By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times

A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage.

On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall’s rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.

“I went through something terrible, but right now I’m in a great place,” Hall said after Thursday’s citizenship ceremony at the Quiet Cannon Country Club. “I can’t imagine anything greater than having my own life.”

Hall’s Egyptian parents sold her into slavery when she was 8 for $30 a month, according to authorities. The Cairo couple who bought her moved to Irvine two years later, smuggling Hall into the U.S. where she toiled for them and their five children until she was 13.

Hall said she worked 16 hour days, scrubbing floors, cooking meals and cleaning house, and was rarely allowed outside the spacious home. She was forced to wash her own clothes in a bucket and was forbidden from going to school. She never visited a doctor or dentist and didn’t speak a word of English.

Her captors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, berated her and occasionally slapped her around, authorities said.

“I didn’t know anything about what America was about. My only hope was to go back home and live a normal life with my family, my brothers and sisters,” she said. “That’s all I wanted.”

In 2002, acting on a tip from a concerned neighbor, child welfare authorities rescued her from the house. Her case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading to the prosecution, federal imprisonment and, later, deportation of Ibrahim and Motelib.

Hall formed a tight bond with one of the lead federal agents, Mark Abend of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, who has served as a friend and mentor. He was at Hall’s citizenship ceremony Thursday.

“I’m really proud of her. Think of everything she’s been through. Being sold into slavery at an early age. Coming over here. Not having a family,” Abend said. “The resiliency she has is just amazing. The fortitude. Not falling apart. Not being a destroyed soul.”

Abend remembers interviewing Hall, then 13, with the help of an Arabic interpreter for the first time when she was being cared for at the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange. Her captors told her to never speak to police, that officers would beat her. She stayed tight-lipped until she was allowed to call her parents in Egypt, and her father ordered her to go back with her captors.

“That’s when I saw a spark,” Abend said. “She stood up to her dad. She said, ‘No! This is not right. What they did to me was not right. You sold me into slavery.’”

At 13, Hall decided that she wanted to stay in the U.S. She hasn’t returned to Egypt or seen her family.

In recent years, Hall has spoken to groups across the country about combating human trafficking. She’s briefed ICE agents about the emotional and physical trauma victims face.

In 2010-11, federal immigration officials launched 651 investigations into human trafficking, arresting 300 people. According to the U.S. State Department, there are more than 12 million people entrapped in some form of slavery worldwide.

Hall said her dream now is to become a federal agent for ICE to help crack down on human trafficking and free the enslaved.

“That’s my top goal,” Hall said. “I’ve been through it. I know I can help.”

Los Angeles immigration attorney Angelo Paparelli, who represented Hall pro bono, said that her citizenship application was filed under a special provision for juvenile immigrants and that county officials from the outset supported her decision to stay in the U.S.

“She has literally gone through a living hell, and now she wants to give back,” said Paparelli, of the national law firm Seyfarth Shaw. “She’s there to give other people courage.”

For now, Hall is living in Beaumont in Riverside County and working at the Cabazon outlets as a store supervisor. She’s deciding whether to go back to college to finish a degree or to apply for the local police force.

“I’m very excited. I can start my career now,” she said. “I can start my life.”

Filed under: American Muslims, Arab, Egypt, Freedoms, United States Tagged: American Muslims, Cairo, Child Slavery, Egypt, Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, Orangewood Children’s Home, Shyima Hall, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. State Department, United States

By Aamir Qureshi for MSNBC

Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States fears he will be murdered if he leaves the sanctuary of the prime minister’s official residence after he was branded a “Washington lackey” and a “traitor,” according to a new interview.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Husain Haqqani said that “certain powerful quarters” in Pakistan — the paper said this was a reference to the country’s ISI intelligence agency — were behind the claims against him.

Haqqani is at the center of a scandal that threatens to topple Pakistan’s government over an alleged request to the U.S. to help stop a coup by the army, following the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

In October, a U.S. businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, wrote an article for the Financial Times newspaper claiming Haqqani had written a memo to U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, who was then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, supposedly promising to replace Pakistan’s national security hierarchy with people favorable to the U.S. in exchange for help in reining in the military.

Ijaz, who claimed he had been asked to convey the message to Mullen, further alleged that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari supported the move. The Financial Times operates behind a paywall, but Ijaz also wrote an article for Pakistan’s The News in November describing his allegations.

‘Hysteria’
Both Zardari and Haqqani denied Ijaz’s claims, but Haqqani subsequently resigned.

“I’m a guest of the prime minister (Yousuf Raza Gilani) with whom I have had a long-standing political association. There are clear security concerns given the hysteria generated against me. Staying at the prime minister’s house is the safest option,” Haqqani told the Telegraph in an interview published Wednesday.

“My good friend Salman Taseer (the late governor of Punjab) was killed by a security guard because he heard in the media that the governor had blasphemed. I’m being called a traitor and an American lackey in the media with the clear encouragement of certain powerful quarters even though I’ve not been charged legally with anything,” he added.

He said that he had left the prime minister’s house twice, once to go to court and another time to visit the dentist because he had toothache.

“The president and prime minister are firmly standing behind me and the government is not going anywhere. This is psychological warfare against the government,” he told the Telegraph.

In December, Zardari, who was married to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, said people should pay tribute to her memory by guarding against anti-democratic conspiracies, an apparent reference to tensions over the memo scandal.

He said his wife’s death was also a conspiracy against Pakistani democracy.

“I therefore urge all the democratic forces and the patriotic Pakistanis to foil all conspiracies against democracy and democratic institutions,” said Zardari in a statement sent to reporters.

Filed under: Afghanistan, Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistanis, United States Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, Husain Haqqani, Memogate, Mike Mullen, Pakistan, Pakistanis, PPP, United States, Yousuf Raza Gilani

Search engine optimization is something you can do alone. So If you do decide you will have you seo done in-house here are a few mistakes you should avoid. The fewer you do the more of a gurantee you have of establishing a ranking and presence on all three major search engines.

1) Uncrawlable

 Your robots.txt file missing or incorrect is just one small thing that can completely destroy the crawalability of your site. Others potential uncrawalable factors are full-blown flash site, no sitemap, and session-IDs.

2) Terrible Usability & Design

Your site architecture should mimic real life. You wouldn’t walk into an unstable building would you? The same goes for a user or search engine spider. If a search engine spider visits your website and links are broken it will make it even more difficult to rank and categorize. A user may just stumble around and eventually leave your site. In fact, if your navigation is horrible you can expect visitors to leave quickly.

Do Check: SEO Essentials for Web Designers

3) Poor URL Structure

There are just too many good CMS (content management systems) available for you to have faulty URL structures. Here is an example:

1. example.com/23243kjop.php (This is what you DO NOT want!)
2. example.com/this-is-what-you-want (This is what YOU WANT!)

Now if you have example number one you need to fix that as soon as possible. You could be missing out on a lot of visitors, search engine rankings, and of course possible clients.

4) Duplicate Content

Some companies are just too lazy to actually hire a freelance writer for unique content. If you can’t afford a few articles at 5$ a pop you probably shouldn’t be running a business anyway. Duplicate content will not get you into the search engine rankings. No rankings beats the entire point of actually having a website in the first place. Do yourself a favor and hire a writer that will write you up some unique content. I am sure you users and the search engines will appreciate it.

5) Keyword Research

This really can be tagged alone with duplicate content. You don’t just want any random content do you? Learn to do some keyword research so you know what you are actually trying to rank for. If you are a dentist in Alabama then you obviously want to target the “Alabama dentist” keyword, along with its long-tail partners.

Do Check: Strategies Which Help Your Keyword Research To Drive More Sales

I am one of those people who believe you should outsource what you don’t know how to do. So if you are truly thinking about doing your own in-house search engine optimization, think twice!

Johanna is a freelance writer that writes on a variety of topics such as technology and internet marketing. She also works for wish.co.uk where you can get some useful gift ideas.

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