Refugee sentenced in Ft. Dix Six plot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Albanian refugee who supplied the guns in the foiled Ft. Dix Six plot to kill soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq got off lightly in NJ yesterday according to this article in the New York Times.

CAMDEN, N.J. — A 25-year-old man who admitted he supplied guns and ammunition to friends accused of plotting to attack soldiers at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey was sentenced on Monday to 20 months in prison, a term that exceeds the federal guidelines but falls short of the five years prosecutors had sought.

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The man, Agron Abdullahu, an ethnic Albanian who immigrated to the United States in 1999 from a refugee camp in Macedonia, has already served almost 11 months in prison and could be released by year’s end, his lawyer said.

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“I wish I never let them use my guns,” Mr. Abdullahu said at a hearing Monday morning before the sentence was pronounced. “I’m sorry. I can’t turn back time.”

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Judge Robert B. Kugler of Federal District Court here rejected motions from prosecutors for “upward departures” and an “enhancement” that would have significantly extended Mr. Abdullahu’s sentence, but he still imposed a sentence harsher than the 10 to 16 months called for in federal guidelines.

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“I am convinced this was not as innocent as he would like us to believe,” the judge said of Mr. Abdullahu.

So the judge gave him 20 months instead of 16.    Wow, what a punishment.

It’s March 31st, do you know where Matthew Lee is tonight?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

 Update April 3, 2008:   Still no sign of Mr. Lee’s monthly report to complain about the Bush Administration not bringing enough Iraqis to the US.   I can only conclude that the numbers were up this month and thus it was not worth reporting.    Or, maybe he is waiting for the big pow-wow tomorrow. 

Time for our monthly Matthew Lee Watch. 

We are waiting for AP reporter Matthew Lee to tell us how few Iraqi refugees arrived in the United States during the month of March.   The time of his reporting varies slightly.   Last month he posted his story about 8 hours into the first day of the month, but he was early and reported late in the evening of October 31st, so who knows it could be soon!

He will tell us how many Iraqis are in Syria and Jordan, and that we have a moral obligation to bring them to America (even Bush says so!). 

He will tell us that the Bush Administration promised to resettle 12,000 in FY 2008 which began on October 1, 2007.   Then there will be a little subtraction to show how many the Administration will need to bring to fill its quota for the year.

He may make an oblique mention of the fact that Homeland Security and the State Department were in a tussle over security issues.  I guess, by at least mentioning it, he covers his bases, but never goes into much detail about Homeland Security’s concerns about terrorists getting in as refugees.

I would really like to see him find out how many of the refugees coming from Iraq are Christians and how many are Muslim, now that would be an interesting bit of investigative reporting.

If any of you see his report before I do, please comment here and send a link!

So who is coming with the Bhutanese?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If this article is accurate, it looks like there could be others of unknown nationality resettling in the West from the refugee camps in Nepal.

KATHMANDU, 30 March 2008 – As one of the world’s largest third-country resettlement processes started this week in Nepal, with over 10,000 Bhutanese refugees scheduled to be resettled in various Western countries by the end of 2008, Bhutan has disputed that all the refugees are in fact from Bhutan.

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Sonam Tobgay, head of the policy division of the Bhutanese Foreign Ministry, told IRIN on 27 March: “It is… factually incorrect to term all the people in the camps [in eastern Nepal] Bhutanese. Bhutan cannot accept a blanket reference to all the people in the camps as being ‘refugees’ from Bhutan.”

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Tobgay said the problem of the people in the camps in eastern Nepal was not straightforward: “It is a highly complex issue with its genesis in illegal immigration, in a region marked by vast population movements, porous and open borders, poverty, environmental degradation and political instability.”

We’ve heard rumors that there is rampant corruption when United Nations employees approve refugees for resettlement; we hope that is not the case here because literally tens of thousands are expected to be brought to the West from Nepal over several years.

Some refugees have complained there has been an unclear process of selecting refugee families for interview.

This article says some of the first are headed to Arizona.    We reported several resettlement cities last week here.   Start reading back from here if you want to follow our coverage of the decision to bring Bhutanese to the US and the conflict that decision has created in the camps where many do not want to come. 

Kansas Somali refugee arrested in rape of students

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to a tip from Us or Them, here is a story that our friends in Kansas will be surprised to hear (or maybe not).   A Somali refugee has been charged with intoxicating and raping two boys from a Catholic High School. I am not making that up!

 A Leavenworth substitute teacher accused of unlawful sexual relationships with high school students is a Somalian refugee in the United States under political asylum, officials said Thursday.

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Mohamed A. Dirshe, 26, has been charged in Leavenworth County District Court with three counts of unlawful sexual relations and three counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor for illicit purposes, which are all felonies.

The article goes on to tell us what a terrible story Mr. Dirshe has, as if somehow that might excuse the behavior.  I’m going to suggest that some of these tales of terror are fabricated to open the doors to the good life (complete with a college scholarship) in America.

At the age of 9, he witnessed the murder of his father, uncle and older brother outside his home in Somalia by militia men from a rival clan, according to an article in the winter 2005 edition of Aspire, the university’s alumni magazine.

Lest I am accused of shadenfreude, the situation is horrible.  However, the irony of this happening at a Catholic School, since it is Catholic Charities that is being paid to resettle refugees in Kansas will not be lost on folks in say Emporia, KS where the Somali refugee issue dominated the news for months.   Mums the word from Catholic officials.

Officials with the Leavenworth Regional Catholic Schools could not be reached for comment Thursday.

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Police are investigating whether there were more victims.

Mohammed is a very lucky fellow in one way.  If he were subject to Sharia law, it wouldn’t be long before he would be hoisted by one of those cranes with a noose around his neck as we saw in “Fitna.”

NY Times: Fraud in the non-profit world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No, you don’t say!  This article from the New York Times rounds out my troika of posts this weekend that began with Chicago non-profits getting boatloads of charitable money that go for political organizing, Chris Coen’s charges that although well paid, Chicago charities have a bad record of caring for refugees.  And, now a report that says these groups are losing billions to fraud every year.  

…. what is getting the attention of nonprofit leaders is the report’s estimate of the overall cost, which the authors put at $40 billion for 2006, or some 13 percent of the roughly $300 billion given to charity that year.

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“It’s a surprisingly large number,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who does surveys of public confidence in charities. “We really need to take a good hard look at what’s going on in these organizations.”

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The new report is based on data from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which, the report said, found that “all organizations,” whether government, for-profit or nonprofit, “lose on average 6 percent of their revenue to fraud every year.” Applying that percentage to nonprofits’ total 2006 revenue of $665 billion — donations, government payments and other income — the authors came up with the $40 billion estimate.

Read it all!    And, I can’t believe I’m saying this, good for you New York Times!