His mother, I assume, could have named him anything. She chose Haroon.

In most parts of the world, carrying such a name is not much of a problem. It is a celebrated one, even.

There is Haroon Rashid, the cricket star of Doha, Qatar who, it was last reported, "could manage only one run and was run out pushing for the second that left the teams level, both on runs scored and wickets lost."

There also is Haroon Rashid, a respected mental health professor in the Punjab, and another Haroon Rashid, a Peshawar, Pakistan-based journalist, who recently won the first-ever BBC World Service Award for best reporter/presenter.

Then, too, there is Haroon Rashid Aswat, a Briton suspected in the 2005 London subway bombings and of plotting to set up a camp in Oregon to train fighters for war in Afghanistan.

That Haroon Rashid is the one the feds thought they had when police busted Haroon Rashid, a 36-year-old Lakewood mechanic and 10-year legal resident of the U.S. with an American wife and four American children, following a late-night fight with suspected gang members outside of a relative's home.

Charged after the fight with simple assault, Haroon Rashid, the Lakewood mechanic, days later was named by then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in a much-publicized press conference as the mastermind of a Colorado terrorist cell that allegedly included his wife, brother-in-law and assorted other relatives.

Yet when the real Haroon Rashid Aswat later was arrested, the charges against the Lakewood mechanic, in jail since 2004, suddenly were dropped. And the attorney general did not hold a press conference.

Lakewood's Haroon Rashid, however, did not walk home a free man.

On Tuesday, according to his wife and friends, he was put on an airplane in New York and deported back to his native Pakistan - not for anything terrorism-related, but for the penny ante fight more than three years ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to hear the Lakewood mechanic's appeal of the government's deportation order that rested on what at best could be called, given the underlying crime, an unusual sentence of 401 days in jail, 366 of them suspended, all of which made it an aggravated felony and Haroon Rashid eligible for deportation.

The gang members had taunted the man and his family, days after the Sept. 11 attacks, because of their ethnic background. They scuffled after Haroon Rashid told them to knock it off.

Even the cops called the altercation a minor one.

"This is such an injustice," said Jennifer Erickson, 33, a neighbor of the Rashids, who left her two children with Saima, the man's wife and her best friend, to make the rounds on Tuesday to drum up support for Haroon Rashid.

"Saima has not seen her husband for two weeks. She was not allowed by the government to see him before they took him. She cries and cries every day," she said.

Haroon Rashid, even the government grudgingly acknowledges, had never before been in trouble with the law, just a man trying to make his way in the world.

"That family is as American as mine," said Jennifer Erickson, "a true American family let down by our justice system."

She and a group of neighbors on Tuesday were contacting government officials, seeking a pardon.

Who, I asked, the same government officials who at that moment were putting Haroon Rashid on a plane bound for Pakistan?

"We need a pardon simply so justice can be served here," Jennifer Erickson said. "That's the only thing we can beg for now, to keep that family together."

Saima, 35, said the deportation order has ripped her family apart. Asked if she would take the children to Pakistan to be reunited with their father, she said simply:

"This is our country. This is the only life my children know. And this is the problem. The government is effectively deporting five other Americans, all who have done nothing."

To take her children to Pakistan would be "unconscionable," she said.

"I would not place my children in that scary place."

So she will stay in Colorado, she said, to seek a state-court appeal of her husband's assault conviction.

"I will stay as long as it takes. What the future holds, I cannot know."

None of it is fair, Jennifer Erickson said.

"Haroon and Saima came here for the American Dream, and because of his name, a mistaken identity, it blew up right in their faces.

"What the government did is a big embarrassment, and they want to get him out. As soon as he is gone, the sooner the story closes."

Maybe not.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-954-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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