Category: Africa

Somali cab drivers in Portland (Maine!) threaten lawsuit, city backs down

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Would someone please tell me why such apparently large numbers of Somali former “refugees,” who sought refuge from their terror-filled homeland in the Horn of Africa, are running back and forth to Africa for extended periods of time if there is so much danger there?

And, why are so many Somalis drawn to driving cabs and buses at airports, or working in airports in other capacities (Question for another day!)?   Well, that and meatpacking, of course.

This is a story about how Portland, ME officials would like to reduce the number of cab permits at the airport and recently required that cabbies show up in person to re-apply for their permit.  But NO! says the Somalis’ lawyer, that isn’t always possible—you are discriminating against all these guys who have to hop over to Africa from time to time!

From the Portland Press Herald:

PORTLAND — The city’s decision Friday to rescind a policy barring the use of any power-of-attorney agreement to get a taxi permit for the Portland International Jetport opens the door to talks about the issue, said the lawyer representing taxi drivers.

Sigmund Schutz, an attorney with Preti Flaherty, said the policy was “a back-door attempt to squeeze out” airport taxi drivers. Schutz represented 11 taxi owners and drivers from Somalia who sued the city over the policy, which was adopted last month.

The city had said it would no longer allow taxi drivers or owners to renew their access permits using powers of attorney. Instead, each permit applicant would have to appear in person.

The city has been trying to reduce the number of drivers of unreserved cabs — those that sit outside the terminal waiting for fares, as opposed to those that are called to pick up travelers — to 40 by tightening the rules on permit renewals.

And, I guess that cab driving is so lucrative that cabbies can afford trips to Africa!

The Somalis have argued that they sometimes have to go to their homeland to attend to family matters, and that those trips can be lengthy. They might not be in the country when their permit is up for renewal.

For new readers, another frequently visited post here at RRW is this one from 2009—‘Somali migration to Maine: it’s the welfare magnet, stupid!’

Minnesota “love and peace” crowd defends women who told court to “go to hell”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh, geez.  The political hard left in Minnesota is rallying around the Somali women recently convicted of sending material support to the terror group Al-shabab in Somalia.  I first told you about them here where they dissed our legal system and said infidels would die.

Now, from Fight Back News (LOL! don’t you love it when peace people have publications like Fight Back News) we see that peace and justice activists are organizing to rally around their cause in the months leading up to their sentencing.

Minneapolis, MN – About 100 people gathered for a “Speak Out in Support of the Somali Community” Dec. 3. The organizers were inspired to do the forum after the Oct. 20 conviction of Amina Ali and Hawo Hassan, two Somali American women who raised money for charities assisting Somalia’s poor. The women’s conviction was related to providing “material support to foreign terrorist organizations.” During jury deliberations, supporters of the women made it clear that the situation for people in Somalia was dire and that people required help for basic survival.

Remember readers, these were women who did not say they acted out of naivete’.

In the AP story about their conviction, here, we learned that the government had recorded their phone calls and prosecutors reported this at trial:

Prosecutor Steven Ward contended that Ali and Hassan were in contact with key al-Shabab leaders and getting frequent updates on the fighting. He said their conversations showed they knew al-Shabab was a terror group, sometimes celebrating casualties.

In one of those calls, Ali told others to “forget about the other charities” and focus on “the jihad.” In another, she said, “Let the civilians die.”

Now that they have been convicted, Minnesota hard Left groups, saying the FBI is on a “witch hunt,” are making them a cause celebre’!

Both women were convicted of conspiracy to provide material support for a foreign terrorist organization. In addition, Ali was convicted of 12 counts of providing material support and Hassan was convicted of two counts of lying to FBI agents. Each count of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization carries a 15-year sentence. On the day of the conviction, there were huge protests in Somalia over the women’s cases.

The women were accused of helping al-Shabab, an Islamist organization that fights to free Somalia from foreign domination.

Participants at the forum were urged to pack the courtroom for the sentencing of Amina Ali and Hawo Hassan. The sentencing is expected to happen in the early spring. Before that, there will be other actions and campaigns around the case.

Why so many Somalis in the US?   That is what people are googling everyday and they end up here at RRW where top posts continue to be this one about how and when we admitted so many Somalis to the US and this one about how come there are so many Somalis in Minneapolis (Minnesota generally).

Ethiopian refugee gets 30 years for sexually assaulting elderly man

~ Ann Corcoran

That’s the report last week from Minnesota where the convicted man’s attorney tried to get a lesser sentence because he was a poor refugee from troubled Africa.

From the Twin Cities Pioneer Press (Hat tip:  Cliff):

Ahmed Sule was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison Friday for sexually assaulting a legally blind elderly man in the victim’s Fridley home last year.

Anoka County Judge Tammi Fredrickson handed down the decision after the victim’s daughter told the courtroom how Sule’s actions last September had affected her father and their family.

[…..]

The victim, who was 84 at the time of the attack, was suffering from cancer when Sule broke into his home. Sule, 24, repeatedly told the man he loved him and wanted to kiss him before sexually assaulting him. The elderly man tried to fight off Sule but was weak from radiation and chemotherapy.

[…..]

The man has since died.

[…..]

Brisbois [Sule’s attorney] had been hoping the judge would take into account Sule’s background. The refugee from Ethiopia grew up in a constant state of conflict in his native country, Brisbois said.

[…..]

He will be deported after his prison term.

Be sure to read the comments on this troubling story where friends of the victim said they danced in the street at hearing the verdict.

The Ethiopian refugee flow to America keeps flowing

The article doesn’t tell us in what year Sule came to the US, but we have resettled the following numbers of Ethiopians in the last four years (here): 560 (2011), 668 (2010), 321 (2009) and 299 (2008).  For years prior to those go here where we were bringing over 1000 Ethiopians each year.  Why?  I don’t know, but one of the Top Eleven federal refugee contractors* is run by Ethiopians—The Ethiopian Community Development Council.   The present head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services is Ethiopian Eskinder Negash, here.  [By the way, I hope to write a post soon on the revolving door between contractors and the federal agencies that dole out the money to the contractors!]

* If you are a new reader, don’t be fooled by the name they call these contractors—voluntary agencies (volags for short)—they are not run by volunteers but by highly paid professionals managing a refugee industrial complex!

Libya: Obama “responsibility to protect” will now be tested (on us?)

~ Ann Corcoran

Samantha Power and the women around Obama (Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton) we are told convinced Obama to back the ouster of Qadhafi in Libya based on the “new international community’s responsibility to protect.”    I was never quite sure who exactly was being protected from whom.

Here a writer in The Star from Toronto says he is hopeful that Libya will “emerge as a showpiece of the Arab Spring” (really now, like Egypt was supposed to have been?).  In your dreams!

The Star:

The sheer messiness of the moment renders premature any declarations of mission accomplished. What Canada joined — a new kind of war framed on the emerging ideal of the international community’s “responsibility to protect” — has given rise to a new kind of aftermath.

Libya is altogether different today than Iraq in 2003, or Afghanistan in late 2001. Uglier, in some ways, because of the score-settling…

So who is the target of the score-settling by Arab Islamist militias?   Dark-skinned people, that’s who.

Nowhere did the revolution’s ugly aftermath present itself as viscerally as at a Tawerga refugee encampment near Tripoli Airport, where close to 2,000 darker-skinned Libyans are living in fear of continued score-settling. Many acknowledge they fought with Gadhafi forces. But many did not. And unlike lighter-skinned Libyans who allied with the ousted regime, the Tawerga refugees have been subjected to near-blanket reprisals — most recently, at this camp, a night raid in early November involving 60 carloads of fighters from the hornet’s nest of anger that is Misurata, Tawerga’s neighbouring city.

This is one of nine Tawerga camps…

Watch for it!   The ‘responsibility to protect’ means we go to war and create a whole new bunch of refugees that need to be resettled in the West!

Don’t make Omar Jamal the poster boy for the anti-CAIR crowd!

~ Ann Corcoran

You know I’ve been out of the loop since mid-October or so, so I didn’t know about all this business about CAIR going after Somalis Abdi Bihi and Omar Jamal in Minneapolis until I saw this post by Marisol at Jihad Watch yesterday that begins:

CAIR’s Minnesota chapter led a personal attack on the credibility of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi in connection with their planned presence at a conference whose literature described al-Shabaab as an “Islamic extremist terrorism organization,” to which CAIR took exception.

There are at least two noteworthy aspects to this story: First, the threats are a reprise of the old chestnut “Say Islam is a Religion of Peace, or we’ll kill you.” The second is that CAIR is caught in its own game, for as hard as it has worked to cast all criticism as incitement to a violent “backlash,” at least where Islamic teachings and advocacy groups are concerned. How about their intense criticism of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi? If CAIR Minnesota is to hold itself to the standards it imposes on others, it would have to apologize, shut up, pay up, and disband.

Then again, claiming victim status tends to require a certain ideological pedigree, and the right connections. “FBI Investigating Facebook Death Threats on Somali Advocate,” by Tom Lyden for Fox 9 News, December 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace)….

Seems that Jamal now claims he is getting death threats on his facebook page.   As we have noted here at RRW (innumerable times since 2007 when I noted he defended a Somali rapist caught in the act and on camera), Jamal is a publicity hound and possibly more than that.  I call him the Somali Jesse Jackson (Frontpage Magazine writers called him the Al Sharpton of the Somali community) and he is at the center of anything to do with Somalis including driving media attention away from the Somali who died with cyanide (enough to kill hundreds) in his hotel room in advance of the 2008 Democratic Convention, here.   At that time we learned that Jamal was here illegally and had been convicted of immigration fraud in 2003 in Tennessee.  He was never deported.

Readers:  Search RRW for ‘Omar Jamal’ and you will see what I mean.

Abdi Bihi, on the other hand, seems to be the real deal and should be encouraged.   Here is one of many posts on Bihi  at RRW.  At one point I suspected that Jamal had only pretended to be on Bihi’s side to get more information to pass along—to someone.   Facebook threats from Al-Shabaab would be a very handy way to solidify one’s cover, or simply to get media attention.