On many occasions in St. Cloud, Dotoo Nebi noticed that something about his slim body, average height and dark complexion sorts him into a community he technically doesn’t belong to: Somalis.
“People here think I’m Somali,” Nebi said, seeming bewildered. “We’re not Somalis. We have a different language. We’re from a different part of the world.”
Indeed, they’re from a different country. Nebi, for example, hails from the Agarfa village of Ethiopia, an East African country of more than 94 million people.
Twenty-six years ago, Nebi was born into the country’s largest ethnic group, Oromo, which has spent decades fighting against the Ethiopian authoritarian regime for recognition and independence.
That struggle still continues in the region, giving birth to a seething unrest that has uprooted many families, including hundreds who made St. Cloud their home.
“They took all of our cows, goats and horses,” Nebi said of the Ethiopian soldiers, who roamed in his village. “Every single day, we used to see (them). We were scared for our lives.”
That fear finally brought Nebi to St. Cloud, where he now serves as the executive director of the Midwest Oromo Community, a nonprofit organization that provides service to his Oromo community in Central Minnesota.
The soft-spoken leader is at times surprised that many people here don’t differentiate his community from the Somalis.
On a recent day in the St. Cloud Wal-Mart, he said, an American woman had a heated argument with a Somali woman. When the quarrel cooled off, he said, the same American woman approached him, stared at him and yelled out, “I hate Somalis.”
“She thought that I was a Somali,” he said. “I didn’t say anything.”
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Geshe Hassen, another member of the St. Cloud Oromo community, said he had a similar experience. Many times, he said, people are genuinely confused — they just don’t know much about the Oromo community and its history.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Hassen said. “But I just wish people would know that we’re from Ethiopia.”
Members of the broader community aren’t the only people who misidentify the Oromo group. Hussein Mohamud, who is a Somali, said he speaks in Somali with Oromo people when he sees them on the streets.
“The way we dress and our physical appearance are the same,” he said. “Even our people can’t sometimes tell the difference between the two communities.”
Childhood years in Ethiopia
Nebi’s story is different from that of Somalis — and it’s remarkable in its own way. He came of age at a time when writing in his native Afaan Oromo language was a crime in Ethiopia.
The language had remained nothing more than an oral tradition until in the early ’70s, when leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front made Afaan Oromo the official language in the areas they controlled.
In response, the former Ethiopian dictator Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam banned the language in the country.
Nebi, however, secretly learned to write and read it from his father, Kedir, who had also taught scores of others in the Oromo community.
When Mengistu’s government collapsed in 1991, Nebi’s father joined the liberation movement for the betterment of the Oromo people — risking persecution.
About a decade later, life in the region became too dangerous for Kedir; he moved to the United States in 2001.
Nebi, on the other hand, moved to Kenya with his family of eight in 2004.
Two years later, Nebi, who completed his middle and elementary school education in Ethiopia, came to Minnesota in 2006. “When I came here, I didn’t know English,” he said, adding that when he sat for the exam for placement at Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, he wrote the exam in his native language.
His math and science skills, though, were above average. When he began to study biomedical science at St. Cloud State University in 2008, he worked as a math and science tutor at the university’s campus.
Oromo community service
Through the Midwest Oromo Community, Nebi said he hopes to educate St. Cloud residents about his Oromo people — a community that has both Muslims and Christians, whose language and country is different than Somalis and their homeland.
According to Nebi’s estimation, St. Cloud is home to more than 500 Oromo people who started arriving in 2008. Many of them struggle with language and cultural barriers as well as education and transportation issues, Nebi noted.
Some members of the community applauded Nebi for his service.
Hassen, who is also Nebi’s longtime friend, remembers Nebi as an effective organizer even when the two were in college. “He used to organize us in college,” he said of Nebi. “Because of him, we became more involved in campus activities.”
He added: “Now he’s organizing the community the same way he used to organize college students. I really like his leadership style.”
Since Nebi became the head of the Midwest Oromo Community in 2013, he’s created several educational programs and services to empower his community. They are aimed at older people, women and youth in the Oromo community.
“We provide many programs,” said Nebi, who’s also a paraprofessional at North Junior High School, “like community health education, and mental illness and immigration services.”
DENVER (CN) - Twenty-two years in prison is a fine sentence for an Ethiopian torturer who stole another man's identity and fled to the United States to duck prosecution, the 10th Circuit ruled Tuesday.
Kefelegne Alemu Worku used the name Habteab Berhe Temanu to hide in Denver until 2012, when immigration agents found him after several witnesses identified him as a member of the Ethiopian Red Terror campaign of the 1970s. He was accused of torturing and killing dozens of political prisoners while working as a prison guard, and stealing the identity of an Ethiopian man.
"Four of the victims testified that they had been tortured by Mr. Worku," 10th Circuit Judge Robert Bacharach wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.
A Denver federal judge Worku the maximum sentence on each of count: unlawful procurement of citizenship, visa fraud, and identity theft.
Worku appealed, claiming he'd been subjected to double jeopardy, that he had permission to use Temanu's identity, that there was no proof he came to America to dodge prosecution for human rights violations, and that the witnesses who identified him as a sadistic prison guard had been subjected to "improperly suggestive photo arrays." He also claimed his sentence was "substantively unreasonable."
The 10th Circuit rejected all of his challenges.
Though Worku claimed the third count of identity theft was the same as the first count, unlawful procurement of citizenship, the crimes are not "based on the same conduct," Bacharach wrote.
Nor was the judge persuaded by Worku's claim that he had "lawful authority" to use Habteab Berhe's identity, because he had permission from the man's children.
"Mr. Worku has not presented any cases suggesting that the children could lawfully allow another person to use their father's identity," Bacharach wrote. "Mr. Worku does not allege consent from the person whose identity was used: Mr. Berhe."
Bacharach cited the U.S. District Court ruling that Worku "had persecuted others 'because of race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,'" and lied about it. He also was accused of having paid a broker to help with the identity theft.
"Together, these facts create a plausible inference that Mr. Worku wanted to come to the United States to avoid punishment for his human rights violations in Ethiopia," Bacharach ruled.
Nor was the court persuaded by Worku's claim that "the photo arrays were unduly suggestive, resulting in a deprivation of due process." Worku claims that of the four photo arrays used, his photo was "the brightest and clearest" in the first two. In the third, Worku said, his photo was the most "heavily shadowed." He was the only man shown wearing a "large hooded winter jacket," only one man had hair on his head, and two of the men didn't have facial hair.
"We agree that in the arrays, the lighting is slightly different for Mr. Worku's photograph and some of the 16 other photographs," Bacharach conceded, "but all are color photographs and depict Ethiopian men of similar ages. With these similarities among the men depicted, the court had the discretion to conclude that the differences in lighting would not have suggested which photograph to pick."
Worku's "substantively unreasonable" claim implied that the 22-year sentence could not "be reconciled with the sentencing guidelines," Bacharach said.
But district court had taken into account that Worku "was capable of torture," that he had "concealed his identity to avoid prosecution," and that his crimes were serious because they "corrupted the established processes of immigration and limited the prospects of truly deserving immigrants."
Due to all of this, the district court was correct to impose the maximum sentence for each violation. Bacharach cited U.S. District Judge John Kane, whose sentence Worku appealed: "'Congress has provided maximum sentences for the most egregious violations of these statutes. If this case is not egregious, I cannot imagine what case would be.'"
