That is what All Gov* is reporting yesterday. Here is the whole story from Noel Brinkerhoff:
The former head of Somalia’s military is now the focus of a potential landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court which will decide whether foreign officials now living in the country can be subject to U.S. law.
Mohamed Ali Samantar, once Somalia’s minister of defense under the Siad Barre regime in the 1980s, now lives in Fairfax, Virginia. He has been accused by some Somalis of overseeing a campaign of torture, imprisonment and executions directed at political prisoners. The allegations include authorizing the 1988 military attacks that killed more than 5,000 people in Hargeisa, the nation’s second largest city.
The Center for Justice & Accountability has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Somali survivors who want Samantar punished for his actions. The case, Yousuf v. Samantar, relies on the Torture Victim Protection Act which Congress passed in 1991. The law states that foreign government officials accused of torture who now live in the U.S. can be accountable under American law as long as there is no effective judicial system in the country where the crimes were committed. Plaintiffs are arguing that the chaotic state of Somalia today makes it impossible to bring Samantar to justice back home.
Samantar insists that he is protected from legal action in the U.S. under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act which grants immunity from American lawsuits to government officials from other nations.
I’m not a lawyer but I wonder if this case will have some bearing eventually on Gitmo prisoners should they be released in the US (I heard about the possible release of some on a talking-head show yesterday).
* I was not aware of All Gov (Everything our Government really does) before I saw this story, but it’s an interesting website, check it out.