Refugee would-be kidnappers sentenced in Roanoke, VA

We first reported this story in May, here.  Yesterday a judge in Roanoke, Virginia sentenced four former refugees to short prison sentences and deportation when they are released from prison in the attempted kidnapping case that shocked rural Virginia.

From the Roanoke Times:

The plot was bizarre, carefully planned and amateurishly executed: To make money in America, three young men from refugee families set out to find a wealthy woman, abduct her from her home and hold her for ransom.

It all unraveled as soon as Audrey Levicki answered the door to her Southwest Roanoke County home.

Suspicious that the two men were not the Red Cross volunteers they claimed to be, Levicki braced the door with her foot and then slammed it shut on the arm of the one who tried to reach inside.

The two men ran off, despite months of planning and a getaway car waiting at the end of the driveway with rope, handcuffs and other tools of a kidnapping. The duo was quickly arrested along with two accomplices, setting in motion a series of unintended consequences that culminated Monday at a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

Levicki, whose intended fate was to be held in a rundown camper until her captors could collect up to $1 million from her corporate executive husband, said that she is now a prisoner in her own home.

“My life went to hell on April 6,” Levicki said in a statement to Judge James Turk, recounting how the incident led to fearful days, sleepless nights and a loss of security so profound that she no longer ventures outside to feed the dog unless armed with a baseball bat.

For the three African natives who tried to kidnap Levicki — Luke Musa Elbino, 20; Mohammed Hussein Guhad, 20; and Joshua Kasongo, 19 — the consequences went beyond the five-and-a-half-year prison terms they received at the end of a daylong hearing.

Once they are released from prison, the three face almost certain deportation back to Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda — countries their families fled when they were boys to escape civil war and genocide.

This part is a joke, we won’t deport them.  We never send refugees back to places like Somalia and possibly not even the Sudan or Rwanda.  In five and a half years they will be back in Roanoke with additional ‘skills’ they learn in prison!  Maybe they will be reformed, maybe not.

Then here is the ultimate in liberal do-gooder hubris:

“They went through terror themselves, so I couldn’t imagine them inflicting that on anyone else,” Barbara Smith, the retired head of the nonprofit Refugee and Immigration Services* office in Roanoke, said while testifying for the defendants.

People like Smith assume that when the US shows kindness, the kindness will be returned.  She can’t believe that young men plucked from the hell hole of Africa could bite the hand that feeds them.  

Read the entire article in the Roanoke Times, there is lots more to the story.  Note that even the reporter in using words and phrases like, “bizarre,” “surreal,” “full of ironies,” appears to be demonstrating his disappointment that these young men didn’t follow the magical pattern of what refugees are supposed to be—grateful and ultimately successful.

In fact, in that May post on this story, the Judge at that time, Judge Michael Urbanski, said he was sad about the case.  Here is what I said about his sadness:

For whom are you sad Judge? It doesn’t sound like you have the frightened women who were stalked by these men at the top of your “sad” list. Are you sad that these men ‘flipped the bird’ at the gift given them by the ‘humanitarians’ at the State Department and the volag federal contractors who brought them to America? Or, are you sad for yourself because the myth of the beautiful American melting pot has been tarnished?

* Looks like this resettlement agency is a Catholic Charities (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) subcontractor.

Endnote:   This isn’t the first time we have heard about problems in “welcoming” Roanoke.  Back in April 2008 we reported on the on-going conflicts between African Americans and the new African refugees resettled by this agency, here, in Roanoke.  These agencies have this naive notion that African Americans will welcome with open arms their black brothers from Africa into their communities.  It’s not about skin color, it’s about culture and the cultures are often in conflict.  It doesn’t help either that refugees get all sorts of government stuff.

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