[00:00:06] Speaker 04:
Mr. Poussin, we see the top of your head on the screen.

[00:00:12] Speaker 04:
Can you hear us?

[00:00:16] Speaker 00:
Yes, I can.

[00:00:17] Speaker 03:
Great.

[00:00:18] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:00:19] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:00:19] Speaker 03:
Council, whenever you're ready.

[00:00:21] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:00:22] Speaker 03:
Jean Reese, USC Immigration Clinic, Pro Bono Council for Petitioner Abdul Malakoff.

[00:00:28] Speaker 03:
I'll reserve four minutes for rebuttal.

[00:00:32] Speaker 03:
Here, the board has determined that petitioner

[00:00:37] Speaker 03:
was persecuted and tortured, suffered harm rising to the level of persecution and torture by the government of Uzbekistan.

[00:00:47] Speaker 03:
He received that persecution and torture while he was imprisoned for 15 days based on his possession of a banned religious text.

[00:00:55] Speaker 03:
It is undisputed that the banned religious text was written for the Shafi school of Islam, where Mr. Abdimalakov

[00:01:03] Speaker 03:
practiced the Shafi school.

[00:01:05] Speaker 03:
And it is undisputed that when petitioner Abdemilakov was released from the imprisonment, the Uzbekistan government forbid him from attending the mosque, forbid him from praying in public, and forbid him from attending social gatherings.

[00:01:21] Speaker 04:
But didn't he testify that they did not forbid him from practicing his religion?

[00:01:26] Speaker 03:
The testimony is unclear because we're in a situation where there was a double negative.

[00:01:31] Speaker 03:
The actual quote was, so they did not prohibit you from practicing Shafi'i Islam.

[00:01:37] Speaker 03:
Is that correct?

[00:01:38] Speaker 03:
It's a yes or no answer.

[00:01:40] Speaker 03:
And I'm referring to page 400 of the record.

[00:01:45] Speaker 03:
And the answer is no.

[00:01:46] Speaker 03:
So if the last question is, is that correct, the response is no.

[00:01:51] Speaker 03:
But either way, if you, you know, so I think it's unclear.

[00:01:55] Speaker 03:
But the case law is pretty clear.

[00:02:00] Speaker 03:
Shane B. Ashcroft says, you know, having to hide your practice in your home, you know, would constitute persecution on account of a religious basis.

[00:02:10] Speaker 03:
So the question is, if this court determines that religion is a central reason or even a reason, so whether it's petitioners' Shafi religion or the imputed kind of extremist Shafi version of that religion, then the court should remand and that's the end of the inquiry.

[00:02:31] Speaker 04:
So when did you first raise imputed religious views?

[00:02:34] Speaker 04:
So the first time I saw it was in your reply brief.

[00:02:36] Speaker 04:
Was that argued before the agency?

[00:02:38] Speaker 03:
It was on page 110 of the record in the BIA brief.

[00:02:45] Speaker 03:
The BIA brief states that the government kind of suspected this radicalism based on the Shafi sect.

[00:02:53] Speaker 03:
And so the idea that even if the government's mistaken, they were mistaken about his extremist religion, that's still a basis.

[00:03:02] Speaker 03:
to find that there was a protected ground here based on religion, even if it was a mistaken, if the belief was about religion, even if it was a mistaken belief.

[00:03:12] Speaker 03:
So again, that's page 110 of the record that that's argued there.

[00:03:21] Speaker 03:
In this case, regarding whether or not petitioners' actual religion was the reason, the court can find it was the actual reason or the imputed religion.

[00:03:34] Speaker 03:
Both of those would require remand at the end of the inquiry.

[00:03:37] Speaker 03:
Even if the court said, okay, well, it was clear he didn't possess this book, there is a regulatory presumption of future persecution based on past persecution.

[00:03:49] Speaker 03:
So the board here never found that past persecution presumption.

[00:03:52] Speaker 04:
determined that he had practiced his religion for 20 years with that incident.

[00:03:57] Speaker 04:
And that was part of its conclusion that the persecution he experienced was because he had a banned book, not because of his religious practice, and that he said he never read the book, he didn't know what it was about, didn't know what was in it, and that he wasn't prohibited from practicing his religion.

[00:04:13] Speaker 04:
So they found no nexus between the persecution he experienced and his religion.

[00:04:19] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:04:20] Speaker 03:
But the record shows that he practiced his religion in private in the home, that it was never written down.

[00:04:26] Speaker 04:
He testified that... Well, then why... That begs the question.

[00:04:31] Speaker 04:
You're saying he couldn't practice his religion because he couldn't pray at the mosque and he couldn't pray in public, and now you're saying he never did those things anyway.

[00:04:39] Speaker 04:
He just practiced his religion at home.

[00:04:41] Speaker 04:
So how was his practice of his religion affected because he was persecuted for having a banned book?

[00:04:47] Speaker 03:
Well, what I'm saying is that the record doesn't support that he was openly practicing this religion and went 20 years without being harmed.

[00:04:54] Speaker 03:
The record is that he attended a mosque that was a different type of religion.

[00:04:58] Speaker 03:
And the fact that he wasn't, and so he comes to the attention of the authorities because he has this Shafi book that has been banned publicly in his possession at a cafe.

[00:05:08] Speaker 03:
So, the fact that he is tortured and persecuted because he's possessing this religious text shows that religion was a central reason of that persecution.

[00:05:20] Speaker 04:
But not his religion, right?

[00:05:22] Speaker 04:
You're saying it was imputed religion, but so the issue is whether he has a reasonable fear of future persecution and the

[00:05:32] Speaker 04:
The agency, we would have to determine whether there's substantial evidence for the agency's conclusion that there's no nexus between his past persecution and his religion, given that he practiced his religion for 20 years, and that he could still practice his religion.

[00:05:45] Speaker 04:
By his own account, he could still practice his religion.

[00:05:47] Speaker 03:
But if there was no nexus to religion, why would he be prohibited from going to a mosque?

[00:05:52] Speaker 03:
Why would he be prohibited from praying in public or from attending social gatherings?

[00:05:57] Speaker 03:
That evidence shows that motive of the persecutor was religion.

[00:06:02] Speaker 03:
And so it was his Shafi religion that he said was faced under suspicion.

[00:06:07] Speaker 03:
He testified it was a suspicious school.

[00:06:11] Speaker 03:
And we have country conditions evidence that talk about these various kind of non-recognized schools of Islam thought that many other people are arrested and tortured for, even if they themselves are not peaceful

[00:06:29] Speaker 03:
you know, chats and conversations about it and that's it.

[00:06:33] Speaker 02:
The potential obstacle for your client is that we have to review this for substantial evidence, right?

[00:06:40] Speaker 02:
It seems like the evidence is a bit mixed and maybe actually the grand scheme of things maybe actually favors your client's case but

[00:06:46] Speaker 02:
You know, we're not reviewing this de novo, we're looking for substantial evidence and it seems like there's some evidence that it was, you know, the government viewed him as a, you know, the book, it's banned, it's radical, radicalism, not necessarily religion.

[00:06:59] Speaker 02:
So that's one issue here is the standard review is obviously very deferential when we review these things.

[00:07:05] Speaker 03:
correct but i don't think that there's any you know in this case he wasn't arrested for stealing or first possessing a book on nuclear physics he was arrested for a religious text he was accused of belonging to a religious group he was tortured and called a wahhabi a jihadist so i don't see how the court how you know substantial evidence shows that the motivation was this religion uh... this religious text i guess you know

[00:07:32] Speaker 02:
analogy be here in the United States if someone was arrested – investigation for being associated with ISIS or something like that.

[00:07:42] Speaker 02:
The United States Government would say, no, this is about radicalism, even if the person was motivated subjectively by their own distorted view of religion.

[00:07:52] Speaker 02:
We're looking at radicalism, not religion.

[00:07:54] Speaker 02:
So I assume

[00:07:55] Speaker 02:
That would be the case here, is that the government there would say, we're just banning this book because it promotes radicalism, not necessarily religion per se.

[00:08:04] Speaker 02:
I don't know if I buy it, but I mean, that's kind of what we have to look at.

[00:08:09] Speaker 03:
And I would direct, Your Honor, to the Country Conditions State Department War Report on religious freedom from 2022.

[00:08:16] Speaker 03:
And that report by the State Department talks about prohibitions on religion, restrictions on practice, restrictions on registration, restrictions on who may teach religion, and also talks about these banned religious texts, all in the context of religion, not in the context of some other threat or some other basis.

[00:08:42] Speaker 03:
So I don't think that one can divorce the religious text from religion and say that it was just based on a book.

[00:08:50] Speaker 04:
But didn't we do that in... We have two cases that are somewhat difficult to reconcile, but there's... And again, I don't know how to pronounce them.

[00:09:00] Speaker 04:
Gao and Gu, there's G-U-O.

[00:09:03] Speaker 04:
uh, versus Sessions and Gu versus Gonzalez.

[00:09:06] Speaker 04:
They're very similar with the home church, um, practice of religion, Christianity in China.

[00:09:12] Speaker 04:
And, um, in one we found there was past persecution and the other we found there was not.

[00:09:17] Speaker 04:
And the distinction was whether the person was prohibited from practicing their religion.

[00:09:20] Speaker 04:
And one, where the person did not suffer persecution with a nexus to religion, they were disseminating Christian tracts.

[00:09:27] Speaker 04:
But they could still afterwards practice their religion.

[00:09:30] Speaker 04:
And the other, they couldn't attend their home church.

[00:09:33] Speaker 04:
They couldn't practice their religion.

[00:09:35] Speaker 04:
So here, I think applying those cases, it would seem that because he could still practice his religion, that he would follow.

[00:09:43] Speaker 01:
Judge Gould, if I may ask you a question.

[00:09:47] Speaker 01:
Under the substantial evidence test,

[00:09:51] Speaker 01:
and our circuit president, to give you relief, wouldn't we have to say the record compels relief?

[00:10:02] Speaker 03:
Yes, and it does compel relief.

[00:10:05] Speaker 03:
And there can be more than one reason.

[00:10:06] Speaker 03:
They could suspect that he was some sort of militant radical, but they could also have religion be a central reason for that.

[00:10:15] Speaker 03:
And regarding Guovee Sessions,

[00:10:17] Speaker 03:
The case in Guo, they similar here accused Guo of kind of this political opinion where he was inciting the overthrow of the government based on the religion.

[00:10:31] Speaker 03:
So there's a similar connection there.

[00:10:33] Speaker 03:
And in Guavi Sessions, part of the determination that the harm rose to the level of persecution was this permanent restriction on the practice of religion, which was constituted religious persecution.

[00:10:45] Speaker 03:
We already have the harm constitutes persecution.

[00:10:48] Speaker 03:
It's just whether one of the central motives, or even under a withholding of removal, a motive, a reason, had to do with religion.

[00:10:57] Speaker 03:
And the evidence compels it not only through petitioners' testimony, but also through the country conditions that talk about these blacklists, these arrests of people based on religion.

[00:11:12] Speaker 03:
Another basis for this is this particular social group whose back's accused of extremism related charges.

[00:11:21] Speaker 03:
Contriguitions show that the government has created ways to identify these groups, singled out groups, put these groups on lists.

[00:11:29] Speaker 03:
that there are these kind of social governance mahalas that report on the activities of people in their communities, whether it's related to extremism.

[00:11:37] Speaker 03:
So that's also a basis is that particular social group.

[00:11:40] Speaker 03:
And the BIA rejected it on particularity?

[00:11:44] Speaker 03:
on social distinction, not on particularity.

[00:11:47] Speaker 03:
The only reason the board rejected it was social distinction and they just said there's no social distinction.

[00:11:53] Speaker 03:
But they don't say why, they don't explain why.

[00:11:55] Speaker 03:
So if this court, you know, we have provided evidence that it does show social distinction.

[00:12:01] Speaker 04:
But the IJ said why and the board looked through the IJ's decision.

[00:12:04] Speaker 04:
I mean the IJ's decision was more fulsome and talked about you can't distinguish these people from anybody else because there's no definition of what this means.

[00:12:13] Speaker 03:
But that would be particularity.

[00:12:15] Speaker 03:
But also under social distinction, people related to extremism related charges.

[00:12:21] Speaker 03:
It's clear in the country conditions, the Human Rights Watch report and the State Department report on religious freedom that there are charges that target people, that there is banned religious texts.

[00:12:32] Speaker 03:
And Diaz-Renoso and also Diaz-Torres say that in determining whether or not a group is socially distinct, you can look to government rules and you can look to discriminatory laws and policies that show a group is perceived as distinct.

[00:12:53] Speaker 03:
And that's what we have here.

[00:12:55] Speaker 03:
We have evidence of rules targeting extremists that are based on these kind of religious ideas.

[00:13:02] Speaker 03:
We have people reporting on extremism.

[00:13:05] Speaker 03:
We even have the government in certain places prosecuting

[00:13:10] Speaker 03:
torturing pre-trial of people suspected of these crimes.

[00:13:14] Speaker 03:
So there is social distinction and the immigration judge's explanation why there isn't social distinction is, well, you don't know if they could be Muslim or a Jehovah's Witness, for example.

[00:13:25] Speaker 03:
You know, the country conditions talk about most extremisms that are targeted are Muslim, that there are issues for other religions not being registered, not being able to practice publicly.

[00:13:36] Speaker 03:
But the torture and the ill treatment of individuals are largely people who are suspected of belonging to radical groups.

[00:13:47] Speaker 03:
And, you know, some of that record evidence would include 709, there's laws against extremist religious groups, 720, VAT mahalos, which are community governing bodies report on activities of suspected extremist groups.

[00:14:07] Speaker 03:
So they are distinct in society.

[00:14:10] Speaker 03:
And regarding kind of this idea that, you know,

[00:14:15] Speaker 03:
there was just kind of a mistake regarding the book and Petitioner was released and that his family hadn't been also harmed or interfered with their practice of religion.

[00:14:30] Speaker 03:
Petitioner provided in his motion to reopen new evidence that wasn't really

[00:14:34] Speaker 03:
that his father was called in by the same authorities, interrogated for four hours, asked about petitioners' whereabouts, and he also was restricted in his practice of religion and was asked about religion.

[00:14:47] Speaker 03:
So that's further evidence that would go directly to Nexus, that would show a reasonable likelihood that he is eligible for asylum and withholding.

[00:14:58] Speaker 03:
and the board abused discretion in denying that motion to reopen.

[00:15:02] Speaker 03:
One of the reasons the board and the immigration judge state is his family isn't harmed and here we have evidence that now his family is under interrogation and inquiry and restricted.

[00:15:13] Speaker 03:
Another reason why this court should remand is because

[00:15:17] Speaker 03:
Under the Convention Against Torture, you don't need a nexus.

[00:15:21] Speaker 03:
We have past torture, significant past torture, because of the possession of this book.

[00:15:26] Speaker 03:
He was released on parole with conditions and left the country.

[00:15:29] Speaker 03:
There is evidence that the police were looking for him in his neighborhood.

[00:15:34] Speaker 03:
The police said that if he left the country, it would be bad for him.

[00:15:39] Speaker 03:
Country conditions show that there is pretrial detention and torture.

[00:15:47] Speaker 03:
The idea that this would just be a lawful sanction, again, you have the government torturing him for this religion, him leaving 19 days later, and then the fact that if he returns he wouldn't again be tortured because it would somehow be a lawful detention is contrary to the record evidence.

[00:16:09] Speaker 04:
You're over time now.

[00:16:10] Speaker 04:
All right, so we'll hear from Mr. Busen.

[00:16:28] Speaker 00:
Good afternoon, Your Honors, and may it please the Court.

[00:16:30] Speaker 00:
My name is Jesse Busen, and I represent the Attorney General.

[00:16:34] Speaker 00:
I wanted to address a few points made by my colleague to start.

[00:16:40] Speaker 00:
First, she stated that it's undisputed that this book is

[00:16:48] Speaker 00:
tied to the Shafi'i school of Islam, I'm not sure that is borne out by the record.

[00:16:54] Speaker 00:
The petitioner certainly stated that he believed that the book was consistent with Shafi'i beliefs, but there's no other record evidence indicating whether or not this book is a Shafi'i religious text or whether it is related to another school or sect of Islam.

[00:17:14] Speaker 00:
Setting that aside,

[00:17:18] Speaker 00:
What we have in this case is petitioner and his family were able to practice their religion peacefully for a number of years.

[00:17:27] Speaker 00:
And it was only due to his possession of this banned book that he was brought to the attention of the police.

[00:17:34] Speaker 00:
The police interrogated him.

[00:17:37] Speaker 00:
They harmed him.

[00:17:39] Speaker 00:
But it was a count on his possession of this book.

[00:17:41] Speaker 00:
It was not on account of his religion, which is borne out by the fact that his family had never had a problem before this.

[00:17:48] Speaker 00:
And in fact, when the police found out that the book was a gift and that he didn't espouse these beliefs, they let him go.

[00:17:57] Speaker 00:
They let him go with restrictions.

[00:17:58] Speaker 00:
It's not clear from the record if those restrictions were intended to punish him for his religious beliefs under the Shafi'i sect, or if it was punitive, or if there was any other reason for the government to have done this.

[00:18:17] Speaker 00:
And petitioners signed GWO, and the government attempted to distinguish that in its brief.

[00:18:26] Speaker 00:
In GWO, the petitioner in that case was targeted purely because of their membership in a house church.

[00:18:33] Speaker 00:
And when they were released, they were prevented from practicing their religion

[00:18:39] Speaker 00:
at all.

[00:18:39] Speaker 00:
They were not permitted to continue to practice in a house church or separately.

[00:18:44] Speaker 00:
Here, as Your Honors recognized, the petitioner was allowed to continue to practice.

[00:18:51] Speaker 00:
He was just not allowed to attend these public prayer meetings at a mosque that was not part of his religious sect.

[00:19:04] Speaker 00:
With respect to the record evidence regarding

[00:19:09] Speaker 00:
conditions in Uzbekistan, it's simply not specific enough to petitioner's case to be able to glean any sort of idea of what would happen to him.

[00:19:25] Speaker 00:
There is a lot of discussion of treatment of extremist groups.

[00:19:31] Speaker 00:
There is no specific discussion of the Shafi'i in particular.

[00:19:37] Speaker 00:
There is a lot of discussion of general conditions and that in of itself is not enough to sustain his burden to show future harm that it is more likely than not that he will experience future harm.

[00:19:54] Speaker 00:
My colleague pointed out or argued that.

[00:19:59] Speaker 00:
the government seeking him out or targeting people for religious extremism can in and of itself create the social distinction necessary to establish a particular social group.

[00:20:12] Speaker 00:
I would cite Villaga Sanchez V. Garland stating that the social group has to exist independently of persecution and the persecutor's perception enough is not enough to make the group socially distinct.

[00:20:26] Speaker 00:
It may be relevant to determining a group social distinction, but it is not alone sufficient to establish that.

[00:20:34] Speaker 00:
What would be more relevant is, as this court found in Cordoba v. Holder, is general social perception, which can be assessed from the perspective of the society in question as a whole, the residents of a particular region or membership of

[00:20:50] Speaker 00:
members of different social groups.

[00:20:52] Speaker 00:
And we don't have that evidence here.

[00:20:54] Speaker 00:
All we have is evidence that the government has laws targeting religious extremist groups from across the board.

[00:21:03] Speaker 00:
And simply being accused of being a criminal is not sufficient for this group to be socially distinct.

[00:21:16] Speaker 00:
Regarding past torture, I wanted to note under Dawson v. Garland, even when there is past torture, there is no presumption of future torture.

[00:21:25] Speaker 00:
It is a factor that can be considered, but the fact finder has to consider all of the relevant evidence when determining if there is a likelihood of future torture.

[00:21:37] Speaker 04:
So is that your response to counsel's argument with respect to the CAT claim?

[00:21:41] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:21:44] Speaker 00:
At least to the extent that, to the extent she argues that the past torture is dispositive of a determination that it is more likely than not that he would be tortured in the future.

[00:21:53] Speaker 00:
That is not the law of this court.

[00:21:56] Speaker 00:
Moreover, the facts show that he was released after it was determined that he was not an extremist.

[00:22:04] Speaker 00:
And that is strong evidence towards showing that he is not likely to be tortured should he return to his Becca stance.

[00:22:11] Speaker 04:
So not being allowed to attend a particular mosque or attend a social gathering that is not torture, right?

[00:22:19] Speaker 04:
Those were the restrictions he was received.

[00:22:22] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:22:23] Speaker 00:
I would argue that it would not qualify as either persecution.

[00:22:26] Speaker 00:
It would not qualify as persecution.

[00:22:28] Speaker 00:
It certainly would not qualify as torture.

[00:22:32] Speaker 04:
So it seems like a critical issue, at least in my mind, in looking at this is whether substantially evidence supports the agency's nexus determination.

[00:22:45] Speaker 04:
The agency concluded he was arrested and persecuted because of a banned book, not because of religion.

[00:22:55] Speaker 04:
And counsel on the other side makes a pretty compelling argument that

[00:22:59] Speaker 04:
book was about religion, or at least we believe it was about religion, and so there was really some religious motivation here.

[00:23:05] Speaker 04:
How do you respond to that?

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
Well, again, I would note Judge Lee's statement that this is – would be similar to a situation where somebody is arrested and detained because of suspicions that they support ISIS.

[00:23:22] Speaker 00:
Which is not would not in and of itself the persecution on account of a religion.

[00:23:27] Speaker 00:
It would be persecution on account of suspected terrorist ties or extremism.

[00:23:33] Speaker 00:
And again here.

[00:23:36] Speaker 00:
The fact that his family was able to practice their religion without any sort of interference strongly suggests that this was not about his religion.

[00:23:48] Speaker 00:
This was about the perception that he was an extremist, as the police said.

[00:23:54] Speaker 00:
They accused him of being a jihadist or a Wahhabi.

[00:23:58] Speaker 00:
They didn't

[00:24:00] Speaker 00:
make any sort of statements about you are practicing a sect of Islam that we disapprove of, or that we view this sect as being extremist.

[00:24:14] Speaker 02:
Can you address the motion to remand his father's affidavit?

[00:24:19] Speaker 02:
Why isn't that relevant to the Nexus question?

[00:24:25] Speaker 00:
It isn't ultimately relevant because the information the affidavit

[00:24:30] Speaker 00:
The affidavit doesn't make clear that the father is being targeted specifically because his religion, or that if the petitioner returned that he would be targeted on account of his religion.

[00:24:42] Speaker 00:
He was questioned.

[00:24:43] Speaker 00:
The father stated that he was questioned by police about his son, that his son is on an international watch list, but they did not explain why he was on some sort of watch list.

[00:24:54] Speaker 00:
They didn't indicate that it was because of his religious practice, because they suspect him being an extremist, whether it was because he had left without reporting in and meeting those reporting requirements, or for any other reason.

[00:25:11] Speaker 00:
The questions to the father about his religion

[00:25:17] Speaker 00:
fail for the same reason I think that it fails for the petitioner, because these restrictions that were placed on him didn't prevent him from practicing his own religion, and it would not rise to the level of persecution.

[00:25:36] Speaker 00:
And in terms of showing a connection to the, a nexus to his religion,

[00:25:47] Speaker 00:
Again, it's not clear why these restrictions were placed on the father, if they were placed on the father because they didn't wish to have him interacting with other people in public events, if it was purely punitive.

[00:26:00] Speaker 00:
The evidence just is not sufficient to meet the burden to establish prima facie eligibility for leave and reopening.

[00:26:08] Speaker 00:
And it certainly is not sufficient to show that the board abused its discretion in denying that.

[00:26:13] Speaker 02:
The new evidence may not be dispositive of the Nexus question, but it does add a few more details.

[00:26:20] Speaker 02:
I think the statement's a little bit more clear and emphatic than what was in the record before for what the petitioner had testified before the IJ.

[00:26:30] Speaker 00:
And that raises the question of whether the sort of incremental

[00:26:39] Speaker 00:
addition of information is sufficient to meet the burden of establishing reopening, establishing prima facie eligibility for relief such that reopening would be warranted.

[00:26:50] Speaker 00:
I would argue that these statements from the father without any further information, without any further knowledge of him regarding the motivations of the police in this case are not sufficient to meet that burden.

[00:27:12] Speaker 04:
Do you agree with your colleague that petitioner argued imputed religion before the agency?

[00:27:29] Speaker 00:
I would have to refer back to the record.

[00:27:32] Speaker 00:
I do not believe that came up at any point before the reply brief.

[00:27:38] Speaker 00:
But I think it would still fail for the same reasons that

[00:27:43] Speaker 00:
of the claim would fail with respect to persecution on account of religion.

[00:27:48] Speaker 00:
There's just not sufficient evidence to show that religion or an imputed religion was that there was any nexus that the harm that he experienced had a nexus to his religion, whether his actual religion or any imputation.

[00:28:08] Speaker 00:
And regardless, even if they imputed an extremist religious opinion to him, once the police learned that he was given the book as a gift and didn't espouse those beliefs, they let him go.

[00:28:24] Speaker 00:
And that is evidence that the police would no longer impute that opinion to him.

[00:28:42] Speaker 00:
All right, if the court has no further questions, I will cede my time and rest on the brief.

[00:28:48] Speaker 04:
All right, thank you.

[00:28:50] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:28:56] Speaker 04:
Ms.

[00:28:56] Speaker 04:
Reese, if you would like, I will give you two minutes on rebuttal.

[00:29:06] Speaker 03:
So Petitioner did argue imputed religion in the opening brief on page 19.

[00:29:12] Speaker 03:
Petitioner says, this is the accusation of belonging to an extremist sect and being interrogated about religious practices and beliefs.

[00:29:21] Speaker 03:
This is direct evidence that the persecutor's motivations were based on Mr. Abdomalakov's religion or perceived religion.

[00:29:28] Speaker 03:
So that was raised to the board.

[00:29:31] Speaker 03:
It was raised in our opening brief.

[00:29:33] Speaker 03:
And Canisagovia highlights that imputed religion or imputed religion is a protected ground.

[00:29:43] Speaker 03:
So even if the government was wrong about the perceived religion, that would constitute nexus to a protected ground.

[00:29:51] Speaker 03:
And I'll quote Zhang V. Ashcroft regarding this practicing in private and not being restricted.

[00:29:57] Speaker 03:
And this is on page 719 to 20.

[00:30:02] Speaker 03:
This court has held, to require Zhang to practice his beliefs in secret is contrary to our basic principles of religious freedom and the protection of religious refugees.

[00:30:13] Speaker 03:
So this is

[00:30:14] Speaker 03:
In support of substantial evidence showing religion was a central reason or at least a reason for the persecution Thank you.

[00:30:22] Speaker 04:
Thank you Also, thank you both for your arguments this morning and this case is submitted and we are in recess until tomorrow morning

[00:30:47] Speaker 04:
This court stands in recess until tomorrow morning.