DETROIT — He was accused of being part of terrorist cell in Detroit in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He spent about 15 months in the Wayne County Jail, often in isolation. He was occasionally strip searched.
And then, he was acquitted of all charges.
Now, after the trial, the jailing, the humiliation and the close encounter with spending his life in prison, Farouk Ali-Haimoud has a new American experience:
He has become a U.S. citizen.
“I went through a lot to get that citizenship,” he said, talking on a recent Sunday afternoon at an Arabic bakery on West Warren Avenue in Dearborn. “Those were hard times, not just hard times for me, but for my family. They accused me of one of the worst crimes on the planet.”
About nine months ago, Ali-Haimoud, 32, got word from immigration authorities — just like millions of immigrants before him — that he was a U.S. citizen.
But his journey from Algeria to Detroit to U.S. citizenship, was anything but typical.
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