Category: Africa

Buffalo: Somali father beats stepson to death over homework

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Incidentally, Buffalo is a favorite city for the federal refugee contractors.  We know from a story two years ago that Buffalo has a big problem with domestic abuse among refugees, here.   Type ‘Buffalo’ into our search function for more posts on the troubles in that city which is trying to use its immigrant population to revitalize the city—hey!  good luck with that.

From the Buffalo News a few days ago:

Ten-year-old Abdifatah Mohamud was running for his life down Sycamore Street at about 5 p.m. Tuesday when a concerned neighbor stopped to try to help.

Seeing the boy’s stepfather chasing after him, the neighbor helped the man, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, catch up with the child.

The boy didn’t want to go home with Mohamud.

“I told the boy, ‘Daddy promises nothing is going to happen,'” the neighbor later told The Buffalo News.

“The boy said to me: ‘No, he always says that.'”

Less than six hours later, Abdifatah was dead, brutally beaten, and his stepfather, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, was under arrest.

There is more, read it all.  Be sure to check out the murderer’s places of employment.

Readers:  I just now was reading a bunch of stories at the Religion of Peace website (that is where I found this one) and you might call today’s selection “Muslim immigrants gone wild worldwide“.  There are a couple of links to stories about asylum seeker rapists—Muslim men raping women and men in Sweden and Finland for example.  You might want to put the Religion of Peace on your daily reading list!

Somali sex trafficking trial underway in Nashville

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update April 21st:  More sordid details from the on-going trial, here.

Case is complicated by lack of accurate birth dates for the former refugees.

From AP at the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Forensic experts testified about DNA evidence during the second week of a federal trial involving several defendants accused of using a young Somali female for forced prostitution.

The trial being held in Nashville includes nine out of a total of 30 people who have been accused in an indictment of involvement in a child sexual trafficking ring that prosecutors say was run by Somali gangs and that included sexual acts in Minnesota, Ohio and Tennessee.

The key witness testified last week that she was used as a prostitute by members of Somali gangs starting in the 6th grade. But the trial has been complicated by the fact that both the alleged victim and many of the defendants are from Somali families who fled to the United States as war refugees and who don’t have accurate birth records. The other defendants are expected to face trial at a later date.

Go here for all of our previous coverage of the case.

South African constitution makes promises it can’t keep as economic migrants pour in

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Every time I see one of these articles (coming with some regularity now) about South Africa’s troubles with immigrants seeking the promised land and the local population that resents them, that ol’ schadenfreude is hard to hide.  South Africa threw off the yoke of “white oppression” and a myth was born that the country would be a model for the world—it would be the RAINBOW nation where people of all races would live in harmony as they were directed to do by a Communist-inspired constitution.

I wondered, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently touted South Africa’s Constitution as a model for emerging ‘democracies’ (ROFLMAO) like Egypt, if she ever read newspapers (maybe Katie Couric should ask her what she reads).  Here we learned that the African National Congress promises the moon to anyone in South Africa—a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.  No wonder they are flowing in by the tens of thousands from across Africa and the Middle East.

But, the government is learning the hard way, you can’t have Open Borders while offering security and sustenance to anyone who gets there.

Here is the latest news on how the government is trying to cope with the problem:

JOHANNESBURG—South Africa, which receives more individual asylum requests than any other country, announced Thursday it is taking steps to cope with the influx.

The government’s immigration department said in a statement that it faces an “immense challenge” and was extending hours at offices across the country that accept asylum applications from people who have traveled from as far away as Pakistan. Mkuseli Apleni, the department’s top bureaucrat, also said police will help manage lines at the offices, where fights and stampedes have broken out.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees welcomed the moves. The agency’s spokeswoman for southern Africa, Tina Ghelli, told The Associated Press that her agency is concerned that people fleeing oppression and violence are finding it difficult to get help because economic immigrants are abusing and overwhelming the system in South Africa.

According to UNHCR figures, more than 100,000 people sought asylum in South Africa last year. That was well above the next highest number of applications received, some 74,000 in the United States.

And, can you believe it! They have xenophobia too (and it’s not the white people who fear the foreigner).

Somalis make up the second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa, according to the U.N. refugees agency. In South Africa, they are not confined to refugee camps and can work and receive state welfare benefits.

Most asylum applications are from Zimbabweans, whose neighboring country is gripped by political violence and economic uncertainty. Congolese, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis also apply, UNHCR said.

Xenophobic attitudes led to an explosion of violence against foreigners, particularly those from elsewhere in Africa, in some of South Africa’s poorest communities in 2008.

Indeed tribalism is alive and well even in the Rainbow Nation with the model constitution.

American Al-Shabaab believed to have been executed in Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported on the American-born Jihadist who grew up in Alabama on several occasions (here) a couple of years ago and hadn’t heard much of him since.  Now, there are rumors that he was executed (beheaded?) in Somalia earlier this month after a disagreement with leaders of the Al Qaeda linked terror group Al Shabaab.

From Key Media:

Keydmedia Somali had received a report that Hammami, a leader in the group Al Shabaab, was executed on April 4 by other Al Shabaab members in rebel-held Lower Shabelle region of southern Somalia, but the exact location is unclear yet.

Hammami, who used the name “Abu Mansour al-Amriki” or “The American,” appeared in a video last month in which he said he was afraid for his life because of disagreements within the officials of Al shabab rebels.

A Washington, D.C.-based group that monitors the war on terrorism said, however, that it questions the accuracy of the report, the second in 13 months reporting Hamammi’s demise.

In 2010 Hammami said that Al Qaeda’s (and Al-Shabaab’s) goal was nothing short of a worldwide Caliphate, here.

For new readers Al-Shabaab first came to our attention when dozens of Somali refugees returned to Africa to get terror training, here.

More delays in the Tennessee Somali sex trafficking case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, what do you know—refugee immigration documents are inaccurate for some.

(Previous posts on this case can be found here)

From AP at NECN.com (raise your hand if you’ve seen this story mentioned anywhere on the mainstream media!):

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — A federal trial involving more than a dozen defendants accused in a sex trafficking ring run by Somali gangs has faced a series of delays.

U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes again this week ordered jurors to return on Monday as defense attorneys argued that the defendants, many of whom are refugees from Somalia, were juveniles at the time the alleged crimes occurred.

The indictment said three gangs called the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia and the Lady Outlaws were forcing teenage girls into prostitution and operated in St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Columbus, Ohio; and Nashville.

After selecting a jury last month, the trial was delayed last week when prosecutors turned over thousands of documents and audio recordings from the investigation to defense attorneys on the eve of trial. Both defense attorneys and federal prosecutors have repeatedly declined to comment about the case.

Who exactly is my mama, and when exactly was I born?

Many, but not all the defendants, are described as refugees who came to the United States as young children. [What about the others, were they born here, or came illegally?—ed] Police have relied on immigration paperwork to determine their ages, but defense attorneys have argued in court that information in those documents are routinely incorrect due to cultural and language issues.*

One defendant, Abdirahman Abdirazak Hersi, has a date of birth listed in police records as Feb. 20, 1990, but his mother testified in court Wednesday that he had been born in Somalia on Dec. 1, 1991, and that her sister was incorrectly listed as his mother in immigration records.

His attorney has asked the judge to dismiss some of the charges against his client because he would have been a juvenile at the time of the offenses and he never had a juvenile status hearing that would determine whether he would face the charges as an adult.

* Or due to fraud!   New readers may not know that the family reunification portion of the Refugee Resettlement Program was (maybe still is!) closed for years beginning in 2008 when the State Department discovered widespread fraud primarily from Somalia and East Africa.   The “family” members turned out not to be related at all.  Here is my original reporting.  And, as of this writing (July 2011)—fewer refugees coming to the US due to security concerns—the program had not resumed.