Agents found mail in the name of Ethiopian man suspected of torture

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Investigators found envelopes addressed to a Denver man suspected of human rights violations in Ethiopia when they searched the home of a man being tried for immigration fraud, a witness said Wednesday.

Judith Jorden was among federal agents who searched the East Florida Avenue apartment of an Ethiopian who entered the United States, and later became a naturalized citizen, under the name Habteab Berhe Temanu.

Since his arrest last year, the man has admitted to being Kefelgn Alemu Worku, who prosecutors say was a guard at in an Ethiopian prison during the late 1970s, a time of political turmoil during which the Marxist military government imprisoned and killed thousands.

A witness on Monday who spent 18 months at the “Higher 15″ prison in Addis Ababa said Alemu Worku tortured and killed inmates at the prison.

Jorden, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, said that along with immigration documents, the search in August turned up two canceled, and opened, envelopes. Both were from Ethiopia and addressed to Tufa Alemu.

Another man, also Ethiopian, was in the apartment when agents arrived, and they checked his immigration documents and allowed him to leave for work. “He was temporarily staying with the defendant,” Jordan said.

The government claims Alemu Worku came to the U.S. in 2004 under the name Habteab Berhe Temanu. He took the name at the request of four of Habteab Berhe’s children who needed someone to act as the head of their household in order to emigrate to America.

At the time their father suffered from dementia and they didn’t think he could successfully complete an immigration interview.

Three of Habteab Berhe’s now grown children testified on Tuesday that they knew Alemu Worku as Tufa and had no knowledge of his past.