U.S. citizen on no-fly list discusses being stranded in Egypt and talks with FBI

Fairfax man finally returns to U.S. after being put on no-fly list in Cairo

After traveling to Yemen to find love and learn Arabic, Yahya Wehelie was stranded in Cairo for six weeks when the FBI put him on a no-fly list.

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By Ian Shapira

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2010; B01


Yahye Wehelie, 26, born and raised in Fairfax County, was supposed to have been home this spring, telling friends and family about his 18-month stay in Yemen: the technology classes, his quest for a Muslim bride, the wedding and reception that featured a DJ playing music by Michael Jackson and Celine Dion.

Instead, while on his way home in early May, Wehelie was stopped while changing planes in Cairo. It turns out he had been placed on the U.S. government's no-fly list. From that moment until last weekend, Wehelie, a graduate of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, was stranded in Egypt, shuttling between a $16-a-night Cairo hotel room and a windowless room at the U.S. Embassy. There, he said, FBI special agents fed him Oreos and chips and told him he might never see Virginia again.

In his first extensive interview since his return home July 17, Wehelie said the FBI peppered him with questions about possible ties to terrorists. In about six exhausting sessions over his 11 weeks in Egypt, agents made Wehelie log his daily activities dating back several months. They asked whether he was a "devout" Muslim. They probed about connections he might have to Islamic radicals, including Sharif Mobley, an alleged al-Qaeda recruit from New Jersey whom Wehelie met on a street in Yemen.

And then their tone changed, morphing into entreaties to help protect his native land: Might Wehelie consider being a mole in the Muslim community when he got home?

"I've lived in Virginia my whole life," Wehelie said, dressed in loose jeans and a striped Ralph Lauren shirt. "I listen to rap. I play basketball. I watch football. I wasn't brought up the way these crazy people [terrorists] are brought up. I just want to live on with my life. I don't want to be an informant. I want to work for an IT company. I want to be a normal person."

Wehelie -- who says he was in Yemen because his mother sent him to learn Arabic and find a Muslim wife -- sees his experience as what could be described as a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he agonized for weeks over how to prove that he was no threat to his native land. But the government says it must maintain a tight watch over those who may have had contact with known terrorists, and Yemen has been a special point of concern in law enforcement circles of late.

Since Christmas, when a Nigerian man who had trained in Yemen tried to blow up an airplane landing in Detroit, about 30 Muslim Americans have been restricted from leaving, returning to or traveling within the United States, according to a log kept by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Several recent high-profile attempted terror plots against U.S. targets, including the attempted Christmas Day attack and the Times Square incident, remind us of the need to remain vigilant and thoroughly investigate every lead to fend off any potential threats," said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, who declined to address Wehelie's case specifically. "The American public correctly demands that of us."

Bresson said the "FBI is always careful to protect the civil rights and privacy concerns of all Americans. . . . We are very mindful of the fact that our success in enforcing the law depends on partnerships with the Muslim community and many other communities."

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria and the FBI are still investigating Wehelie, according to his attorney, Tom Echikson. The family met Thursday with government officials, but Echikson would not discuss the talks. He said he is trying to get Wehelie removed from the no-fly list.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S attorney's office in Alexandria, said he could not confirm or deny any investigation into Wehelie's activities.

Wehelie's parents, Shamsa Noor and Abdirizak Wehelie -- Somali immigrants who studied at the University of the District of Columbia -- said they had been worried about the second-oldest of their six children, who they thought seemed adrift.

Yahye Wehelie had dropped out of Norfolk State University. By 2008, when he was working as a DHL delivery man, his parents urged him to learn Arabic so he could launch a more lucrative career and maybe find a Muslim wife.

Wehelie, who likes playing Xbox video games and reading Slam and Sports Illustrated magazines, pushed back.

"I was thinking, no, I didn't want to do it. . . . I didn't need to go to a foreign country to learn no foreign language," he said. "I was scared. I went on YouTube to see some clips of Yemen and didn't like what I had seen. I was like, man, this place is in the Stone Ages. I got mad. I actually got depressed.

"How could I match up with someone in Yemen?" Wehelie remembered complaining. "They won't understand American culture. I was going to have to man up."

In October 2008, Wehelie boarded a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from Dulles and was soon ensconced in Yemeni society. He enrolled at Lebanese International University in Sanaa, the capital. He rented a one-bedroom apartment, played basketball and visited Internet cafes. Soon, he found a bride, a Somali refugee a few years his junior. Maryam was the sister of a friend of a friend -- a nurse.

He thought she was cute. They both liked spaghetti and walks in the park. More important, she made him curious about his Somali heritage.

"Other women who want to meet Americans are like, 'Oh, he'll bring me back to the States,' " he said. "She wasn't like that. . . . She wanted her Somali culture -- and I wanted to get back to that, too."

A year after Wehelie arrived in Yemen, the couple married. Some of his family showed up, including his youngest brother, Yusuf, who wound up staying long-term. Guests danced to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." The couple posed in their wedding attire -- Yahye in a dark suit, Maryam in a gown with flowing train -- for souvenir photographs emblazoned with the words "With Love."

Soon, Wehelie got homesick. He wanted to return to the United States to file for permission to bring his wife home. Early this May, he and his brother boarded an EgyptAir flight to Cairo, where they expected to switch to a flight to New York.

But at the Cairo airport, airline officials told the brothers they couldn't make the transfer. They were directed to the U.S. Embassy.

Mystified, the brothers jumped into a cab, thinking the detour would last half an hour and they'd still make their flight. But at the embassy, they were told to wait, go get some lunch. When the brothers got back from Hardee's, they were told that FBI agents from Washington were flying in to see them.

Wehelie borrowed a cellphone and called his mother to say he might be delayed by up to four days. The brothers shuffled off to the nearby Garden City House Hotel, paying with money the U.S. government lent them. The brothers were given coupons for fast-food restaurants and plenty of time to check out the Nile and the Pyramids. After a few days, Yusuf was cleared to go home, but Yahye had to stay.

Wehelie said he met with two FBI agents in a small room at the embassy. The agents -- a man and a woman -- asked a barrage of questions: Do you pray every day? Have you ever met the following people? He took a polygraph test. He handed over passwords to his e-mail and Facebook accounts.

"The FBI, you think they're smart, but these people . . . they'll ask you the stupidest questions that are so irrelevant," Wehelie said. "I am cool with them trying to make screenings safe for my country and all U.S. citizens. I just think in my case, it took a little longer."

Back home in Burke, where the walls are decorated with artwork featuring the Koran, Wehelie's mother said she "felt guilty. I would wake up at 3 a.m. and pray to God to help me. I sent him there to be a better person for this country."

But in Cairo, the FBI's questions seemed designed to examine her son's possible ties to people with very different loyalties. When they showed Wehelie photographs of radicals, one looked familiar, if only vaguely. It was Sharif Mobley, a U.S. citizen accused of killing a hospital guard in Yemen after Mobley was arrested in a sweep of suspected al-Qaeda militants.

Wehelie told The Washington Post that he met Mobley once at random in Sanaa on Hadda Street, a popular spot for foreigners, but knew nothing about his past.

"I don't consider myself knowing this guy," he said. "I met him outside on Hadda Street. He came up to me and said, 'Are you American?' I said, 'Yeah, I am.' 'Well, cool dude, where are you from?' It was small talk."

As his sessions with the FBI wound down, Wehelie said, agents asked whether he might attend mosque services in the Washington area and report back on potential terrorist plots or security threats.

"I was like, 'Man, I don't know,' " he said. "It was very weird. I don't think that's right."

Finally, on July 17, Wehelie was allowed to fly to New York, but because he's still on the no-fly list, he could not continue on to Washington, so his parents picked him up at John F. Kennedy International Airport and drove him home. By morning, he was back playing video games on his Xbox.

Now he wonders whether he'll see the female FBI agent again. In Egypt, she told him she'd like to take him out for a meal -- "for a chitchat"-- when he got home.

"I said, 'Cool, it depends on if I have free time,' " Wehelie recalled. "I didn't want to be rude. I am willing to talk if it coincides with my schedule."

Somalis seeking asylum take back-door route to U.S.

Image via Wikipedia

By Amy Taxin
Monday, January 4, 2010; A11

LANCASTER, CALIF. -- The asylum seeker from Somalia hung his head as an immigration judge grilled him about his treacherous journey from the Horn of Africa. By air, sea and land he finally made it to Mexico, and then a taxi delivered him into the arms of U.S. border agents at San Diego.

Islamic militants had killed his brother, Mohamed Ahmed Kheire testified, and majority clan members had beaten his sister. He had to flee Mogadishu to live.

The voice of the judge, beamed by videoconference from Seattle, crackled loudly over a speaker in the mostly empty courtroom near the detention yard in the desert north of Los Angeles. He wanted to know why Kheire had no family testimony to corroborate his asylum claim.

Kheire, 31, said he didn't have access to e-mail in detention and didn't think to ask while writing to family on his perilous trek.

It seemed like the end of Kheire's dream as he waited for the judge's ruling. He clasped his hands, his plastic jail bracelet dangling from his wrist, and looked up at the ceiling, murmuring words of prayer.

Kheire is one of hundreds of Somalis in the past two years to have staked everything on a wild asylum gamble by following immigration routes to the United States traditionally traveled by Latinos.

With the suspension of a U.S. refugee program and stepped-up security in the Gulf of Aden and along Mediterranean smuggling routes, more overseas migrants from Somalia are pursuing asylum through what one expert calls the "back door."

"The U.S. has closed most of the doors for Somalis to come in through the refugee program, so they've found alternative ways to get in," said Mark Hetfield, senior vice president for policy and programs at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. "This is their new route." About 1,500 people from around the world showed up in U.S. airports and on the borders seeking asylum during the 2009 fiscal year, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Somalis were the biggest group to make the journey, with most arriving in San Diego. More than 240 Somalis arrived during that period -- more than twice as many as the year before.

Most Somalis have reached the United States -- there are about 87,000 here -- through U.S.-sponsored refugee-resettlement programs. But the State Department suspended a family-reunification program for refugees in 2008 over fraud concerns. The number of Somalis admitted by refugee programs dwindled to about 4,000 last year.

Those now traveling through Latin America are taking a path well worn by asylum seekers from other countries. Immigration lawyers say they have worked with clients from Ethiopia and Iraq who also reached the United States through Mexico.

"To get a flight from Africa to Europe is very hard. The easiest place to go is America," said Yahya Idardon, an asylum seeker who fled Somalia last year after his father and brother were killed. "Africa to Latin America is easy. . . . When you are going to Latin America, no one is concerned about you, no one is asking, so it is easy to go there and cross all these countries." Once reaching the U.S. border in San Diego, Somalis are frisked, fingerprinted and screened by an asylum officer to gauge whether they have a credible fear of returning home.

They are then shuttled to an immigration detention center until their cases go to court.

About 80 Somalis are being held in Lancaster, a detention center 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Dozens more have been held in San Diego and the remote border town of El Centro, immigration lawyers said.

On Jan. 4, the government plans to start releasing many asylum seekers while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard. It is unclear how many Somalis will be let out; they must prove their identity and many don't have documents. And still others say they have nowhere to go even if they were freed, their attorneys said.

Compared with asylum seekers from other countries, Somalis have been more likely to win their cases, according to immigration court statistics.

But in the courtroom in Lancaster, Kheire spent the last moments of his hearing worried that the judge would send him back to Mogadishu to face the threat of death -- even after he had survived such a harrowing journey.

The attorneys for Kheire and the government sat quietly in the courtroom, listening to the judge read the ruling as Kheire prayed.

A Somali interpreter whispered urgently into Kheire's ear. He broke into a hesitant smile. He would be allowed to stay.

Kheire left the courtroom in his black, laceless sneakers and jail jumpsuit, escorted by sheriff's officials. Later that night, he was dropped off by authorities at a nearby train station. He had $5 in his pocket.

"They said, 'This is America. Welcome to the United States of America,' " Kheire said.

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Somalis Gather to Discuss Racism, Alienation in Australia

By Phil Mercer Sydney 17 August 2009

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Young Somali immigrants say they face racism and feel unwanted in Australia. Their problems have drawn more attention since four men from Somali backgrounds were charged with planning a suicide attack on an army base in Sydney.

Community groups say that Somali refugees often are stuck in a kind of "no-man's land" between their own culture and mainstream Australia.

The Somali immigrant community suffers high unemployment. Many refugees have problems learning English or experience the lingering effects of torture and trauma. Alienation can leave some vulnerable to the influence of criminals and extremists.

Others complain of racism from mainstream Australia.

Young Somalis wrapped up a meeting Sunday to discuss these issues in Melbourne, where a series of counter-terrorism raids were carried out earlier this month.

Kamal Mohamed, who is a student, says the arrest of four Somali-born Australians in the raids will only heighten society's suspicions of him and his peers.

"Before this issue happened, terrorism claims and all that, we were slowly integrating, but now we're not integrating, it's just full stop now, there's no integration, because people have already judged us," he said.

Police also are investigating allegations that some young Somalis have traveled back to Africa from Australia to fight for radical Islamic groups.

Tens of thousands of African refugees have resettled in Australia - most arriving from Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Liberia and Somalia.

This year about 13,500 refugee visas will be issues and while millions of dollars are spent by the government helping newcomers to adapt to life in a strange, new country.

Despite efforts to help the transition, some African refugees have been accused of forming gangs, harassing women and committing violent crime.

Community leaders admit that a small minority has gotten into trouble but they say the majority has nothing but respect for Australian laws and customs.

Australia Detains Terror Suspects

Australian police have arrested four people in the city of Melbourne after uncovering what they say was a plot to launch a suicide attack.

The group was planning to carry out the attack on an army base, police said.

More than 400 officers were involved in searching 19 properties across the city before dawn on Tuesday.

The suspects are Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese descent; one man, aged 25, has been charged with conspiring to plan a terrorist act.

Nayaf El Sayed, from the Glenroy district of Melbourne, was remanded in custody until 26 October.

He did not enter a plea or apply for bail, and refused to stand for the magistrate in court.

His lawyer told the hearing: "He believes he should not stand for any man except God."

Police were granted extra time to question three others - Saney Aweys, Yacqub Khayre and Abdirahman Ahmed.

A fifth man, who had been detained earlier, was also being questioned about the alleged plot.

'Sobering'

"Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and [are] allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia," a police statement said.

"The men's intention was to actually go into the army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could before they themselves were killed," said Tony Negus, acting chief commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.

Holsworthy Barracks on the outskirts of Sydney was one of the planned targets, according to police.

The attack would have been the most serious terrorist attack on Australian soil, Mr Negus added.

"Members of the group have been actively seeking a fatwa or religious ruling to justify a terror attack on Australia," he said.

Prosecutors told the court they had evidence some of the men had taken part in training and fighting in Somalia.

They also said there were phone conversations, text messages and surveillance footage, including footage of one of the suspects outside the Holsworthy army base, linking the suspects to an alleged attack.

The court heard the men planned to seek a fatwa, or religious ruling, to support an attack on the Holsworthy army base.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "The sobering element of today's development is the reminder to all Australians that the threat of terrorism is alive and well, and this requires continued vigilance on the part of our security authorities."

The country's security level is unchanged at medium, where it has been since 2003.

The police said the raids followed a seven-month operation involving several state and federal agencies.

Police believe those arrested are linked to the Somali-based al-Shabab group, which seeks to overthrow the weak UN-backed Somali government and is believed to have links to al-Qaeda.