Asha Ali Abdille

Well I’m glad Asha Ali Abdille wasn’t on my flight, but if she had been I suspect she would have not managed to do anything but injure herself.  The security measures on international flights are much stronger than on domestic flights and especially compared to small aircraft on domestic flights which don’t even use metal detectors.

Not that I advocate metal detectors on these small flights.  I think it was  a sensible decision that no sane terrorist would try to hijack such a small plane. Sadly in this case Asha Ali Abdille is obviously not particularly sane.

Apart from anything else, trying to hijack a Beechcraft 1900 to fly to Australia is pretty stupid.   Australia is around 1,500 miles from Blenheim. Generally the Beechcraft is used for flights under 500 miles. Now with full tanks it can just in theory do 1,500 miles (but I doubt 1,500) but very unlikely it has full tanks for a short flight as the extra weight costs a lot. So she hadn’t even picked a plane which could make the journey.

It goes without saying huge kudos to the pilots for getting everyone down safely, despite having been stabbed by her.

Actually it seems pretty clear from the reporting that she is either mad or bad (a court can determine which) and it does make you wonder whether NZ should have its own “Do Not Fly” list as even before this placing her on there seems like the reason you would have such a list.

Winston Peters has long campaigned about this woman.  And while he often gets it wrong (remember the innocent Iraqis he defamed last election) he has some valid points about why she was allowed to bring her family over here, after she had started criminal offending.  I don’t know the law off hand but as a refugee rather than a migrant, I doubt she personally can have her residency cancelled, even with criminal convictions. But she has tried to bring in 14 family members, which can be stopped.

Peters has asked many question in Parliament about this woman.  Some extracts:

On 3 November 2004:

But this story just gets worse. I wonder whether the journalists involved really knew just who it was they were putting on the front page of the Dominion Post. It turns out that the so-called sympathy case for bleeding-heart liberals has a background that Al Capone would have been proud of. She has, first, several convictions for violence and intimidation; second, a charge of conspiracy to kill, which did not proceed because the prosecution witnesses refused to testify; third, evidence of already bringing in several family members, some of whom were allegedly not true family members, which checks failed to identify; fourth, regular movement between the Somali communities of Hamilton, Hawke’s Bay, Christchurch, and Lower Hutt, using intimidatory tactics to get her way; and, fifth, a well-known reputation for carrying weapons and spitting in people’s faces, and then for telling them she has AIDS—clearly a true role model for our refugee programme. This story has a disturbing undercurrent that our soft policies allow to happen.

And 10 November 2004:

Can the Minister explain why we have a fistful of letters of complaint that have never been acted on by his department, and will his investigation of Asha Ali Abdille deal with her treatment of staff at the Red Cross in Wellington and Christchurch, which involved threatening to pour petrol on one person and spitting in another receptionist’s face, and the bizarre circumstances at the Hastings police station in which she threw a bucket of faeces over a constable.

As I said above, this is not about her right tolive here. The issue Peters has been on about is whether she should have been judged by Immigration Service as a sound person to sponsor family members.

I do wonder if NZ does have a “do not fly” list.  It is of course easier with the benefit of hindsight, but her previous activities do suggest she would be a prime candidate for inclusion.