Nuradin Abdi: Man not allowed to contact family for three months
Reported on 03/09/04
MI - Family of Nuradin Abdi, the Somalian man who was arrested on Nov. 28, 2003 for alleged links with terrorism, has not been able to contact him for more than three months and does not know where he is being held.
"He's like a dead person to us," said cousin Asha Yassin Hassan after his secret court hearing on March 9, 2004.
Abdi's brothers, mother, sister and wife drove from Columbus to attend the hearing. They were not allowed in and waited outside the courtroom for six hours. They were not allowed to talk with Abdi, but saw him briefly as armed agents whisked him to and from the courtroom.
Sat 03.13.04
DETROIT -- An immigration court ordered the deportation of a Somali refugee who was investigated for possible links to terrorism Tuesday -- a connection his family denies. After a closed, five-hour hearing Tuesday, a Detroit immigration court judge decided to deport Nuradin Abdi, who was living in Columbus, and running a cell phone business when federal agents took him into custody Nov. 28.
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February 10, 2004
SOMALI MAN DETAINED IN GOVERNMENT PROBE
Early in the morning of Nov. 28, federal agents swept into a North Side neighborhood and arrested a Somali immigrant.
They searched the home of Nuradin Abdi, his family said, and then took him to his business where agents confiscated his cell phone and computers.
Leaving business cards identifying themselves as agents for the FBI and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they then drove Abdi to Cincinnati. The government charged him with lying on his application to enter the United States six years ago, but also accused him of connections with a terrorist plot, members of the Somali community say.
After two months behind bars, without communication with his wife and children or his mother and brothers in Columbus, Abdi, 31, appeared in Detroit's federal immigration court Jan. 28 for a hearing closed to the public.
In a rare move, federal authorities are trying to deport him to Somalia, an African country now controlled by warlords, his attorney said. Although Abdi is jailed, the case is a civil, not a criminal action.
Government officials here, in Detroit and in Washington refuse to talk about Abdi's case. One official confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that the hearing in Detroit was sealed because authorities are in the midst of a sensitive investigation linked to Abdi. Officials refused to say whether the investigation is a terrorist threat.
"We came here because human rights are respected," Nadifa Hassan, Abdi's mother, said with the help of an interpreter yesterday. "My son was taken and there was no criminal charge and he has had no access to his family."
Hassan, a U.S. citizen, wants him released.
The case has instilled fear in Columbus' Somali community of nearly 20,000 that government agents could arrest people for no reason, said Maryan Warsame, head of the Somali Women and Children's Alliance.
"People are profiling this community because of our religion," Warsame said. "We are Muslims, but we are not terrorists."
Some Somalis here speculate the government is interested in someone Abdi knows or knew. His family says Abdi may be a target because he regularly attends prayer services at a Columbus mosque and he speaks Arabic. When he was younger, he was among a number of Somalis who fled to the Middle East to escape the civil war.
"It's a witch hunt," said Abucar Yusuf, an architect who moved to Columbus 20 years ago. Yusuf has been told, "They are arresting him for knowing someone he went to school with 20 years ago."
Abdi is married with two children and another on the way. He is the family's sole breadwinner. His family got only a brief glimpse of him in Detroit.
Asked why the government is taking such measures, Abdi's attorney, Douglas Weigle of Cincinnati, said only, "There's a certain aura around this case."
Abdi probably didn't mind the hearing was closed, Weigle said. "He didn't want anyone to hear any wild accusations about him."
So far, this is simply an immigration case.
"There are no allegations of terrorism in his immigration charge," Weigle said. "He has not been criminally charged with anything."
He said the country's treatment of immigration cases has changed drastically since the Sept. 11 attack. "If you have any kind of Islamic background -- I don't care what John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge say -- you'll be subject to a different kind of scrutiny."
Hassan Omar, leader of the Somali Community Association of Ohio, said the Somali community is not blindly protecting one of its own. "If someone commits a crime, we don't mind if they go to jail," Omar said. He called for state and local, civic and community leaders to speak up on Abdi's behalf.
In Abdi's case, scheduled to resume March 9, the community of war refugees sees no substance to the charge.
"People who lie on their applications do so because they want to stay in the United States and make a future for their children," Warsame said, "because they have no home to go back to."