i don't even understand HOW (or why)

this person who (allegedly) tortured almost a whole country GOT INTO THE UNITED STATES much less LIVES HERE

NO immunity for him or any OTHER war criminal. NONE (that includes prosecuting the bush administration and if need be the current one as well if we find out they're doing nasty shite as well)

The War Criminal Next Door

Virginia resident Mohamed Ali Samantar oversaw a reign of terror in Somalia. Will the Supreme Court grant him immunity?

— By Daniel Schulman

Supporting an alleged war criminal's bid to evade accountability is surely not a popular stance. But when the Supreme Court took up the case of Somali General Mohamed Ali Samantar last fall, an odd coalition of defenders emerged. Among them were the government of Saudi Arabia, various pro-Israel groups, and three former US attorneys general. At stake is whether foreign officials can be sued in US courts for human rights abuses, or whether they are protected by a swath of immunity that shields them from answering for even the most heinous acts. Supporters of Samantar’s position contend that if the Supreme Court rules against him, it could leave officials from Saudi Arabia, Israel, the US, and elsewhere vulnerable to an avalanche of lawsuits. And the case raises major foreign policy questions, particularly as the Obama administration wages an aggressive fight against terrorism around the world.

The case is the first ever to target a member of the brutal regime of Somalia's late dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. Samantar served as his defense minister and later prime minister, and he oversaw the country's armed forces as they engaged in a litany of human rights violations. "He was the dictator's enforcer," says J. Peter Pham, the director of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy's Africa Project. Samantar moved to the US in 1997 and for years has battled a lawsuit by alleged victims of the regime’s abuses—who collectively tell of torture, rape, extrajudicial killings, wanton imprisonment, and the abduction of family members who were never heard from again. Samantar's lawyers argue that he's immune from such suits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), a 1976 law that, with some exceptions, protects countries (and any "agency or instrumentality" of those nations) from being sued in US courts. ../.

Technorati Tags:torture, torture victim protection act, bashe abdi yousuf, mohammed siad barre, mohamed ali samantar, foreign sovereign immunities act
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