Day: October 15, 2013

Ethiopian war criminal got into US as refugee by lying about his identity

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Imagine that!

Kefelgn Alemu Worku has been found guilty in US court in Denver and will likely serve 15 years in prison for lying.

Kefelgn Alemu Worku

Thanks to Creeping Sharia for tipping us off to this latest news.

I searched our thousands of posts and voila, I knew I recognized the name, we first reported on Worku here in 2012.  It is really worth visiting that post to see how complex a fraud was perpetrated on the US State Department.  Worku didn’t just claim (in isolation) to be someone else, but “kids” in America (not his kids) actually helped perpetrate the scam and allowed him to assume the identity of their ailing father.   He came to the US through ‘family’ reunification.

Here is the news of the conviction yesterday at East Africa News (emphasis is mine):

A United States court has convicted an Ethiopian immigrant, who is suspected of having committed war crimes in his home country, on charges of immigration fraud and identity theft.

Prosecutors told the court that the accused, Kefelgn Alemu Worku, had lied about his past and stolen someone else’s identity before immigrating to Colorado in 2004 as a refugee. Worku admitted that he had used a false name to gain entry and citizenship in the United States but denied allegations that he had tortured and killed political prisoners while working as a prison guard in Ethiopia in the 1970’s.

The accused was arrested in May 2011 after Ethiopian Immigrants, Samuel Ketema, 53, and his brother, Kiflu, 58, identified and confronted him at a cafe in Aurora, Colorado. Kiflu claims he witnessed Worku torturing and killing several prisoners – including one of Kiflu’s best friends – while serving a prison sentence in Ethiopia.

So we taxpayers absorbed the expenses of his resettlement, his use of social services, his legal case and now we get to take care of him in prison for the next 15 years!

Worku now faces up to 15 years in prison following his conviction. Dozens of Ethiopian immigrants who thronged the court during the trial seemed satisfied with the verdict.

The charges brought against Worku in Denver were for immigration violations and not the war crimes that he is accused of having committed nearly four decades ago. Ethiopia already tried him for those crimes in absentia and sentenced him to hanging.

I guess what this really means is that in lieu of deportation and hanging, we get to pay for him in prison for 15 years, then what?  Will he be released into America to collect his senior citizen benefits because he is a US citizen?  But, wait! is he a US citizen if he used another person’s identity?

Clamp-down on illegal boats seems to have cooled Rohingya plans to make a run on Australia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Gosh, could strict border enforcement work!

For new readers, the Rohingya are Muslims, some of whom have lived in Burma, others in Bangladesh.  They are often called “stateless” by the human rights industrial complex which has made them a cause celebre in a public relations campaign we have followed for over five years.   We have a category specifically for Rohingya posts, here (156 previous posts!)

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, second from right, is quoted often in support of Rohingya.

 

Australians, fed up with the thousands of mostly Muslim illegal migrants coming to their shores in recent years, has elected a government which is sending signals that it won’t be a push-over as some recent governments have been on the subject of illegal immigration.

Here is an article in The Irrawaddy which reports that Rohingya people (already in their own “cultural zones” of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh) are now having second thoughts about trying to reach Australia.  Emphasis below is mine.

KUALA LUMPUR — Australia’s clampdown on refugees and migrants trying to reach the country’s shores by boat has prompted uncertainty among Rohingya who, facing state oppression and attacks by Arakanese Buddhists, have fled Burma in the tens of thousands in recent years.

Since Australia’s now-ousted Labor government decided in July to prevent refugees traveling by sea from landing in Australia—saying that would-be arrivals would be taken to processing centers in neighboring Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG)—some Rohingya who had hopes of making it to Australia are now in a bind.

“We are disappointed, we feel like we are stuck,” said Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, president of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHOM). “Many of us do not have papers here [in Malaysia] and we have no status in Burma. It is a difficult situation for anyone who hoped to travel to Australia,” Ahmad told The Irrawaddy.  [To “travel” or make an illegal run for Australian shores!—ed]

Thousands of Rohingya refugees undertake a treacherous maritime journey from western Burma to Thailand or Malaysia. From there some in turn hope to reach Australia, usually attempting another dangerous maritime crossing through the Indian Ocean.

[…..]

Rohingya arrivals to Australia are difficult to quantify, as those who do make it are listed as “stateless” by Australia, while some others who arrived in Australia over recent years claimed to be Rohingya but were assessed by Australia to be either Bangladeshi nationals or Burmese Muslims, according to Chris Lewa.  [I suspect that those Rohingya getting into the US through refugee resettlement are being referred to as Burmese Muslims as well, since the word ‘Rohingya’ is associated with some pretty rough types.—ed]

Australian government statistics—covering the years from 1998 to 2012—list 2,204 stateless maritime arrivals to Australia, a cohort that includes Kurds, Palestinians and Rohingya.

The boat people issue became a major election issue as immigration restrictionist Tony Abbott was elected as the new Prime Minister last month.

A voter backlash against the arrival of over 40,000 asylum seekers since 2007, when policy was relaxed for a time, prompted both of Australia’s main parties to suggest tighter controls.

I found this bit of the story of interest too:

Indonesia is a common transit point for refugees trying to reach Australia, Rohingya included. At least 28 Middle Eastern migrants drowned when a boat, which was aiming to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, sank off Indonesia in late September.

Note they are simply referred to generically as ‘Middle Eastern’ migrants with no mention that they were Lebanese pretending to be Syrian refugees as our commenter ‘pungentpeppers’ reported here.

The photo is from this story about a UNHCR meeting in June.  In a cursory search I can’t find a specific website for Lewa’s Arakan Project, lots of references to Lewa and the status of the Project as an NGO, but no website.  if any industrious readers find one, let us know!