Kurdish man a new citizen with old name

BANGOR – When he lived in his native Iran, Ako Kapri was forced to abandon his Kurdish name and became known as Omar Aghazadeh.

On Friday, he gained a new nationality, as well as the right to return to his old name.

Kapri, 38, who lives in Portland, was one of 21 men and women from 11 countries who became U.S. citizens Friday morning at ceremony at U.S. District Court in Bangor.

“I feel real freedom here,” Kapri said after the ceremony.

While Kurds are Muslim, they are not Shiite Muslim, the dominant group in Iran. And Kurdish names such as his are banned, he said. The Kurds are a distinct group of people whose homeland, Kurdistan, is divided among four countries: Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

In Iran, he had been jailed for political activism. So he arrived in Portland in 1997 as a political refugee. “I had a friend in Maine. He sponsored me,” Kapri said.

Since then, he has studied at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, where he graduated last weekend. He is a computer scientist.

Kapri still has family in Iran, and although he hopes they will one day join him in the United States, he knows it will be difficult.

“It’s too hard [to emigrate to the United States] after September 11, and it’s getting harder,” Kapri said.

Kapri was also one of 14 people who requested and were granted name changes.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John A. Woodcock presided over the Bangor event, which lasted about an hour. During the ceremony, the new citizens took an oath swearing to abandon their former nationalities and become full-fledged U.S. citizens.

“The history of the United States is a history of immigration,” Woodcock said in his remarks to the new citizens, stressing the fact that with American citizenship come equal rights under the law.

“No one can claim any greater rights as an American citizen than the rights you now have,” Woodcock said. “The American pie has no upper crust.”

Woodcock went on to say that it didn’t matter what reason brought the new citizens to the United States, only that they are here.

For Nasra Salub, 21, of Lewiston, coming to America means leaving the destruction and violence of her native Somalia. “There were civil wars in my country,” Salub said.

The only word Salub could find to describe her feelings after being naturalized was “excitement.”

The new citizens came from Canada, China, Haiti, Iran, Jordan, Cambodia, Mexico, Somalia, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Zambia.

After the swearing in of new citizens, Thad Zmistowski, an accomplished singer and Bangor lawyer, led the crowd in singing “America the Beautiful,” and later in “The Star Spangled Banner” in closing ceremonies.

Three lawyers were admitted to the federal bar by Woodcock during the ceremony. They are Michael P. Turndorf, James C. Beardsley and Mary Katherine Lynch.