Samatar, Monster Next Door

[Thankful]

Ngonge,

 

We'll continue this if the Supreme court throws away the immunity defense.

 

Also, remember your way isn't the only way!

[NGONGE]

^^ You may surprised to find out that I don't personally care what the Supreme Court does either way. When the man did what he was accused of, I was playing NINTENDO in Dubai, saaxib. I carry no baggage.

 

[Cyber_Nomad]

Originally posted by Thankful:

Ngonge,

 

I can honestly say I had no clue you came from NW Somalia. For some reason I thought you came from another area, I’m not sure what it was, but once I read the anger you wrote with and the name calling. I came to the realization that you must be. Maybe it's the failure of your secessionist’s dreams that make you so hostile or the fact that you can't admit when you are wrong. But If I knew you were a right-winger from NW Somalia, I would have approached this differently; you seem stuck in your ways!

 

This argument since the beginning has to with the Hypocrisy, specifically what got my attention was the people that posted the Articles: "JB - Monster living next door" and "Qudhac - Gulwadayaal claim samtar is now a victim."

 

The two people who made that thread is what originally got me annoyed and interested, because these guys can comment only on Samatar and talk about his history but not their leaders. Later what really got me annoyed was witnesses in the law suit. Because they and the SOLers will never say a word about Riyaale who comes from their enclave! That's what the arguments was and always been about, now I still believe that the lawsuit is coming from ONE source and I am saying that this source, (whether it be the witnesses or the right wing faction on SOL are biased.)

 

quote:

---

Thankful, you are being obtuse again, saaxib. The link I gave does mention their clan but it also mentions they are two individuals, you stubborn pirate. The SL community in that city did not get together and file a case against the man there; TWO people did. The mention of their clan is important because it sheds some light into the background of the case but this is not a portrayal of the clan as a whole. Not every person from SL is after blood. Some have moved on and some, due to very personal experiences and the opportunity to address these experiences, have not. This is straight and simple but you are being thick on purpose here.

The article said they are suing on behalf of 2 members of the (I-clan), they alleged victims are concealing their names. The case is Doe v. Ali. The reason they need to immediately mention their tribe is because it plays big role in their suit. The reason why it says that the Siad government "I-clan was a special target of the military government." Is to make it clear in their eyes that their whole "group" was being targeted not just themselves. The lawsuit then mentions their tribe; read the background info on the article you sent me, before the victims are mentioned, the lawyers identified the individuals by their tribe and in the background summary they give a brief history of what theri tribe was facing, before then talk about the victims. So even though you tried to say in American tribe means nothing, their lawyers know that mentioning the Siad government directly focused on them as a group helps their case. The lawsuit specifically makes it known that their tribe was a special target of the Siad’s military government and not just these private individuals.

 

 

You (and others) cry Riyaale went to America and nobody prosecuted him. That too is nonsense. Because, and now I'll have to hold your dirty pirate hand here and walk you back to the start of this post;

the case was brought by private individuals and these individuals have a direct problem The worse thing in all of this is not really the trial, Samatar or the perceptions you have. What is really appalling here is the idea that just because Somalia had many criminals no victims should have the gal to go after those they believe have wronged them, for the simple reason that others did not! But that is not the way the world works.

That is not even the way Somalis work; when someone is killed, some ask for the perpetrator to be killed too whilst others are happy with the blood money. Some believe revenge serves no purpose whilst others demand retribution. It is a very personal and individual thing and not a clan objective.

At any rate, SL (as a collective) has already chosen its method of revenge, it decided to secede and never expose itself to the possibility of a return to such times or heartache. Lakin ma cid ba fahmaysa?

 

 

But you are wrong when you say that these individuals have a

direct

problem with those men. They are saying that the men under their command subjected them to torture. They are not saying Samatar actually did it! But that military and NSS did. Which is why I say, if anything....the possibility of Riyaale being more directly responsible for their abuse is high? But just like SOL and these witnesses they remain silent. I question their sense of justice and why they aren’t blind when it comes to searching for it. It is one dominant group in NW Somalia’s government that is blaming all other Somalis. The whole reason NW Somalia wants to break up is the claim they make about the abuse they suffered, the reason the witnesses in the case want money is also the abuse they suffered. Yet they never say a word about the NSS station chief!

 

The reason I mentioned Nuremberg Trials is important because it made it clear that you can't use the excuse you were just following orders (like some did for Riyaale), I included Iraq because there new government refused to allow ALL ex-baathists in. Which is the right way to do it, but in NW Somalia an NSS agent was made president!

 

So you are right the lawsuit is from private individuals and just like the posters of this thread it is all coming from "one" side. So my only issue I can prove is towards those two hypocrites’. Especially the witnesses who claim NSS agents came to his house and tortured him. And when an NSS station chief from NW Somalia visits Virginia, they all remain silent.

 

The issue has always been about JB, Qudhuc and now the witnesses in the case. They can talk about war crimes attributed to ex-Siad guys who don't hold heavy weight in their NW Somalia Gov't, but won't say a word about the ex-Siad guys that lead their country and who were once a part of a brutal security apparatus that abused them.

Lengthy post and a point well cleared, every one has the right for justice regardless of the offenders tribal affiliation, the reason Somaliland didn't take the path of vengeance is the disastrous end of that path - because it would have stirred up clan violence since some clans were more favorable to the Junta than others-, one of the key principals of reconciliation conferences in SL was to start a new page regardless of what happened in military junta era, and to consider all were victims to that regime - regardless of their clans-, thats why SL didn't suffer the clan based cleansing that happened in the South.

 

Individuals don't have the last say in Somaliland, and even though I respect the opinion of the two SNM members in the article you referred to, I also have to tell you that some of the SNM members were pro-federal Somalia, but declared independence Somaliland despite those because that was what the majority wanted.

[Thankful]

Washington Post

 

 

At 74, Fairfax resident, a former Somali prime minister, may face war-crimes lawsuit

 

The case has divided courts. A federal judge in Alexandria ruled that even if the immunity law does not mention individuals, such protection is the "practical equivalent" of immunity offered to a state. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond overturned the lower court, pointing to the law's silence on individual immunity.

 

Samantar's attorney, Michael Carvin, says that a decision against Samantar would open U.S. officials to lawsuits in other countries.

 

The accusers' attorney, Patricia Millet, says that Congress and the executive branch "have expressly determined that" it is in the United States' interest to deny "foreign officials who engage in torture and killing a safe haven within the United States."

 

A hero or a criminal?

 

 

Talk to Somalis about Mohamed Ali Samantar and the lawsuit, or cruise through Somali chat rooms on the Internet, and you will find vehement, dizzyingly divergent opinions. Samantar's a war criminal who should be brought to justice, or he's a nationalist hero being scapegoated. He's a demon. He's an Abraham Lincoln.

 

Mohamed Ali Samantar, whose name will be brought before the Supreme Court this week as that of a war criminal in his native Somalia, has a hard time getting up from the couch in his tidy split-level home in Fairfax City.

 

Dressed in a pressed charcoal-colored suit for his first interview in many years, Samantar, 74, stiffly hauls himself halfway up from the threadbare brocade sofa. Some of his 13 sons and daughters rush in to help. He stays them with a single gruff word. Slowly, the man who was defense minister and prime minister of the last functioning regime in Somalia stands up on his own.

 

His five accusers in a civil lawsuit call him a war criminal, a monster living out his golden years with impunity in a quiet suburban neighborhood. This man, they say, was responsible for the unjust torture that they or members of their families suffered in the 1980s. They say Samantar administered a regime of repeated rape, abduction, summary execution and years-long imprisonment in solitary confinement. The accusers want someone, finally, to be held accountable for the well-documented human rights atrocities of that era.

 

Samantar waves his hand impatiently. The accusations, he says in a deep, throaty voice, are "baseless allegations, with no foundation in truth."

 

They come from a time when the country was in the midst of the first of many brutal civil wars, pitting north against south, clan against clan. A time when no one's hands were clean. "I served the people rightly and justly," he says. "I always respected the rule of law. I am no monster. I am not going to eat anyone."

 

With that, his 3-year-old granddaughter, one of the many grandchildren screeching gleefully throughout the house for their traditional Sunday dinner, comes up and kisses him on the lips.

 

The case before the justices is not about whether Samantar is a war criminal, but whether his accusers, with no viable legal alternatives in their homeland, can sue to make him answer their allegations. The question to be decided, which has potentially powerful policy implications for the United States and its foreign relations, centers on immunity.

 

Samantar says he has immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which protects foreign states from lawsuits. His lawyers argue that, although that law does not mention individuals, it protects his official actions just the same. His accusers, in a suit first filed in federal district court in Virginia in 2004 by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, say the law does not shield individuals, especially those who've been out of office for years.

 

To understand that divide, Somalis say, you must know a Somali's clan and how that clan fared when Samantar and the brutal regime of Mohamed Siad Barre were in power -- from 1969, when the generals took over a weak and corrupt government in a bloodless coup, to 1991, when they fled and the country devolved into the violent anarchy that has reigned since.

 

To understand the lawsuit, Somali experts say, one must understand the history, from the 19th-century colonial division of the country into northern and southern pieces ruled by Britain and Italy, to the 20th-century Cold War dynamic, in which superpowers propping up friendly regimes averted their glance from human rights abuses.

 

In 1977, Somalia went to war with Ethiopia seeking to annex an area where a Somali clan called the ****** lived. When thousands of ****** refugees fleeing that conflict poured into Somalia's north, the clan living in that region, the *****, responded to the influx and what they viewed as harsh government policies. With help from Ethiopia, the ***** began an armed rebellion.

 

Members of the ***** clan, such as Bashe Yousuf, one of Samantar's five accusers, see him as the last remnant of a regime bent on destroying not only the rebels but the entire clan.

 

Yousuf and the others say that even though Samantar didn't perpetrate torture directly, he should be held responsible. "He is the highest-ranking person of that regime," says Yousuf, who spent six years in solitary confinement and is a U.S. citizen living near Atlanta. "He gave the commands."

 

Aziz Mohamed Deria, another of the plaintiffs, holds Samantar responsible for the day in 1988 when the Somali military burst into his family home and took his father, younger brother and cousin, who were never seen again. "The ones who took them, I don't know where they live, their names," says Deria, now a U.S. citizen and commodities broker in Portland, Ore. "What I know is that Mr. Samantar . . . was in charge of what was happening. If I know the big fish and I know where he lives, why go after the small ones?"

 

Samantar makes no apologies for the army and its conduct during the civil war. "The people bringing these allegations were, by their own admission, part of a movement that came as invaders from another country and wanted to secede," Samantar says in Somali as one of his sons translates. "In the army, your primary function is to defend the nation from foreign invaders. The army did what it was meant to do -- protect the nation from splitting in two." The plaintiffs deny they were part of the rebellion.

 

After the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, the ***** in the north declared independence and sought to establish the nation of Somaliland, dividing the country in two.

 

Building a new life

 

 

Samantar barely escaped Somalia with his life in 1991. Armed bandits, he said, shot his young daughter in the back four times and his 15-year-old son in the legs as they raced to the border. A bullet grazed the back of Samantar's skull. He lived in Rome with three of his children until 1997, when his wife, who had come to the United States earlier with their four youngest children and then received political asylum, sponsored him.

 

Since then, he says, he has lived in Fairfax "in relative peace." The living room is adorned with family photos, an elaborate Arabic embroidery of the 99 names of Allah in gold, and a black-and-white photo of a much younger Samantar shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher.

 

He is a private man, friends and family say, who plays chess, has a warm sense of humor and prays regularly. He is supported, he says, by his 13 children.

 

David Rawson, the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Somalia from 1986 to 1988, says he has been puzzled why Samantar, of all Somali officials of that era, is the one being sued. Real power, he says, was concentrated in President Siad Barre and a small group of his clan members.

 

"Samantar was so far out of the decision-making loop," Rawson says. "But Samantar comes from a small clan. There's no political cost to going after someone vulnerable like that, as opposed to going after someone who comes from a significant family or important clan."

 

Samantar's clan, the Tumaal, is one of a handful of small clans considered outcasts.

 

Asked whether he feels remorse for the brutality of his era in power, Samantar's answer is abrupt. "It's in the past," he says, pouring Splenda from a yellow packet to sweeten his bitter chai tea.

 

Staff writer Robert Barnes and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

[Thankful]

David Rawson, the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Somalia from 1986 to 1988, says he has been puzzled why Samantar, of all Somali officials of that era, is the one being sued. Real power, he says, was concentrated in President Siad Barre and a small group of his clan members.

 

"Samantar was so far out of the decision-making loop," Rawson says. "But Samantar comes from a small clan. There's no political cost to going after someone vulnerable like that, as opposed to going after someone who comes from a significant family or important clan."

 

Samantar's clan, the Tumaal, is one of a handful of small clans considered outcasts.

 

 

It's what I was saying too! This man is a neutral person who has no reason to to defend him! He was there during the time as well!

 

 

I came across this right now when it was posted on Hiiraan!

 

Hopefully others will realize that i'm not the only person who is puzzled why Samatar is being sued, that his minority clan probably plays a part and that Siad was the one calling the shots!

[STOIC]

There are many obstacles to this lawsuits’ success, but at least this case will be a lesson to any Somali warlord, that the result of their acts will one day be brought to justice. The balancing of interests in this case is indeed a delicate and difficult issue for the US supreme court.While I personally know the victim in this case I will leave the court to decide and wish him nothing, but Success.It is a bit joke though that some of you out of ignorance and maybe arrogance stick to the “he is from small clan” attitude.The law is a fair game without distinction as to what colour or clan one origins.

[Thankful]

Humans are naturally opinionated and have their bias towards certain things and since all law was created by them, the laws themselves will never be perfect. That is why in American African Americans are more likely to be convicted then Whites.

 

But this has little to do with the bias in the law, but rather the bias in those who are accusing.

 

Well atleast David Rawson, the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Somalia from 1986 to 1988, feels this way to.

[Abwaan]

Originally posted by Che -Guevara:

A&T-Is Cumar Jees still alive?

 

lol...Ma dacweyn lahayd? I heard he is in Egypt. You wanna file a lawsuit?

[alisom]

Interesting!

[Sherban Shabeel]

^lol whose script is this now