From: Biniam Yohannes (yohannes_b@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Feb 14 2009 - 10:04:08 EST
Pro-se Eritrean Vs. rkmc.com
We all may have seen a movie or read a book about how African Americans were once a very rich and prosperous community in a small town, owning their own homes, shops, and farm lands. Then some powerful and jealous white men instigate a crime against one black man by falsely accusing him of raping a white woman. Consequently, civil disobedience erupts and angry mobs of white men burn down their businesses, ransack their properties and massacre their men, women, and children.
Because of this and other similar kinds of miscarriage of justice, the African American communities have formed a system to defend themselves from such vicious acts of crimes against them. But, we, Eritreans in particular, and many other immigrant communities in general, have become very easy targets of similar miscarriage of justices. Thank God that he can speak and write English to defend himself. There are thousands of other immigrants who have become victims of similar situations. These silent victims could not defend themselves and they could not tell their stories.
Why do they have to bring a white woman when they could turn a black woman against a black man? Especially if that black woman happens to be an ex-wife of the black man. Once they found a determined ex-wife to continuously lie for them, they saw a great potential of extorting at least 60 thousand dollars and destroying a the black man's life. So, they formulated over 100 counts of machinations in order to extorting 60,000 dollars from this black man.
After living together with her for about 2 years and 6 months in U.S.A, and after he made sure that she got her green card, on April 29, 2005, he filed for a divorce due to her infidelities. Soon after he filed for a divorce, she immediately filed for, and was granted, an Order for Protection ("OFP"), that is, a restraining order against him. He knew that a restraining order is nothing but a piece of paper --unless you violate it. In fact, looking at it from the Eritrean culture, you can say that there is undeclared restraining order in the American society of each other against each other. Therefore, he did not appeal it.
Little did he know, in less than two weeks after the judge had granted the ex-wife an OFP, starting on July 25, 05 until just one week ago, i.e., Jan. 25, 2009, for 4 years in a row, she filed over 100 counts of false police reports and baseless violations of the OFP against him. The violations range from gross misdemeanor to serious felony charges.
An mob of enemies, who were lying in ambush, watching for an opportunity to destroy and annihilate another black man, had, at long last, been afforded the pretext for which they were longing. Now they could achieve their malevolent purposes.
Not so with an Eritrean man. Unlike many other victims of false crimes, he fought them bravely and humiliated them with a crushing defeat.
The defeated team of attorneys are from the law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. and their website is www.rkmc.com. ¯ It all started when they agreed to represent the ex-wife for free of charge or, as it is believed, they agreed to share whatever money they could get from him.
After reading this story, many have written to the Pro Se litigant in his private email and asked him if he is a lawyer. He is not a lawyer and he doesn’t intend to be one in the near future.
Others have asked “why did she have to do all these malicious actions against him?" There is a short answer and there is a long answer. The short answer is "money"¯.
To make the short story long, in 1998, when the war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Ethiopians deported 70 thousand Eritreans to Eritrea. Then, since there was no money wiring service to Eritrea, many Eritreans in the U.S. were looking for the cheapest way of sending money to their families that had been deported. As it may be remembered, he offered a free of charge of money wiring service in the Twin Cities areas and he advertized it in different Eritrean Internet groups. Starting in 1999, he wired thousands of money to Eritrea. Then some selfish and unscrupulous lawyers found out the copies of the receipts of the money that he had wired from his ex-wife. They shamelessly asked him to bring all the money back from the hand of the poor Eritreans and give them 60 thousand dollars out of that. That started this whole messy litigation in civil, criminal, and appellate courts.
In each court hearing, a team of at least 5 lawyers, armed to their teeth with massive pages of false police reports, were coming trying to bring him to his knees. But he refused to settle. When they knew that he was not going to bring 60 thousand dollars from the poor Eritreans, they asked him if he could pay them the 60 thousand dollars over time by arranged monthly payments. He still refused to settle. Finally, they secretly met with one district judge and conspired with him to pass a judgment against him --and he did. This is called an ex-parte meeting and an ex-parte judgment in the judiciary jargon. Did they meet him at a cocktail bar? Did he take some kind of bribery from them? It is unknown. The pro-se litigant only received a judgment against him without any trial or without any hearing. How strange...how very strange? Is this the United States of America or some corrupt country where you can easily bribe judges and manipulate the system? The answer is his friends, anything is possible. After all, these are the lawyers that won 6.13 billion dollars from just one lawsuit. In other words, they have the means and the skills to do anything, let alone manipulate corrupt judges.
That means the pro se littigant was facing his embittered enemy with her 100 counts of baseless charges, a team of lawyers from the most powerful law firm, a number of false witnesses, and a corrupt judge who meets with them in unknown locations and passes judgments against him without hearing his side of the story.
It all ended when, just few days ago, on February 5, 2009, the Minnesota Court of Appeals has reversed the baseless judgments against him and awarded him the costs.
These unscrupulous lawyers boast on their website that they were the ones that fought against the cigarette company, Philip Morris. They pompously claim that in order to fight that litigation, they exchanged over 80 million pages of arguments. Then, finally, the cigarette company were brought to their knees and paid them over 6.13 billion dollars to settle the case out of the court. Thus far, this is the biggest litigation in the history of the world.
These combined lawyers, with all their might, declared war against him and they pledged that they would execute their malicious designs unless he settles for 60,000 dollars. They came up with over 100 counts of false and malicious criminal allegations against him and charged him with them in both the civil and criminal courts. If it was not for the forensic tests and his Eritrean friends and families who came rushing to his aid, and testified as his witnesses, he would have been falsely incarcerated for at least 10 years.
At one time, he was falsely charged with the violation of a restraining order. He received a citation and a court hearing date. He was taken into a prison, the prison of murderers, robbers and other criminals; after they took his fingerprints and his mugshot, they released him. In that false police report, it is written that he was trying to break into the home of the ex-wife and, as she later had testified in the courts, "Because he was attempting to kill her"¯.
Then again, sometimes around December 2005, a computer generated death threat letter with full of vulgarities was sent to the ex-wife. The ex-wife and her pro-bono (e.i. free) attorneys accused him of writing it at both criminal and civil courts. The St. Paul police took him to their station and interrogated him for hours at ends, trying to convince him to admit the charges and to enter into some kind of a plea bargain for a lesser charges. They pleaded with him, "Please tell us that you lost it and you wrote that letter... and we will leave you with just a warning." he knew, once he admit to the crime, it can negatively affect his record for 15 years, that is, when or if an employer tries to hire him, they will immediately find out that he had admitted of writing terroristic threats with full of vulgarities. He was ahead of the game. They could not fool him by such plea offers. When he refused to enter into any kind of a plea bargain, they, furthermore, threatened that if they find out that he was the one who wrote that letter, he could be charged with a third degree felony, and, if convicted, he could face at least 10 years in jail and a fine of 10,000 dollars. But he still refused to enter into any kind of a plea bargain and he told them that they could do whatever they want, but he was not the one who wrote that letter. So, they took his finger prints and his saliva to check it against the seal of the envelope for DNA with forensic tests. After more than a year of delays, they finally called him and told him that the DNA they found on the letter and the envelope was not mine. For lack of evidence, they dropped the felony charges against him. On the other hand, when they asked the ex-wife to give them her DNA, with the advice of her free attorneys, she found out that "she has the right to remain silent"¯ and thus, she refused to give them her DNA. Therefore, the police never charged her for false police report.
Then again, she and her attorneys charged him of violation of the restraining order by terrorizing the ex-wife with a gun. When she made this false and malicious crime report against him, her chief witness was her newly found white boy friend. By promising him a lion's share of the 60,000 dollars she sought to extort from him using this and other kinds of threats, she made him to agree to conspire and report a false crime against him. In any event, that is what is believed. Nobody knows what kind of agreement she made with him. Not only did she betray her own black brother, who brought out of refugee camps, wars, and poverty, she even attempted to get him arrested by conspiring with her white boy friend with false and malicious crimes. Consequently, his full name was published on the neighborhood crime watch newspaper together with robbers, rapists, and murderers. When the white boy came to testify against him at the courts, he said that "he only saw a black man running away from the house and only from his behind". When he was asked how he knew if he was black or other race by seeing him from his behind, he was totally lost and he had no answer.
Notwithstanding these facts, he was indicted with that crime and was scheduled both at the criminal and civil courts more than 10 times and, after 7 witnesses testified and established his firm alibi, that is, after testifying that he was with them at a cafeteria at the same time when the alleged crime took place, he was acquitted of the crime and the false charges against him were dismissed. Again, neither the police nor the courts charged the ex-wife for filing false police reports.
At another time she, by conspiring with one Eritrean guy, charged him with a crime. That dirty dog was pretending as a friend of the ex-wife and him, by conniving between the two of them unnoticed like a snake and passing information. On her behalf, he called the police and told them that he was chasing the car that they were driving, with a gun in his hand. The St. Paul police indicted with for making a "terroristic threats", that is, a third degree felony. His name and telephone number was published on the police report. When he confronted him, his reply was "he was only translating what she was telling him to say to the police." You should see his face how terrified he was when he said that. He could have charged him with defamation. But, he simply ignored him.
Then again she charged him that he was taking pictures of her when she was in a restaurant with one that looks like a fat Arab merchant. It is beyond belief how a fat merchant, who could be thrice her age, got involved into this. When he subpoenaed him in order to reply to the charges that he helped to instigate, he refused to obey the subpoena by totally ignoring it. He wrote him two letters warning him that he could face a contempt of court charges if he doesn't reply. But, he ignored all his warnings. Since he was overwhelmed with these massive litigations in different courts, he did not have the time to charge him with the contempt of the court.
These are just few of the 100 counts of criminal allegations that his relentless ex-wife and her insidious attorneys launched against him. He likes to limit himself with the summary of these few examples. A simple mention of the most main features of one malicious charge that he was facing would suffice to fill a volume.
The attacks by ambushes which these implacable enemies launched, the indignities they inflicted, the campaigns of harassment they formulated, the investigations they conducted, the threats they pronounced, the false incarcerations they were prepared to commit, the plotting and the wickedness to which they, their false witnesses, and their unscrupulous judges had stooped, constitute a record which can hardly find a parallel in recent history. God only knows how lonely he felt and to what state of helplessness that he was reduced.
That people who had been attracted with each other should later for one reason or another become alienated is the way of the world. However, perhaps only psychoanalysis could explain why someone's attraction should be transformed into irreconcilable hatred and why, driven by a 'road to Damascus experience' in reverse, she should relentlessly attack the man, who brought her out of poverty and the miseries of wars to the U.S. and with whom she had lived for two and half years, subjecting him to all these humiliations with her bitter and deep-seated ill will, lashing out at him by carrying out all her threats with all possible means at every opportunity.
As many of you may remember, he married this woman in Asmara, Eritrea, in Feb 2001. In order to bring her to the U.S., he first went to Asmara; then, since she already had gone out of Asmara, he went to the refugee camps in the Sudan; from there, he took her to Kenya because there was no American embassy in the Sudan. When she was living in the refugee camp of the Sudan, his friends and relatives advised him to leave her there and then. But, he just did not want to leave her there, in a strange country where she could not even speak their language. Instead, he told her "if you want to live with him, you can live with him and if you don't, you can peacefully leave. Therefore, you must sign a prenuptial agreement, that is, an agreement that she must not come after his property if we decide to split." After spending thousands of dollars to bring her through all these all these countries, on Nov. 2002, she came to the U.S. and we renewed the prenuptial agreement
For 4 years in a row, she progressively launched, relentlessly pursued, and meticulously executed all her baseless charges against him, both at the criminal courts and the civil courts, simultaneously. Consequently, there were multiple court hearings in both criminal and civil courts, one overlapping the other, and, after 4 years of litigation, all of them were dismissed and he was acquitted of all the crimes, both at the criminal courts and the civil courts except with one count. Finally, on Feb 5, 2009, the U.S. Courts of Appeals has reversed that one count of the false charges that he was wrongly convicted and, in its opinion, the upper court found that the district judge had abused his discretion for convicting him with that meritless charge.
Consequently, for 4 years since he had filed for a divorce, in order to defend himself from all these baseless accusations and intense hostilities, he was subjected to numerous criminal and civil court hearings, police interrogations, indictments, false incarcerations, fingerprints, and forensic tests. Throughout this period, he went through the emotions and turmoil of being falsely accused of crimes. He was unable to focus his attention on anything but the false accusations and their emotional and financial ramifications.
Despite of all their calculating and malicious schemes of hostile actions against him, he remained extremely patient. But his forbearance and patience that he has been showing to all her insidious actions, the St. Paul police's lack of prosecuting the ex-wife for false police reports, the unscrupulous district referee Earl Beddow's extreme tolerance of all her lies, and his violations of his constitutional rights, had served only to inflame her animosity and reinforce her determination to execute her malicious designs against him.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that he was made an object of such monstrous betrayals, and a target for such vicious assaults, he has been going from strength to strength, he was forging ahead, undaunted and his spirit unbroken by the injuries that he has received. In the midst of all these trials, he has been reinforced with a resolution that no obstacle, however formidable, could undermine. These experiences had lighted in his hearts a confidence that no misfortune, however black, could quench. It had infused into his heart a hope and a faith in the Almighty God that no force, however determined, could shatter. It has been an uphill battle to counteract the machinations of such an implacable and vigilant enemy and her unscrupulous attorneys who once dreamt of extorting 60 thousand dollars from him by their empty threats.
Even though the task had been long and arduous, yet the prize of learning to defend himself has been priceless. Even though he has been alone and limited in his experiences, powers, and resources, yet, with the help of God, he was able to bring these most powerful lawyers to their knees until one of their most threatening and antagonistic lawyer was fired from the law firm. Even though the combined forces of the enemies that he was fighting were fierce, numerous, and unrelenting, yet with perseverance, he was able to vanquish their hopes and annihilate their forces. The utmost of his open and secret enemies could hope to achieve was to retard his growth and obscure momentarily his enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The aim of these ruthless enemies was to get him convicted of a crime that he has never committed and to permanently destroy his record, so that he may get fired from his current job, and never be able to find another job in the U.S. again for at least 15 years. Yes, it takes 15 years for such records to expire. The 60 thousand dollars they dreamt to collect from him in order to drop the baseless charged against him was completely shattered, and they were never able to attain it. Moreover, the felony charges they instigated and the subsequent incarceration of at least 10 years of what these treacherous enemies had carefully devised and meticulously executed, they utterly failed to achieve it.
End Notes:
Visit this page for the 6.13 billion dollars tobacco litigation:
http://www.rkmc.com/Minnesota_Tobacco_Litigation_Case_Result.htm
You may look at these pages to find out how "intensely bigot"¯, "fiercely fanatical"¯, and "unspeakably corrupt"; the "incompetent"; judge he was facing by visiting the pages:
http://www.courthouseforum.com/forums/view.php?id=1052790#post1052790
http://www.abuseofdiscretion.com/
Finally, you can see the summary of the cases online, as it is a public record, by going to, and searching for "Yohannes" on "Participants" section of the left pane of this page:
http://macsnc.courts.state.mn.us/ctrack/publicLogin.jsp
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