By JOSEPH KELLARD
His trial was held on Wednesday, Oct. 15, and the following day Judge Alan Horonof sentenced him to a year of imprisonment. Since Badrajan had been incarcerated from the time of his arrest in August 2002 until this month, he was not remanded to prison, since he'd already served his time.
"Badrajan was brought to trial on both charges, but he was convicted on the lesser one and acquitted on the felony," said Rick Henshaw, a spokesman for District Attorney Dennis Dillon's office.
On August 21, 2002, Badrajan left a message on the voice mail of a supervisor of the Town of Hempstead Tax Office in Hempstead in which he said: "We will be bombed out of the system. We did not take a lesson from 9/11 or Oklahoma City and there will be international justice," according to documents from the First District Court in Hempstead.
Later that day, Badrajan was arrested for both making a terroristic threat, a class D felony, and aggravated harassment, a class A misdemeanor. The former charge became law on Sept. 17, 2001, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and carries a maximum penalty of seven years.
A person is guilty of this crime "when with intent to ... influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion ... he or she threatens to commit or cause to be committed a specific offense and thereby causes a reasonable expectation or fear of the imminent commission of such offense," the law states.
Badrajan was prompted by a discrepancy on his tax bill to make his call and leave his message that ultimately landed him in jail. "I wasn't making a threat, I was simply stating my opinion about why the United States is getting bombed," Badrajan said. "And I said the same thing to the town when I was at their offices two days before, and they didn't arrest me."
Badrajan, who lives in Oceanside with his wife and their twin 18-year-old sons, is an immigrant who was granted political asylum in the U.S. in 1988 from then-Communist Romania. He claims that from the day he arrived in America he has encountered various injustices, most of them revolving around issues such as his unemployment, which he claims violate his political asylum and international law.
"By political asylum law, including international law and United States law, I have the right to serve [in] my job as a civil engineer with a degree recognized by the U.S. State Department, the job I held before I came to the United States," said Badrajan, who has been unemployed for five years, after he lost his job as a mechanic with Este Lauder. "I have to be protected by the U.S. government; I have no right to work."
Scott Rowson, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy in Washington, D.C., said. "There's no guarantee of a job based on political asylum."
Don Clavin, receiver of taxes at the Town of Hempstead, on whose voice mail Badrajan's left his message, issued a statement regarding the verdict against the Oceanside man. "The sentence that this gentleman received speaks to the severity of his crime, and I'm glad to see that his invoking Sept. 11, 2001 and threatening to blow up a Town's facility was not taken lightly by the courts."
Badrajan's lawyer, Michael Favale, did not return phone calls to comment on the case. Town of Hempstead officials did not respond to Badrajan's claims.
