Feresin

ORDER AMENDING MEMORANDUM AND DENYING REHEARING

The Memorandum filed on August 6, 2003, is withdrawn and replaced with the Amended Memorandum filed concurrently with this order.

With the memorandum as amended, the panel has voted to deny the government’s petition for panel rehearing. The petition for rehearing, filed September 26, 2003, is DENIED. The mandate shall issue forthwith.

AMENDED MEMORANDUM ***

Jadran Feresin, a Roman Catholic Croatian, seeks asylum and withholding of removal. Feresin suffered lasting, disfiguring injuries from severe beatings he endured for his refusal to participate in genocidal acts while in the Yugoslavian army, and refused to join - and publically criticized - both the Yugoslavian and Croatian armed forces because of their acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Immigration Judge (“LI”) granted Feresin’s petition for asylum. The IJ held that Feresin *906 testified credibly, that he demonstrated past persecution, and that the INS failed to rebut the presumption that he had a well-founded fear of future persecution. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) reversed and held that Feresin failed to prove that conditions in Croatia had not changed…