{"id":461324,"date":"2026-06-09T12:25:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/?p=461324"},"modified":"2026-06-09T12:33:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:33:22","slug":"somalia-expresses-sorrow-over-u-s-entry-denial-of-referee-omar-abdulkadir-artan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/somalia-expresses-sorrow-over-u-s-entry-denial-of-referee-omar-abdulkadir-artan\/","title":{"rendered":"Somalia Expresses Sorrow Over U.S. Entry Denial of Referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-path-to-node=\"1\"><b data-path-to-node=\"1\" data-index-in-node=\"0\">MOGADISHU(SONNA)-<\/b>The Somali Ministry of Youth and Sports has expressed profound sorrow and disappointment after historic FIFA referee <b data-path-to-node=\"1\" data-index-in-node=\"129\">Omar Abdulkadir Artan<\/b> was denied entry into the United States, forcing him to miss the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Artan is expected to return home to Somalia tomorrow, Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p data-path-to-node=\"2\">According to an official press release, the Ministry\u2014alongside the Presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs\u2014launched urgent, high-level diplomatic negotiations with both the U.S. Government and FIFA to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n<blockquote data-path-to-node=\"3\">\n<p data-path-to-node=\"3,0\">&#8220;Unfortunately, despite these intense efforts, it was not possible to reach a solution,&#8221; the Ministry stated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p data-path-to-node=\"4\">Praising his resilience, the Ministry hailed Artan as a symbol of talent and dedication who brings honor to the nation, proving that local hardships cannot block Somali youth from reaching the global stage. The government reaffirmed its full support for Artan\u2019s future career and thanked the Somali public and sports community for their overwhelming solidarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOGADISHU(SONNA)-The Somali Ministry of Youth and Sports has expressed profound sorrow and disappointment after historic FIFA referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan was denied entry into the United States, forcing him to miss the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Artan is expected to return home to Somalia tomorrow, Wednesday. According to an official press release, the Ministry\u2014alongside the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":461325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461329,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461324\/revisions\/461329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}