Hibo Posted February 26, 2002 More than 30 Somalis who were living in the United States say they have been deported to Somalia in conditions that one woman described as "illegal" and "brutal". They said they were rounded up by the United States Immigration Services two weeks ago and put on board a plane which flew them to the Somali capital Mogadishu via Amsterdam and Djibouti. During the journey, the men were reportedly shackled. Most claim to have immigrated to the United States as teenagers to escape civil war and anarchic clan fighting in Somalia. The east African country is still prone to factional fighting nearly 10 years after an ill-fated US-led military intervention that had been intended to restore stability. 'No information' Fawzia Abdi Mohamed, 24, the only woman among the deportees, said she had been living in Atlanta, Georgia for more than 10 years and working as an electrician. She told the BBC that she had been taken from her home early in the morning and prevented from driving to work. "Every time you asked a question they would tell you, shut up ... they didn't tell us nothing, no information whatsoever," she told the BBC. She was speaking from Hargeisa in the breakaway republic of Somaliland - where she said she had gone after she was "almost killed several times" in Mogadishu because of rumours that she and other deportees were American spies. Expulsions 'unlawful' Complaining that her deportation had been "illegal and brutal", she said: "Cockroaches get treated better than that." Another deportee, 23-year-old Abdirizak Mohamud Mohamed, said he was a college student. He said he had lived in the US for 20 years and that his parents, six brothers and two sisters were still there. He said immigration officers had taken him from his college. "I was never told anything and whenever I spoke I was told to shut up," he said. Both he and Fawzia Abdi Mohamed say they are not fluent in the Somali language and feel more at ease in the United States. The UK newspaper The Times reported that some of the deportees were staying at a squalid Mogadishu hotel without money or passports. The newspaper said one man, Yussuf Hussein, a Somali who emigrated to the United States as a teenager, was arrested without warning from the computer company Intel Corp, where had earned $70,000 a year, in late January. 'No phone call' He said officers of the Immigration Naturalisation Service refused to tell him what he had been charged with, taking him instead to a cell without access to a lawyer or a telephone to contact his wife and two children in Boston. He told the Times that he was arrested three days after the 18 January release of Black Hawk Down - a film about fighting between Somalis and US forces on October 3, 1993, during the international mission to restore peace and stability to chaotic and violent Somalia. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hibo Posted February 26, 2002 hey this is scarry Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
