Good News for All Human-being: Ex-Somali Colonel Ordered by US Federal Magistrate to Pay $15 million in Torture Case

Former Somalia Colonel Abdi Aden Magan

By REGINA GARCIA CANO



Federal Judge Mark Abel awarded the compensation to Abukar Hassan Ahmed, who in a 2010 lawsuit said he endured months of torture in the 1980s during interrogations in Somalia. A judge had previously ruled that the former colonel, Abdi Aden Magan, was responsible for the torture.

Ahmed filed the lawsuit in April 2010, stating that Magan oversaw his detention and torture in Somalia in 1988. Ahmed said that three months of torture he endured make it painful for him to sit and injured his bladder to the point that he is incontinent.

Ahmed said the torture occurred when Magan served as investigations chief of the National Security Service of Somalia, a force dubbed the Black SS or the Gestapo of Somalia because of its harsh techniques used to gain confessions from detainees.

One of Ahmed's lawyers, Christina Hioureas, on Tuesday said the judge's ruling sends a message that the United States will not be a "safe harbor for those who commit human rights abuses." She said that properties owned by Magan could be seized to cover the $15 million.

Somali torture victim Abukar Hassan Ahmed talks about the civil court case against former Somali Col. Abdi Aden Magan during an interview at The Associated Press bureau in Columbus, Ohio. Ahmed is seeking damages against Magan, who was found responsible last year for torturing Ahmed in the 1980s. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

A federal magistrate in Columbus has recommended that a former Somali colonel pay a human-rights activist he tortured in Somalia $15 million in damages.

Ahmed was a professor at the Somalia International University and a lawyer defending political dissidents when he was imprisoned and tortured. Ahmed in 2010 found out Magan was living in the United States through a Google search.

Magan lived for years in Ohio. He initially fought the lawsuit, brought by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, but stopped participating last year and now lives in Kenya. Court documents list Magan as representing himself. An email requesting comment sent Tuesday to the address listed for Magan on the court docket was undeliverable.

Magan had argued that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong country and too long after when Ahmed says the abuse happened. He also had said he faced his own ordeal in Somalia and fled after falling out of favor with the government.

Koh said that, "taking into account the relevant principles of customary international law, and considering the overall impact of this matter on the foreign policy of the United States, the Department of State has determined that Defendant Magan does not enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts."

Ahmed is now legal adviser to the president of Somalia and divides his time between London and Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.
 

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“Magan said he was above the law, that he was the law,” Nushin Sarkarati, one of Ahmed’s attorneys, said at the hearing. She said the Magan case is the first court judgment holding a Somali National Security Service official liable for human-rights violations.

Sarkarati said Ahmed, who now lives in England, was left with permanent physical injuries that made him unable to father children and with mental injuries that interrupt his sleep and generate flashbacks of his torture.

She had asked Abel to order a substantial penalty as punishment and to deter others.

“If you are black, you need justice,” Ahmed told the court during the May hearing. “If you are white, you need justice. If you are yellow, you need justice. So everybody needs justice. It is universal. “I don’t seek only my justice, but I seek justice for other people also, because I call them the silent victims of torture — in Somalia or in other countries.”

Magan has moved to Kenya and has not participated in the lawsuit for more than a year. He could not be reached for comment. Ahmed is a legal adviser to the president of Somalia.

Sarkarati is an attorney with the Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco-based human-rights organization. The center, as well as Hioureas of Chadbourne & Parke in New York City and Kenneth R. Cookson of Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter in Columbus, represented Ahmed.
kgray@dispatch.com

Source: AP