for civil liberties in general and Getu in particular.

Getu insists he merely brushed past the woman while trying to get to his seat down the bus' narrow aisle. Street told police Getu "pushed" her several times, a complaint that brought a Pittsburgh police officer to the scene. The bus driver ordered Getu off the bus after she complained.

Eight passengers wrote letters stating that Getu allegedly said things ranging from "I'm Jesus" and "the Lord of Lords asked me [to choose] life or death" to "You are all blessed, but wait until tomorrow" and "Americans are going to die."

These statements and several like them make up the bulk of the "terroristic threats" Getu is alleged to have made that morning. Getu insists he merely asked for a Bible and that there was no ruckus until he was back in the terminal. Once there, he says he was surrounded by Street's angry colleagues. The police believe some angry passengers were part of the crowd that surrounded him.

What happened next was either a full-blown "scuffle" with the arresting officer or a case of a foreign traveler being assaulted by an "unidentified man" while holding onto a pen that the man, who turned out to be a policeman, mistook for a knife.

It was during this scuffle that the officer, Bryan Sellers, subdued Getu and blackened his eye. Because Sellers had been dispatched directly from the Hill District Station, he was in full uniform. Getu recalls it differently.

Weeks later, Angela Street would fail to show at Getu's preliminary hearing to tell her side of events that landed a God-intoxicated Ethiopian in the psychiatric ward of Allegheny County Jail for six weeks. We'll explore Getu's encounter with the police and his journey through the system in the next column.

Caught in a vortex of fear, Getu still has hope

Friday, May 03, 2002

Part three of four parts
From the moment he reboarded his bus at the Greyhound station Downtown on Feb. 1, Getu Berhanu Tewolde was caught in a vortex of misunderstanding and worst-case scenarios.

	Previous installments Part 2 What put Getu in jail: his own zeal or over-reaction? Part 1 Misplaced vigilance greets a stranger to our city

For bumping into a Greyhound employee while navigating the narrow aisle of a Denver-bound bus, Getu, an Ethiopian immigrant, was ordered off the bus and back into the terminal.

Angela Street, the Greyhound station's night manager, said Getu pushed her "several times" on the bus. Getu insists that other than squeezing past the woman in the aisle on the way to his seat, he never touched her.

The first circle of the vortex that would eventually engulf Getu appeared when Street called the cops. The second circle was the group of angry bus station employees who surrounded him at the terminal. The vortex got stronger when Pittsburgh police Officer Bryan Sellers arrived.

Finding Getu surrounded by Street's angry co-workers, Sellers ordered him to sit down in a terminal chair. Getu refused. He didn't acknowledge the officer's authority apparently because his uniform wasn't as familiar to him as those he'd encountered in Washington, D.C.

The next circle was the one that got Getu charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest. Frightened by the hostility of the strangers surrounding him, Getu made a gesture with a pen the agitated crowd mistook for a knife.

The circle of bruises under Getu's eyes came courtesy of an officer who believed he was disarming a knife-wielding zealot who'd reportedly made "terroristic threats" on the bus before "assaulting" a female employee.

Once handcuffed, Getu Tewolde was taken to the Zone 2 police station in the Hill District where he was interviewed by the FBI anti-terrorism task force. To its credit, it took the FBI 15 minutes to determine Getu wasn't a member of al-Qaida. There would be no federal charges filed against him.

Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh police confirmed that Getu was who he claimed to be. His status as a legal immigrant, his INS card and driver's license all checked out. Even his car was parked at the apartment complex in Washington, where he said it would be.

The Greyhound terminal was evacuated shortly after Getu was arrested, but a thorough search by police and bomb-sniffing dogs failed to turn up anything more dangerous than the usual bus station grime.

Still, no one in a position to cut Getu loose felt sufficiently embarrassed about hauling an immigrant with only a rudimentary command of English before authorities without benefit of legal representation or advice.

Consequently, the vortex of fear only got tighter. He was cleared by the FBI, but Getu was charged with making terroristic threats, risking a catastrophe, aggravated assault and resisting arrest. Statements he reportedly made about God, Jesus and America at the bus station were deemed sufficiently "dangerous" to have his bond set at $10,000. It might as well have been a million.

After a few days in a cell, Getu was moved to a mental-health pod at the Allegheny County Jail. He was fed eight anti-psychotic, mood-stabilizing pills a day, but never examined by a psychiatrist. He met his public defender for the first time at his hearing 10 days after he was arrested.

A month later on March 11, the ACLU and the Free Getu Coalition arranged for him to meet with a lawyer and have a full psychiatric exam before his hearing in four days. Getu was cleared by the jail's Behavior Clinic two days later. On March 15, the Free Getu Coalition paid the relieved immigrant's $525 bail, but his misadventures in Pittsburgh aren't over yet.

The charge he assaulted Angela Street disappeared, but Getu still faces trial for all the other charges. On May 20, he'll find out his trial date. Though the vortex of fear continues to tighten, Getu is no longer alone. The final installment on Tuesday will explore the source of the immigrant's hope.

If justice is finally done, Getu will leave Pittsburgh -- quickly

Tuesday, May 07, 2002

Part four of four

Getu Berhanu Tewolde is a handsome man. He bears little resemblance to the news footage of the puffy-eyed wretch carted off to the mental ward of the Allegheny County Jail three months ago for making "terroristic threats" and resisting arrest at the Greyhound station Downtown.

	Previous columns: Part 1: Misplaced vigilance greets a stranger to our city Part 2: What put Getu in jail: his own zeal or over-reaction? Part 3: Caught in a vortex of fear, Getu still has hope

Getu's face no longer contains telltale signs of his arrest on Feb. 1. The bruised cheeks and swollen eyes that appall visitors to the Free Getu Coalition! Web site -- www.freegetu.org --have healed. The fear and confusion on his face have also receded, replaced by something resembling a peaceful wariness.

The Ethiopian immigrant's demeanor is friendly, but slightly formal. During several interviews at a coffee shop in Squirrel Hill, he is too focused to order anything. When he listens, he leans forward to concentrate with his whole being. When he speaks, he does so with the earnestness of someone for whom English is a second or third language.

During his six weeks at the Allegheny County Jail, Getu saw Pittsburgh at its worst -- suspicious, paranoid of strangers, legalistic and contemptuous of the civil liberties of immigrants. Fortunately, it wasn't the only face of Pittsburgh he was exposed to.

When word spread through Pittsburgh's peace activist community that an immigrant was in Allegheny County Jail without benefit of legal or psychiatric counsel, Getu was inundated with heartfelt expressions of good will and offers of help.

Groups as disparate as Zi-Activism, the Thomas Merton Center, the Anti-Discrimination Committee of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union worked to arrange something approximating a legitimate day in court for Getu.

At Getu's second hearing on March 15, the coalition's efforts paid off. Getu's bail was secured for $525 and he was released that afternoon. The allegation that initiated the arrest -- an assault charge for "pushing" a Downtown bus station night manager -- was dropped.

The charge of risking a catastrophe at the Greyhound station was initially dropped as well, but the district attorney's office had it reinstated. It continues to stand along with charges that Getu made terroristic threats, resisted arrest and assaulted a police officer. On May 20, Getu will find out what day he'll go on trial this summer.

Asked if he planned to stay in Pittsburgh after his trial, assuming a judge is wise enough to cut him loose after all he's been through, Getu smiles and says as politely as he can that he will be on the first bus back to Washington, D.C., if he is found "not guilty" or -- better yet -- if all the charges are thrown out.

Still, he insists that he likes Pittsburgh. On good days, the city reminds Getu of places in Europe he's fond of, but he's understandably nervous here because hypersensitivity and miscommunication got him thrown in jail.

Getu's treatment in jail convinced him that the system's tolerance of procedural irregularity in his case makes Pittsburgh an unlikely place to hang his hat. Asked if the lack of Ethiopian restaurants in this town was part of the problem, he laughed.

"I felt a little depressed while I was in jail," he said with characteristic understatement. "I have doubts about how they run the police department and the jail. It makes me worried."

Getu has made good friends in Pittsburgh during his unplanned sabbatical here. Many, like Saleh Waziruddin, the co-founder of Zi-Activism and the primary organizer of the Free Getu Coalition, will probably be his friend for life.

"When I visited Getu in prison, there were other people visiting people in the mental health ward," Waziruddin said. "It was as if it wasn't necessary to ask whether people were really crazy or not before they were placed there."

Waziruddin shuttles Getu to speaking events and interviews, prompting his friend to clarify his statements in rare instances when Getu can't get his thoughts across.

"They've been a lot of help since I came out," Getu said referring to Waziruddin and other members of the coalition named in his honor. "Everyone is working for humanity. Because of them, I have more confidence about my case."

Asked how he felt when we ended the interview, Getu said, "I hope they drop the [charges]." It was an honest answer to a question he wants desperately to put behind him.

"The Enron Act" (coverage of guerrilla theatre performance)

https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2002/04/01/focus3.html

By Maria Guzzo  – 

Apr 1, 2002 Updated Apr 1, 2002

The Enron act

Members of the Zi-Activism group conducted a bit of guerrilla theater at January's Carnegie Mellon Technical Internship Expo and at Carnegie Mellon's H&SS/Heinz Job Fair in February.

According to its Web site, Zi is an activist organization that aims to use verifiable facts and analysis to counter misinformation and its role and effects on popular culture and government policy.

For these events, group members, primarily Carnegie Mellon students, set up an Enron booth and went about their business recruiting employees and subsequently shredding their resumes.

Apparently, job fair participants could spend a little more time on news Web sites. The Zi Web site reported "many visitors had not heard of Enron and talked to us in earnest about getting an internship!"

For more about the Zi group, see http://www.zi-activism.net. 

Crisis of Civil Rights: The Case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde (Fact Sheet)

Crisis of Civil Rights:

The Case of Getu Berhanu Tewolde

 

FACT SHEET

 

While traveling from Washington DC to Denver on February 1, 2002, Getu Berhanu Tewolde, a legal immigrant from Ethiopia, was arrested at the Greyhound station in Pittsburgh.  He was charged with making terroristic threats, causing and risking a catastrophe, and aggravated and simple assault.

(Sources: “Threat Closes Down Bus Station”, Gina Redmond, WPXI News, Feb. 1 2002 )

 

The news media reported that the FBI counter-terrorism team determined that Getu made no terroristic threats and refused to charge him.  Despite the FBI’s determination, the Pittsburgh Police arrested him due to “the totality of the circumstances…” (Cmndr. Valenta).

(Sources: “Threat Closes Down Bus Station”, Gina Redmond, WPXI News, Feb. 1 2002 / WPGH Fox 53 10 O’clock News Broadcast, Feb. 1 2002 )

 

According to Getu, during a scheduled stop in Pittsburgh he brushed against a Greyhound employee while trying to take his seat at the end of the layover.  The employee then yelled accusations at him, after which the driver ordered Getu to disembark.  Once inside the bus station, someone ordered Getu to sit.  He refused and tried to get the crowd gathering around him to calm down.  A policeman was called and asked Getu to sit, but because he didn’t identify himself as an officer and Getu didn’t see any badge, Getu again refused.  The policeman attacked and beat him, “disarming” Getu of the pen he was holding with the nib-end in his palm.  Getu’s memory of the subsequent events is unclear.

 

This is the third time in Pittsburgh that hysteria on the part of transportation employees, the public, the police and the media has lead to the arrest of an innocent person despite a lack of evidence.

(Sources:  “Victim of post-Sept. 11 Hysteria Repays Our Intolerance with Forgiveness”, Dennis Roddey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 22 2001/ “Bomb Threat Suspect Held on $150,000 Bond”, Steve Levin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 20 2001)

 

Because Getu was beaten by the police, Getu was considered to be undisciplined and was placed on Disciplinary Housing Status at the Allegheny County Jail.  In addition, he was placed in the Mental Health pod under 24-hour solitary confinement and given eight pills a day with no Behavior Clinic examination.  He was allowed only two randomly selected hours per week to leave his cell and to shower.  Getu could not meet with a public defender because he was in solitary confinement.

 

According to a social worker at the Allegheny County Jail, Getu’s trial was postponed until March 15 because he first had to be cleared by the Behavior Clinic, a requirement based upon the felony charge.   However, there was no sign that Getu would be afforded the required Behavior Clinic exam in time for his hearing. Fortunately, Getu received an 11^th hour exam and lawyer visit within the week of his preliminary hearing due to pressure from the Free Getu Coalition and the ACLU. He passed the Behavior Clinic exam, allowing his case to proceed in court and his subsequent release on bail.

 

The “simple assault” charge was dropped at the preliminary hearing on March 15.  By the time of Getu’s formal arraignment on May 20 the “causing and risking a catastrophe” charge was dropped and a second “terroristic threat” charge was added.  Getu’s trial date has been set for December 12.

 

Getu is a victim of the removal of civil liberties, police brutality, and an abusive penal and courts system.  Getu wants to fight his case and is asking others to join him and the Free Getu Coalition.  Find out more about the case and take action on the plight of Getu and others in his situation – please contact us at info@freegetu.org or call (412) 361-2983 and visit http://www.freegetu.org.

 

(Note: Information from Getu based on interviews conducted between February and March, 2002)