A Safe Haven, But for Whom?
The U.S. provides sanctuary for many of the world's most wanted
Human-rights advocates say a major reason war criminals settle in the United States is because it's so easy. In recent years, for instance, Canada has spent millions of dollars getting rid of war criminals. But Ahmed Samater, a Canadian Somali who has spent a decade trying to track down human-rights offenders, says many of Canada's rejects probably end up in the United States. "Canada dumps them at the border," Samater says. "They don't advise [the] INS of the nature of the crimes. And [the] INS doesn't check Canadian records." The INS refused repeated requests to comment for this story.
U.S. News has learned that at least six high-ranking former Somali military and government officials with dubious human-rights records live here. Among them:
Abdi Ali Nur: a former military judge who allegedly presided over sham trials in Hargeisa in northern Somalia in which hundreds of political opponents were found guilty and executed. Lives in San Diego.
Ali Mohamed Siad, the eldest son of deposed Somali dictator Barre: The INS arrested Siad in 1997 when he crossed into the United States from Canada, where he had been denied refugee status. A Canadian court ruled that in the 1980s, Siad had served as chief of a notorious prison called Lanta Bur where hundreds of political prisoners were brutally tortured and executed. At a deportation hearing before a U.S. immigration judge last July, Siad, now a Virginia resident, denied he was in command of Lanta Bur and said he was actually jailed there by his father for being a lush and a womanizer. His lawyer, Ivan Yakub, says that because of a flimsy INS case, he is confident Siad will be allowed to stay. An INS investigator testified he had interviewed 40 witnesses about Siad's past, but the agency did not call any of them to testify at the hearing or even submit affadavits.
Somali Colonel Yusuf Abdi Ali, a k a "Tokeh" ("The Crow"). The INS believes Ali ordered the executions of more than 100 unarmed Issak men; some were burned alive. The Canadian courts denied Ali refugee status, saying his fear of being persecuted in Somalia was unfounded. He withdrew a 1994 U.S. asylum application after a CBS news expose about him but later obtained a green card through his wife, a U.S. citizen. Last year, the INS arrested Ali and prosecuted him for lying about his past. The agency had a dozen witnesses, but the judge threw the case out. The reason: The alleged lies were not documented because Ali's asylum application was inactive.
Others on the who's-who list of war criminals in the United States:
The most notorious of more than a dozen former Haitian military officials is Emmanuel "Toto" Constant. He once headed the feared Haitian paramilitary death squad FRAPH, which was allegedly responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 1990s. Constant, nevertheless, was issued a multiple-entry visa and now lives with an aunt in an apartment in Queens, N.Y. In 1995, then Secretary of State Warren Christopher asked Attorney General Janet Reno to deport Constant. But the State Department later had a change of heart, fearing his presence in Haiti might be destabilizing.
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