Canadian insurgent killed in Somalia: report
Posted on 03 July 2008 by Jack
A Canadian who held a key position in a Somali insurgent group has reportedly been killed during a clash with African peacekeeping forces.
Abdullah Ali Afrah, who was also known as Aspro or Asparo, ran a money-transfer business in Toronto before returning to his homeland and joining Africa’s version of the Taliban.
A rebel spokesman said Aspro died during an attack on an Ethiopian troop convoy in Mataban, 400 kilometres north of the capital, Mogadishu, the Reuters news agency reported Wednesday.
Canadian officials have been trying to verify the reported death but Ottawa has no official presence in Somalia. Attempts to call Mr. Afrah’s mobile phone were unsuccessful. Mr. Afrah, a Canadian citizen, was a senior advisor to the Islamic Courts Union, which is sometimes compared to the Taliban because of its ties to Osama bin Laden and its armed campaign to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist state.
After the National Post first revealed the Canadian’s role in the Somali insurgency in 2006, Mr. Afrah told the newspaper in a telephone interview that if gays and lesbians can do what they want in Toronto, then Muslims should be free to live as they want in Somalia.
Popularity: 14% [?]
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 am
Gee, poor Aspro, I hope he’s all right!
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:01 am
Go ahead Ottawa, knock yourselves out trying to verify if this loyal Somali (Canadian of convenience) is dead or alive. Really, who cares? Certainly not me. After being granted asylum here poor little oppressed victim Abdullah dedicated himself to raising money for terrorists organizations abroad, and who knows, perhaps even here in Canada. Then Canada offered him citizenship (the only country in the world to ever grant citizenship to refugees) and then he used his Canadian passport to travel the world and engage in unlawful terrorist activities. Then he finally got what he deserved. The basis for Canada’s concern would be……?
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
Who wants a bet? - That External Affairs has already chartered an executive jet and has five wonks to the rescue as we speak.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:24 am
Great news!
I hope his death was slow and painful.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:43 am
This issue is going to be very controversial to say the least. But, let’s all be careful what we say for legal reasons and Jack’s sake.
I would tend to agree that we take in refugees too quickly and offer citizenship too quickly as well. But, how do you know what is really is someone’s heart — no matter where they are from? Can’t condemn everyone for the actions of a few. Glad I’m not the one making the decisions.
Think Thomas D’Arcy McGee.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am
According to the newspaper quotation, Mr Aphra has finished his intention to stay in Canada.
Therefore, is he any longer of concern to Canada, or eligible for the Order of Canada?
Quoted as Follows:
“I, as everybody else, I have been working and trying to make [a] good life. I tried my best and, when I finished my intention to stay there I just moved back to Somalia,” he said in the interview.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Let’s hope they used lots of bullets to make sure he can no longer be a live, talking insult to Canada.
Gonna be good day
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Be careful what we say?
Nigel Hannaford exerpted:
Well the key item in the [Canadian] Constitution, the key value, is not actually liberty, it’s equality. Which sounds like a good thing, but what does equality really mean? If it means that all of us stand equal before the law, then most people are going to say that’s a good thing. But if it means that in the name of equality you can’t have an opinion that offends someone else because they claim that by expressing that opinion you are diminishing them as a person, well then of course it means something completely different, which we as liberty loving people don’t support.
(…)
Canada’s original free speech hero was Joseph Howe. He was a newspaper publisher who saw things that were wrong in government, published it, the government objected, they sued him for seditious libel, they told him that he was an irresponsible journalist for bringing this stuff up, because if you say bad things about the government well how can anybody ever respect the government. Nevertheless he faced them in court and a jury found him not guilty and ever since that time, which was 1835, if you’re a history buff, ever since that time Canadians have thought that they’ve had free speech. Now they didn’t always really have it, certainly the Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses have had their problems, trade unionists have had their problems with people trying to silence them. There’s a great Supreme Court of Canada case in 1877 where the Roman Catholic Church had to be told that they couldn’t recommend to their parishioners that they not vote for the Liberals because the Liberals were sinners. There have been lots of people who from time to time have had problems in the free speech area, but it’s always been against the backdrop that free speech is important, that the right to express your opinion is fundamental to democracy and that the right to free speech is not to protect the opinions that we all like and agree with, it is to protect the opinions that we hate. And that’s what we’re losing at the moment.
(…)
The fact is that this country, like a number of others, has a certain political culture and in that political culture disrespect of persons in form of satire or irony, disrespect in the form of political cartooning is all part of it. When a person comes from another country they should know to expect that. If they feel that that is something that they can’t tolerate and don’t want to live with, then there are other countries that you can emigrate to, I guess, and you won’t have the same problems.
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=2233
We’ll say what we like.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Sandy, my comments do not refer to ‘all’ refugees, just this character and we do know what was in his heart because he told us. According to the National Post quote he stated his belief that the Taliban in Afghanistan were just trying to “enjoy Islam, the Islamic principles.” So in other words he supports a terrorist organization that is killing Canadian troops who had been sent on this mission by the democractically elected Canadian government. Then when it came time to abandon his ‘new’ home where did he head straight for, to where his true loyalties always were, Somolia. By shear good fortune or coincidence this ‘ordinary’ Canadian citizen who had been out of his country for many years, quickly rose to be second deputy chairman of the Shura Council of the Islamic Courts Union, whose leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aways is on Canadian and UN terrorist lists. That’s sure sounds like if the chairman and the first deputy chairman got ‘bumped off’ by the goods guys (that’d be either by us or one of our allies) ‘ol Abdulla would become the head honcho of this terrorist organization. We all know that Canada is at war with the Taliban. The Taliban are killing Canadians soldiers in Afghanistan who are there operating under a NATO sanctioned mission and the support of the Afghanistan government. If the is also accurate Abdullah was killed while attacking Ethiopian troops who, just as Abdullah’s ‘fellow’ Canadian citizen/soldiers are in Afghanistan, are currently in Somolia with the support of that country’s United Nations-backed transitional government and are also engaged in ousting Islamic terrorists. So we do in fact know exactly what was in this man’s heart. It was murder, and it didn’t matter to him if who got killed were his so-called ‘fellow’ Canadian citizens or not.
There is absolutely no comparison between the conduct that pre-cluded the deaths of Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Abdullah Ali Afrah whatsoever.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Why would anyone refer to this guy as a Canadian.He didn’t obviously so why should we or the media for that matter.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
If there is a story here, it would be what took place in Canada, if anything, that transformed a refugee into someone willing to die for sharia in a far off corner of the world.
Either he came here with that attitude, in which case, were these beliefs missed, or considered irrelevant by the refugee board? or, there was a transformation that took place within Canada that we need to understand.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I think an equally important question here is whether this man was a refugee in the first place.
From what we see here and from what the man says, he showed up at the door, some humble legal aid lawyers got him refugee status and start up money likely for his “aspirin” business, and when he couldn’t peddle enough pills, he went home.
Is that a possible scenario that needs looking into?
(Edited to remove names of people not connected to the case.)
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
BTDT — I never said there was a direct comparison. Only that we have to be careful not to suspect all refugees from certain countries — who eventually become Canadians. It is true that some are terrorists, or the equivalent in today’s terminology, in their home country but go on to lead productive lives in Canada. This is obviously an exception.
However, make no mistake McGee was the equivalent of an Irish terrorist when he was young and very much a part of the Fenian cause. He changed when he got older and went on to become a father of confederation, but his assassination was related to his earlier causes.
So, all I am suggesting is that, while this case may be obvious in hindsight, and I don’t disagree with that, we should not paint all refugees from Somalia and other middle east countries with the same brush AND we should be careful not to mention names or be unnecessarily defamatory for legal reasons that could adversely affect Jack.
All bloggers have to be careful of that now.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
OK. The very last thing I would ever want to do is cause Jack any problems. But I think you’ll agree that the form of ‘terrorism’ that todays radical Islamists engage in makes McGee’s look like Mr. Rogers.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
One less bad guy and one less Liberal vote or many Liberal votes if he had a large family.