March 15, 2003 - Washington Post: Somalia RPCVs Martin R. Ganzglass and Thomas E. Petri fight to save Somali Leader from Deportation

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Headlines: Peace Corps Headlines - 2003: March 2003 Peace Corps Headlines: March 15, 2003 - Washington Post: Somalia RPCVs Martin R. Ganzglass and Thomas E. Petri fight to save Somali Leader from Deportation

By Admin1 (admin) on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 2:51 pm: Edit Post

Somalia RPCVs Martin R. Ganzglass and Thomas E. Petri fight to save Somali Leader from Deportation





Rep. Petri (right) joined with RPCV Congressmen Rep. Mike Honda, Rep. Jim Walsh, and Rep. Chris Shays for a Peace Corps recruitment meeting with young congressional staffers. Rep. Petri served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia.

Read and comment on this story from the Washington Post on Somali leader Abshir Musse who was kept in solitary confinement for nine years by a Soviet-backed dictator and later helped save American lives during the vicious fighting in Somalia in the early 1990s. Now living in the Uniteds States he is facing deportation under the controversial special registration effort begun late last year by the Justice Department. The program requires adult male visitors from those countries, most of them Muslim, to register at government offices, where they are interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed.

Diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers who endured harrowing times in Somalia with Abshir are demanding intervention by the State Department, which so far has taken no action. A bill has been introduced in Congress by RPCV Congressman Tom Petri who served in Somalia and knew Abshir there to make Abshir, who has been living in the United States while he seeks medical attention for his son, a permanent resident. But it appears to be languishing.

Mohamed's hearing before an INS Judge on March 18 resulted in a postponement until June 3, so there is time to act. RPCVs who want to help should write or fax their individual Congressman or Congresswoman and ask them to support Congressman Petri's bill, H.R. 520, to grant Mohamed Abshir and his family permanent residence status in the U.S. You should urge your Congressperson to do two things; contact Congressman Petri and advise him they will support H.R. 520; contact Congressman John Hostettler, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and urge him to quickly and favorably report out H.R. 520 for a vote by the full House. Please send copies of your letters to Congressman Tom Petri, at 2262 Rayburn Office Building, Wash. D.C. 20515 and Congressman John Hostettler at 1507 Longworth Office Building, Wash. D.C. 20515. Read the story at:


Former Somali General Told to Leave U.S.*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Former Somali General Told to Leave U.S.

Diplomats Protest Possible Deporting Of American

By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 17, 2003; Page A15

To the many U.S. diplomats who have worked with him, 76-year-old Gen. Mohamed Abshir Musse is a courageous Muslim ally who was kept in solitary confinement for nine years by a Soviet-backed dictator and later helped save American lives during the vicious fighting in Somalia in the early 1990s.

But to the Bush administration, he is one of thousands of foreign visitors to the United States who hail from 25 countries suspected of being havens for terrorism, a man who faces deportation because officials refused to extend his visa.

The two sides are now facing off in one of the more poignant cases to emerge from the controversial special registration effort begun late last year by the Justice Department. The program requires adult male visitors from those countries, most of them Muslim, to register at government offices, where they are interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed. Immigration violators face detention and deportation.

The diplomats and some Peace Corps workers who endured harrowing times in Somalia with Abshir are demanding intervention by the State Department, which so far has taken no action. A bill has been introduced in Congress to make Abshir, who has been living in the United States while he seeks medical attention for his son, a permanent resident. But it appears to be languishing.

"People should go to bat for their friends," said Washington lawyer Martin R. Ganzglass, who worked for Abshir as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s and remains a close friend. "The United States has made friends around the world for decades. It's not good policy to write them off."

Abshir was the first commander of the Somali National Police, a pro-American organization that was seen as a counterforce to the Soviet-trained Somali army in the 1960s, when Somalia became a democratic republic. A leader in the northeast part of the country, he headed armed forces against Islamic fundamentalists in factional fighting there more than a decade ago and worked with U.S. officials in setting up nonpolitical police forces in his region and in Mogadishu in 1992 and 1993.

According to one of those officials, he told the Americans there to watch their backs when they came to his area of the country. And in Mogadishu, officials add, the police force he helped to establish relieved Americans of patrolling "the dark alleys" where they might have been killed.

Abshir "has correctly been credited with helping to avoid the loss of American service members' lives," six former U.S. ambassadors and special envoys wrote to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last December. "We know [him] as a good friend of our country and a decided enemy of extremism."

Abshir came to the United States two years ago to seek help for his son, now 29, who has multiple sclerosis. Abshir, who lives in Eden Prairie, Minn., said his visa was extended several times, but it expired Sept. 15 despite his application for renewal. On Dec. 30, he appeared at a government office to register with the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.

Late last month, he was informed that his Sept. 9, 2002, application for a visa extension had been denied because he failed to buy an airline ticket out of the country as the Immigration and Naturalization Service had demanded. "There is no appeal to this decision," the INS told him. Early this month, he received a follow-up notice directing him to report March 18 for removal proceedings before an immigration judge in Minneapolis, making him one of 4,825 men nationwide to face such action.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the agencies created when the Immigration and Naturalization Service was broken up and moved into the Department of Homeland Security on March 1, said, "We are aware of the [Abshir] case and we are looking into it." The spokesman, Bill Strassberger, said an immigration judge at Tuesday's hearing "could find grounds" for Abshir to stay in the United States.

Although a decision to deny a visa extension cannot be appealed, Strassberger added, the results of a removal hearing can be.

A modest man whose optimism appears to be unbounded, Abshir said he does not believe he will be deported. He has confidence, he said, in his "American friends."

Those friends, however, are not so enthusiastic. They have backed a private bill introduced by Rep. Thomas E. Petri (R-Wis.), who met Abshir in 1966, when Petri was a Peace Corps volunteer, but the bill, which would give permanent resident status to Abshir, his wife, his son and a daughter, appears to be languishing in a House subcommittee. The State Department has refused to endorse it on the grounds that it does not take positions on private legislation.

Ganzglass faulted what he considers the State Department's rigid legal bureaucracy for the stance.

"He helped save American lives, but he's just one more [Muslim], right?" said Robert B. Oakley, the U.S. ambassador to Somalia from 1982 to 1984 and a special envoy there from 1992 to 1994, after President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. troops to protect United Nations relief supplies in the war-torn country.

Abshir is hoping for a green card so he can seek insurance to help pay for his son Abdullahi's medical care.

Once head of a nationwide police force known for its professionalism and incorruptibility, Abshir was stripped of extensive property holdings and put under house arrest for 31/2 years when he refused to support dictator Mohamed Siad Barre's seizure of power in 1969. In interviews, he said Barre tried to buy him off with money or prestigious appointments, "anything I wanted, but I refused to work for him."

Released briefly in 1972, he said he was arrested again after attending a soccer game in Mogadishu Stadium, where he received a huge ovation. This time, he was sent to a remote, maximum-security prison and held in an underground cell for nine years.

Peter S. Bridges, who was the U.S. ambassador to Somalia from 1984 to 1986, said he was amazed at Abshir's resilience and determination to restore democracy in his country. "He may be the best Somali living," Bridges said last week. "He wasn't broken at all."

Instead, as Bridges, Oakley and four others noted in their letter to Powell, Abshir was one of the most prominent signatories to a 1990 manifesto calling on Barre to reinstate the constitution and hold free and fair elections. He was arrested again with other signers, but their treason trial was canceled after protests in Mogadishu.

Barre was forced from power in 1991, and the starving country was torn apart by civil war. In a separate letter endorsing Petri's bill, April Glaspie, who served as the U.N. senior political adviser in Somalia, remembered traveling with Abshir "through shot and shell" as they worked to unify the country. She said Abshir took great risks "as he anticipated and advised us on the security dangers facing the U.N. and the remaining U.S. military and civilian personnel" while she was there.

Glaspie said that "no other Somali leader was prepared to risk his life to end the secession." Eventually, Abshir was forced to flee the chaos, first to Djibouti and then to Saudi Arabia. He said doctors in Saudi Arabia advised him to go to the United States to get treatment for his son.

Abshir's daughter Dega said INS officials asked her father for the first time in December for various papers, including a copy of an airline ticket out of the country, the only item he did not submit. He said he did not buy a ticket because he did not know where he should go or when. Abshir said it is too dangerous for him to go back to Somalia, and officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington have refused to renew his permit to live there. He said they told him he would first have to go back to Saudi Arabia.

"That's a Catch-22," said Ganzglass, the attorney helping Abshir. "A private bill can't be used on his behalf if he leaves the country. He has to stay here."

Staff researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Somalia; Speaking Out

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By farahmosman (p187.n-dcpop03.stsn.com - 63.240.218.187) on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 7:33 pm: Edit Post

The dream come true. Every young person should join to the Peacecorpse at least once in a life time

thank you.


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