It is the same every morning. Asiso Osman Abdi wakes at around 3 a.m., worried about her future and the plight of her husband Bashir Makhtal.
She goes into the comfy kitchen in the home of her cousin-in-law Said Maktal and makes tea and drinks it.
Her beautiful dark brown eyes are ringed with circles, recounts Maktal, who finds her in his kitchen every morning when he wakes to say prayers.
The peace of sleep eludes her, she tells him in Somali, because she is fearful she may never see her husband again.
“To me, I feel like the Canadian government doesn’t care about my husband and his passport,” she says through a translator during an interview with the Star.
Makhtal, a Canadian citizen, is serving a life sentence in a prison in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, after being charged with multiple counts of terrorism for allegedly being a ringleader with the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group formed to fight for independence in the oil-rich region.
The Ethiopians have outlawed the group, calling it a terrorist organization.
Family and supporters here have always denied these allegations, saying the only connection Bashir Makhtal, 42, has to the ONLF is that his grandfather was one of the co-founders. Read More here
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written by Paul, January 15, 2011
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written by sucad, January 21, 2011
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written by Wayyeessaa, January 25, 2011
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