American stranded in Egypt due to no-fly list
CAIRO (AP) — A Virginia man, stuck in Egypt for the last six weeks living in a cheap hotel and surviving on fast food, said Wednesday his name was placed on a U.S. no-fly list because of a trip to Yemen.
Yahya Wehelie, 26, who was born in Fairfax, Virginia, to Somali parents was returning with his brother Yusuf from 18 months studying in Yemen, when Egyptian authorities stopped him from boarding his flight to New York saying the FBI wanted to speak with him.
Wehelie said he was then told by FBI agents in Egypt that his name was on a no-fly list because of people he met in Yemen and he now cannot board a U.S. airline or enter American airspace. His passport was also canceled and new one issued only for travel to the United States, which expires on Sept. 12. He does not have Somali citizenship.
U.S. authorities have put Americans studying in Yemen under heavy scrutiny after a number of failed terrorist attacks were linked back to Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the bureau does not comment on whether a particular person is on a watch list. While Bresson did not discuss the FBI’s interest in Wehelie, he did note several recent high-profile terror plots, including an attempted car bombing and a failed Christmas Day jetliner bombing, as reminders of the need to remain vigilant.
Egyptian authorities confirmed there is a Somali-American stranded in Cairo waiting for his name to be lifted from a no-fly list.
Wehelie, however, said he had no dealings with the terrorist organization while in Yemen and does not even see himself as a particularly observant Muslim. He was studying information technology at the Lebanese International University in the capital and only visited a mosque a handful of times.
“It’s amazing how the U.S. government can do something like this,” he told The Associated Press from his ramshackle hotel in downtown Cairo.
“I’m cool with all their fighting terrorism and all that, I’m cool with that, I like that, more power to them,” he said in American accented English, wearing baggy basketball shorts and a long white T-shirt.
“My home is America and I don’t know why I can’t go back there,” he said, adding that he even suggested to the FBI to “put me in like ConAir or something … in an airplane with a bunch of U.S. marshals or whatever, in handcuffs just get me back home.”
When he asked the FBI agents how he could return to the U.S., one made a reference to how “Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” possibly suggesting he take a sea route.
While in Yemen, Wehelie also married a Somali woman whose family had close ties to his own. She remains in Yemen and was to have joined him when he returned home.
Wehelie said the US embassy is for now paying the $16 a night for his hotel, which he will one day have to reimburse, and gives him coupons to eat at U.S. fast food chains.
“I can’t even eat at Hardees anymore, I ate everything they had there for like two weeks straight,” he said. “Now I can’t even walk in there.”
He said he was eating pizza now and that his fast food diet has left him feeling distinctly unhealthy.
In a news conference held Wednesday in Washington by a Muslim civil rights group, his mother Shamsa Noor said she sent her sons to Yemen to learn Arabic and get some direction in their lives and now she feels guilty for that decision.
“It is very frustrating. I feel so guilty because I’m the one who sent them there,” Noor said.
The family said Yemen was a natural choice for them because the education was relatively inexpensive and many Somali natives live in Yemen.
The family said that Yahya Wehelie was never physically abused but subjected to enormous psychological pressure and denied access to an American lawyer his family hired for him.
His brother Yusuf, who was allowed to return to the U.S., said at one point he was arrested and shackled to a wall in an Egyptian prison, interrogated by a man who claimed to work for the CIA.
“What happened to me was wrong and I want to make sure it does not happen to any American citizens,” he said.
Officials at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which sponsored the news conference, said they are aware of at least two other cases where American citizens who are Muslims are similarly denied return to the United states.
CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said the organization understands the need to question travelers and the need to protect national security. But he said the no-fly list is being used as a weapon to punish American Muslims without providing due process.
“We are very concerned that this apparent targeting of American Muslims sends a very wrong message to American Muslims that they are second-class citizens,” Awad said.
Wehelie said he is having trouble sleeping and spends his days at Internet cafes and watching the World Cup in the hotel’s threadbare common room. He has had no urge to see Cairo’s sites.
“I’m not even in the mood to go tourist because I’m in such a crazy predicament,” he said. “My mom’s like go look at the pyramids.”
Wehelie has no intention of returning to Yemen and cannot imagine living in another country. “My foundation is in America,” he said.
Walking through Cairo’s teeming streets, Weheili winced as he passed a fast food outlet.
“I just want a homecooked meal, man, I miss my mom’s cooking.”
——-
Zimbabwe launches program to rewrite national constitution
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe’s leaders launched a program on Wednesday to rewrite the nation’s constitution ahead of an election planned next year.
The long-delayed program to amend a constitution adopted after independence from British colonial rule in 1980 already is nine months behind schedule under an agreement forming a 16-month-old coalition government between President Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai after the disputed 2008 election.
Wednesday’s launch ceremony started several hours late and scores of participants, including reporters, were barred entry at the main Harare convention center by police who said they did not have official invitations or entry passes.
Addressing the gathering, Mugabe and Tsvangirai called for open dialogue on a 60-day “outreach” program to canvass Zimbabweans for their views on a new constitution that would limit presidents to two five-year terms.
Mugabe, 86, who has been in power in Zimbabwe since 1980, opposes that plan.
The coalition agreement calls for a new constitution ahead of a foreign-monitored election planned in 2011.
The program to write a new constitution has been plagued by delays, bickering between coalition partners and shortages of cash to deploy lawmakers and officials to some 2,860 meeting centers across the country over the next two months.
Douglas Mwonzora, one of the organizers from Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change party, said donors pledged $7 million for the program.
But human rights groups and the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network reported accusations of intimidation by Mugabe party militants to muzzle contributions by ordinary people to the constitutional debate.
The election support network said in a statement that its monitors in rural areas noted “many villagers have been warned against speaking in the outreach process. Some individuals have been nominated and told what to say. This pattern has been observed in areas which experienced violence in 2008.”
The organization said it urged Zimbabweans “to be strong and express themselves in this very critical process.”
It said the nation’s police commanders, blamed for bias toward Mugabe’s party in years of political and economic turmoil, publicly declared they lacked cash and logistics to guarantee security during the constitutional program.
Long delays so far and lack of clear publicity also endangered the program aiming to finalize a new constitution by April 2011, followed by a new election.
“A hurriedly made constitution does Zimbabweans a disservice as this is the most important document in the governance of their country,” the organization said.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, meanwhile, forecast worsening food shortages in coming months. In its latest bulletin, it said a resurgence of political violence was disrupting production and distribution of food in Zimbabwe.
The unstable political environment forced more Zimbabweans to flee the country, with more than 3 million already living in neighboring South Africa, it said.
Zimbabweans in self-exile, mainly economic fugitives, have asked to be included in the constitutional reform, but the outreach program organizers acknowledge they have failed to set up a promised web site in time.
Prime Minister Tsvangirai said Wednesday a new, democratic, people-driven constitution would be the nation’s lasting legacy and his countrymen should resist intimidation in crafting it.
“All political parties have an obligation to ensure peace and cohesion,” he said.
Mugabe said his views on constitutional changes differed with those of others.
“I want people to say their own views. We have agreed there should be no violence,” he said, sitting alongside Tsvangirai.
—––
Kyrgyz army tries to get control in riot-hit south
OSH, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Kyrgyzstan’s weak military attempted Wednesday to regain control of the city of Osh, a major transit point for Afghan heroin and the epicenter of ethnic violence that has driven much of the Uzbek population from the country’s poor, rural south.
Troops encircled the city with checkpoints and held the central square, but citizens reported that some soldiers also were looting food aid, casting doubt on the government’s ability to re-establish stability after nearly a week of brutal attacks.
The leader of Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek community said the death toll among Uzbeks exceeded 300. The official toll on both sides is 189, although officials have acknowledged it is likely far higher. More than 100,000 Uzbeks have fled to Uzbekistan, with tens of thousands more camped on the Kyrgyz side of the border.
The interim Kyrgyz government has alleged that attackers hired by deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev set off the bloodshed by shooting at both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, who have a history of ethnic tensions. The United Nations bolstered the claims by declaring that the fighting was “targeted and well-planned,” and appeared to have begun with five simultaneous attacks in Osh by men wearing ski masks.
Provisional authorities said Bakiyev’s clan could try to foment unrest in other parts of the country.
Zarylbek Rysaliyev, the police chief in the capital, Bishkek, said Wednesday that his officers have detained 111 people from the southern regions who allegedly sought to stir up ethnic tensions and offered money to those who would rally in Bakiyev’s support.
Rysaliyev also said police have stepped up patrols around the Bishkek in northern Kyrgyzstan and set up roadblocks on the outskirts.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke by telephone with Kyrgyzstan’s interim President Roza Otunbayeva on Wednesday to discuss the aid the impoverished Central Asian nation will need. A senior American diplomat is heading to Bishkek for further consultations on Friday.
The U.S. has allocated $10.3 million for humanitarian aid, the embassy in Bishkek said. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said more than $6.5 million of that is for immediate humanitarian assistance.
On Wednesday, cargo planes began landing in Uzbekistan with the more than 240 tons of emergency supplies that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees plans to provide to Uzbeks who fled the rioting, including tents, blankets and sleeping mats.
Bakiyev was ousted in April in a bloody uprising fueled by anger over alleged corruption. Mars Sariyev, an independent political analyst Bishkek, said members of his family continued to control the drug trade in the Osh Knot, an area where Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan meet that is one of the most heavily used routes for Afghan heroin heading to Russia.
The drugs are transported by car and truck along a 400-mile-long (700-kilometer-long) highway that runs across the Pamir Mountains from Tajikistan’s porous border with Afghanistan to Osh, as well as along other smaller roads in southern Kyrgyzstan where borders are poorly controlled, according to the United Nations.
Much of the heroin is repackaged in Osh before being transported west to Uzbekistan and north to Kazakhstan and Russia by plane, train and land, the U.N. says. Kyrgyz officials have reported major seizures of heroin and opium in Osh in recent years.
U.N. and Kyrgyz officials also have noted an increased use of “mules,” individuals who carry the drugs in their stomachs or rectums, by consuming or inserting condoms filled with heroin.
Members of the Bakiyev clan lost their hold on the drug trade a week ago with the killing of the leader of an Uzbek criminal group who worked closely with them, Sariyev said. The reputed Uzbek criminal boss, Aibek Mirsidikov, was in a turf war against the leader of the Uzbek community in the Jalal-Abad region, the 24.kg news agency reported, citing an acting deputy prime minister, Azimbek Beknazarov.
The Bakiyevs may have helped instigate the ethnic violence in an attempt both to weaken the interim government and create a power vacuum that would help them regain control over the drug flow, Sariyev charged. He and other analysts also have said they believe that Bakiyev’s clan wanted to derail a constitutional referendum that the provisional government needs to gain legitimacy and pave the way for the parliamentary elections in the fall.
Bakiyev has denied having any role in the violence, speaking from his self-proclaimed exile in Belarus.
Uzbek leader Jalalidin Salahuddinov told The Associated Press on Wednesday that 300 deaths had been reported by members of his community who buried friends and relatives. Some were buried on the day they were killed in keeping with Muslim tradition. Salahuddinov said the number includes some Uzbeks already counted in the official toll.
Military trucks and armored personnel carriers were stationed on the central square, and at least five checkpoints had been established around the city, including along the road to the airport and other entry points. An APC and a dozen soldiers manned each post. Every few hours military trucks transported refugees out of the city.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said security in Osh remained fragile with violence persisting in pockets on the city’s edges. It said the Red Cross and rights organizations had trouble reaching some Uzbek neighborhoods, and voiced concern that humanitarian assistance was not reaching all of the population.
Munojat Tashbayeva, a 31-year-old sociologist, said 20 or so Kyrgyz men in military uniform stormed a building where five sacks of flour had just been delivered in central Osh and ordered her to get out, threatening to shoot her if she objected, before hauling the sacks away.
Tashbayeva said she saw how the assailants beat up several teenagers who had helped unload the cargo and took the flour away. One of the teenagers, 18-year-old Shokhrukh Sobirov, had a severe cranial wound and was left lying on the floor, his head bleeding.
The violence reduced much of Osh to charred rubble. Roving mobs of young Kyrgyz men burned down Uzbek homes and attacked Uzbek-owned businesses, looting them and then setting them on fire. Some Uzbeks who remained in Osh built barricades around their homes from felled trees and fences ripped up from a cemetery.
The letters SOS have been painted in white on streets and walls in Uzbek neighborhoods.
Salahuddinov said that an Uzbek man had been stabbed to death in a market Wednesday and people still feared leaving their basements to receive aid.
“If they don’t kill us, we could die of hunger if the situation doesn’t change in the next few days,” he told the AP.
An AP photographer saw military patrols and heard artillery fire from their positions in central Osh overnight. One of the few Uzbek families to remain in Osh told The Associated Press that a mother of two was killed by shrapnel from a shell launched toward their home by the Kyrgyz military before dawn.
A few stores opened in Osh, but the streets were mostly empty and sporadic shots were heard. The military said that snipers remained active in the city.
Thousands of ethnic Uzbeks were camped in squalid conditions near the Uzbekistan border, waiting to cross and enter one of the dozens of refugee camps there.
In neighboring Kazakhstan, border guards were prohibiting ethnic Uzbeks from crossing from Kyrgyzstan and will deport some 200 ethnic Uzbeks who had crossed into Kazakhstan in recent days, said Zaridjan Sultanov, an Uzbek leader in Bishkek.
Kazakh border officials were not immediately available for comment.
Kyrgyz authorities said some 160 tons of aid have been sent to Osh and Jalal-Abad — another city suffering serious damage in the rioting. But there were concerns about whether it was all reaching the needy.
Svetlana Permyakova, an ethnic Russian resident of Osh, said the supplies she and her neighbors received were “dismal.”
She said the 63 residents of an apartment building in southern part of Osh received a total of several pounds of rice and macaroni, a bottle of vegetable oil and one flat bread per person.
Both the U.S. and Moscow have air bases in Kyrgyzstan, but they are in the north, far from the rioting.
The West has urged Kyrgyzstan to forge ahead with a June 27 referendum on the constitution and parliamentary elections in October despite the violence.
___
Ohio Guard changes air zone after near miss
CINCINNATI (AP) — The Ohio Air National Guard is increasing the buffer zone between military and commercial air space after two F-16 fighter jets flew near the path of a commuter jet over southwest Ohio in April, a Guard official said Wednesday.
The executive officer of the guard’s Toledo-based 180th Fighter Wing said that the military pilots involved in the flight also have been assigned extra training. Safety procedures were re-emphasized to all pilots within the 180th wing, Maj. Gary Bentley said.
The Federal Aviation Administration reported a “near-miss incident” on April 8, when authorities said the two fighter jets came close enough to trigger a cockpit alarm in the Atlantic Southeast Airlines commuter jet.
The 180th said in a news release this week that its investigation found weather was a factor when the lead F-16 pilot unintentionally flew above the maximum altitude of 28,000 feet. Radar showed the F-16s were flying at 30,000 feet, which was where the commercial plane was flying as planned, the FAA had said.
The pilot “lost situational awareness” as he was flying at the ceiling of the authorized military air space while trying to get above rougher air at lower altitudes, the statement said.
A second pilot following his lead also flew above 28,000 feet but informed the lead pilot that they were too high, and both planes descended back into the safety zone, Bentley said.
Bentley says the safety zone between military and other air space has been doubled to 5 nautical miles.
Atlantic Southeast Airlines said in April that the commuter jet remained on its flight path from Cleveland to Atlanta after seeing the F-16s. The commercial flight carrying 58 passengers and four crew members landed safely.
——
Ala. prof charged in brother’s 1986 shooting death
CANTON, Mass. (AP) — A biology professor charged with killing three of her colleagues at an Alabama university has been indicted in the 1986 shooting death of her brother in Massachusetts, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Authorities had originally ruled that the shooting of Amy Bishop’s brother was an accident, but they reopened the case after Bishop was charged in February with gunning down six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, killing three.
Bishop, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 18-year-old brother, Seth, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said.
Keating said he did not understand why charges were never brought against Bishop.
“I can’t give you any explanations, I can’t give you excuses, because there are none,” he said. “Jobs weren’t done, responsibilities weren’t met and justice wasn’t served.”
Bishop had told police who investigated her brother’s death that she accidentally shot him while trying to unload her father’s 12-gauge shotgun in the family’s Braintree home. Her mother, Judith, the only witness to the shooting, confirmed her daughter’s account to police.
But after Bishop was charged in the Alabama shootings, authorities began reinvestigating Seth Bishop’s death.
U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who was then the Norfolk County district attorney, said that Braintree police never told anyone in his office that after Bishop shot her brother, she tried to commandeer a getaway car at gunpoint at a local car dealership, then refused to drop her gun until officers ordered her to do so repeatedly. Those events were described in Braintree police reports but not in a report written by a state police detective assigned to the district attorney’s office.
Investigators looking at an old crime scene photo from her brother’s shooting discovered a newspaper article about the 1986 killings of actor Patrick Duffy’s parents. The clipping, which was in Bishop’s bedroom, described how a teenager shot the “Dallas” star’s parents with a 12-gauge shotgun and stole a getaway car from an auto dealership.
Keating ordered an inquest, which was held in April. Nineteen witnesses, including Bishop’s parents, testified before Quincy District Court Judge Mark Coven during the closed-door inquest. A grand jury heard evidence this month.
Keating said the indictment, brought 24 years after Seth Bishop’s death, brought little comfort.
“You’re never satisfied when a young boy, a young man, has lost his life,” he said. “You’re never satisfied when justice isn’t served. You’re never satisfied, when using your common sense, in all likelihood, three individuals in Alabama that were killed might not have been because the defendant wouldn’t have been in that room.”
An attorney representing Amy Bishop in the Alabama shootings, Roy Miller, had no immediate comment on the Massachusetts charges. Miller has indicated he is considering an insanity defense for Bishop.
The chief prosecutor in Huntsville, Madison County District Attorney Robert Broussard, didn’t immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. He has said an Alabama grand jury would likely consider charges against Bishop in the university shooting by late summer.
——-
Calif. man gets 30 months for false ‘mayday’ calls
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A California man accused of falsely claiming repeatedly to be stranded at sea has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison.
Prosecutors say 53-year-old Kurtis Thorsted broadcast more than four dozen hoax distress signals over six months in 2008, costing the Coast Guard more than $102,000 for attempted searches.
He was sentenced to two years in prison for the same crime in 2004.
Thorsted pleaded guilty to broadcasting the latest “mayday” calls from his Salinas home and telling would-be rescuers he was stranded in an offshore kayak.
A public defender said in a sentencing memo that Thorsted is disabled from a traumatic brain injury and has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He was sentenced Monday at federal court in San Jose.
——-
Ultrasounds to be required for abortions
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Women seeking abortions in Louisiana will be required to get an ultrasound first, even if they are a victim of rape or incest, under a bill that received final legislative passage Wednesday.
The bill by Sen. Sharon Broome, D-Baton Rouge, was sent to the governor’s desk with a 79-0 vote of the state House. Gov. Bobby Jindal supports the measure.
Supporters of the proposal said they hope the ultrasound dissuades some women from getting an abortion at the handful of abortion clinics in Louisiana, by giving them more information about their pregnancies.
“This is a bill that empowers women,” Broome said in committee testimony, adding that at least 15 other states have a similar requirement.
Opponents said requiring a procedure that might not be available at a free clinic nearby will make it more difficult and costly for women to get abortions. No one spoke against the proposal on the House floor Wednesday.
An ultrasound at health care facilities around the state can cost anywhere from $80 to more than $300, depending on the location, according to a review of health care pricing websites for hospitals and clinics in Louisiana.
It was unclear how significant the change will really be, however. Testimony from both sides of the debate has indicated more than 95 percent of women who get abortions in Louisiana already have ultrasounds performed, without the requirement in place.
Broome’s bill started out in a much more controversial fashion. It would have required anyone seeking an abortion to listen to a detailed description of the fetus that included its dimensions and whether arms, legs or internal organs are visible. The woman also would have been required to get a photograph of the ultrasound.
Those requirements were removed from the bill at its first stop in a Senate committee hearing. The description and the photograph will be optional instead, and a statement must be read to the woman seeking the abortion describing her ability to get the description and photograph and view the ultrasound.
After the proposal was revised, it moved easily through the Legislature with few votes in opposition.
Louisiana has enacted a series of restrictions on abortions over the years, many of which have been overturned in courts. Lawmakers also have placed language in statutes to explain the state only allows abortion procedures because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled they are legal.
Earlier this week, lawmakers gave final passage to another bill that would give Louisiana’s health secretary broader discretion to revoke abortion clinic licenses in case of safety and health concerns. Awaiting debate in the Senate is a House-approved bill that would prohibit medical malpractice coverage of doctors when they are performing elective abortions that aren’t required to save the life of the mother.
——–
BP comment about ‘small people’ causes anger
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The BP chairman’s comment that the oil giant cares about “the small people” received an icy reception on Wednesday from residents along the Gulf Coast.
BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: “I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.”
Justin Taffinder of New Orleans was not amused.
“We’re not small people. We’re human beings. They’re no greater than us. We don’t bow down to them. We don’t pray to them,” Taffinder said.
Svanberg is Swedish, and his comments may have been an unintentional slight. But coastal residents are angry over the oil spill disaster and at BP CEO Tony Hayward’s comments that he “wants his life back.”
Terry Hanners, who is retired from state and federal law enforcement and has a small construction company in Gulf Shores, Ala., said the “small people” remark revealed something about BP’s frame of mind.
“These BP people I’ve met are good folks. I’ve got a good rapport with them,” said Hanners, 74. “But BP does not care about us. They are so far above us. We are the nickel-and-dime folks of this world.”
Asked about the BP chairman’s remark, BP spokesman Toby Odone told The Associated Press in an e-mail that “it is clear that what he means is that he cares about local businesses and local people. This was a slip in translation.”
——–
Obama says BP creating $100 M fund for oil workers
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says BP has agreed to establish a $100 million fund to compensate unemployed oil rig workers affected by a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.
Obama said the fund is in addition to $20 billion the company will set aside to pay victims of the massive Gulf spill, the nation’s worst environmental disaster.
Obama imposed a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling last month while a commission reviews the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.
—-Contact The Daily Reveill’s news staff at [email protected].