Give State Department Visa Bans Formal Footing

Date: Mon 02nd November 2009

Mediahouse: East African Standard

Page: Web Edition


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Saturday’s disclosure that Mr Amos Wako has had his travel visa to the US "permanently revoked" makes us curious about the State Department’s ‘no-fly’ list procedures.

As the information was released by a leak to media, there are no details as to what proclamation, executive order or other authority was invoked to ban the Attorney General. For all we know, it could be mere diplomatic bluffing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office has in the past used a presidential proclamation known as the Kleptocracy Initiative travel ban to prevent corrupt officials from entering the US. At least 13 Kenyan public officials and their families are believed to have had travel restrictions placed on them under the graft directive. However, who they are or what they did remain matters of conjecture.

Proclamation 7750 and some 20-or-so other orders have been published in the Federal Register and make clear which groups are restricted. Bans for threatening democratic institutions or transition to democracy are not secret: 7524 locks out government officials from Zimbabwe, 6958 lists Sudan’s personae non grata and a dozen others bear the names of the offending persons’ States.

Executive orders

If the US is serious about possibly banning 13 others over the threat to reforms, it should signal this through a similar directive. It would be a lot harder for Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula to dismiss the bans as acts of an "assistant minister" if they were formal executive orders published in the Federal Register, not hints ‘verified’ anonymously to AP.

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Last Edited: Mon 02nd November 2009 at 12:08:07 PM


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