She lied when asked if she or others helped raise the money that sent at least 22 Somali refugees back to Africa to fight with al-Shabaab in 2007-2008.
The remains of Shirwa Ahmed were flown “home” to Minnesota by the FBI for a proper burial after he detonated a bomb strapped to his body and killed 29 innocent people in Somalia in 2008.
MINNEAPOLIS — A 23-year-old woman admitted Thursday that she lied to a grand jury investigating the long-running case of young men who left Minnesota to join a terrorist group in Somalia.
Saynab Hussein pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Minnesota to one count of perjury. She admitted that in June 2009 she lied when she told a grand jury she did not know anyone who raised money for the travelers, when she actually helped raise money herself.
Hussein, who is pregnant and studying nursing at college, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set.
Hussein was charged on Wednesday, making her the 21st person to be charged in the government’s investigation into efforts to recruit fighters and raise money for al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group at the heart of much of the violence in Somalia in recent years.
Since late 2007, at least 22 young men have left Minnesota to join the terrorist group, which at the time was fighting Ethiopians who were assisting Somalia’s former government.
Some of these Minnesota men have died, some remain at large, and others were among those prosecuted in what the FBI has said is one of the largest efforts to recruit U.S. fighters to a foreign terrorist organization.
The investigation began in the fall of 2008. That October, Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis detonated a suicide bomb in Somalia. Authorities said he was the first known U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing, and they believed he was radicalized in Minnesota.
The following month, the case became public when families of some of the travelers came forward to say their sons were missing.
Her lawyer said lying was “out of character” for her. She was just young and naive. She could get five years, but in my mind she should have been charged with being an accessory to murder.
If you type ‘Somali missing youths’ into our search function, I bet we have 50-100 posts on the subject. In 2009, we attended a disappointing Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Somali former refugees (aka Jihadists).
This is an update of ourpost from Tuesday about the meeting that was held in Springfield, Massachusetts last evening where Mayor Domenic Sarno invited representatives of the refugee contractors to a gathering to discuss the city’s complaints about refugee overload.
08/28/13-Springfield-Republican Staff Photo by Dave Roback-Archbishop Timothy Paul, left, president and CEO of the Council of Churches of Western Massachusetts listens to Katheryn Buckley-Brawner during a press conference after meeting with Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno on the refugee matter in the city of Springfield.
Let me say at the outset—Springfield is not an isolated case.
RRW is filled with stories of resettlement contractors “dumping” refugees on communities. I am here to tell you, the agencies are paid to get refugees into their first apartments, try to find them some menial job (even if it is short-lived so their records show they did find them employment), arrange for the refugee’s legal social services and health care and then basically let the refugees sink or swim—sometimes as soon as three months, but rarely does any agency hang around over 8 months.
SPRINGFIELD – Mayor Domenic J. Sarno did not budge from his request for a moratorium on new refugees in Springfield on Wednesday, but agreed to have the city take part in a joint task force to evaluate the current resettlement program and consider improvements to reduce any hardships on the refugees and the community.
Sarno and numerous city officials met for 90 minutes with approximately 30 representatives of agencies and advocacy groups involved in the refugee resettlement program.
During the meeting, and thereafter, Sarno continued to say the influx of refugees in recent years has strained city services, including the schools, police and code enforcement officials. He said he has serious concerns about refugees living in poverty and substandard housing, and not getting enough help and follow-up services from the service agencies.
He described the situation as “dumping” them on the city’s doorstep with language gaps, and lack of knowledge to get help and basic services.
“This is not an attack on refugees,” Sarno said. “It is about accountability of the agencies following through. What we are saying now is we are at a tipping point.”
Catholic Charity’s spokeswoman, Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, says they (the resettlement agencies) will investigate themselves about the “alleged” failure to follow-up on refugees (seems more and more lately, Catholic Charities is involved somewhere!):
Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, a spokeswoman for the coalition of refugee service groups, said there were “healthy disagreements” during the meeting, but it was “certainly very encouraging,”
“It’s our position that we want to maintain open communication with the mayor’s office,” Buckley-Brawner said. “What we want is to create a pipeline, so decisions are made in collaboration and communication with each other so that small problems don’t become huge problems, and to ensure resourses are there.”
The agencies will research the alleged lack of sufficient follow-up services “to determine to what extent the service agencies can do a better job with the city in meeting the needs of the refugees,” she said.
In your face Mayor!
The mayor cannot legally block refugee resettlement in the region, advocates said.
Frankly, I don’t think this is true! No one has ever tried it! I think there is a 10th Amendment (state’s rights) case to be made here. The problem is that the side that wants to bring the decision about refugees back to the state level hasn’t the resources to take this through the legal system, or politicians like Sarno don’t have the political will to do it.
But, short of a long drawn-out legal battle, citizens in the city can make such a political (media!) fuss that sometimes the State Department will step in and close a program so as to avoid bad publicity that might go national and damage the whole effort.
Maybe some of you remember that the State Department yanked the contract of another resettlement agency in nearby Waterbury, CT in 2008. The agency had come under fire in the newspaper for refugees living in sub-standard conditions. They may be up and running again by now, I don’t know, but they were at least stopped at that point in time.
The State Department and its contractors have been doing this, quietly resettling refugees to target cities for over three decades, and they have done so because the program is under the public’s radar screen, and heretofore the word “refugee” has invoked only warm, fuzzy feelings in the general public. I think all that is changing and I hope we have helped just a little to elevate the issue.
Click here for all of our coverage on Springfield.
Editors note: I posted this today at Potomac Tea Party Report and have slightly modified the introduction.
We know how detrimental these two laws (of course one is not yet a law) will be to America, so how come the ruling class Republicans don’t get it!
At Potomac Tea Party Report I’ve called Jarrett the “Rasputin”of the Obama Administration and have many posts, click here, on who she is and how she operates.
Valerie ‘Rasputin’ Jarrett: Obamacare and Immigration Reform will be OUR crowning achievements!
We haven’t heard much from her lately. There was some speculation that she was calling the shots that terrible night in Benghazi and so she has been hiding out ever since.
Here she is front and center making it very clear that ‘Comprehensive immigration reform’ is an Obama plan (so hey, McCain, Graham, Rubio, Ryan and Boehner why hand him this victory?).
Valerie Jarrett, one of President Barack Obama’s top deputies, said Tuesday that immigration reform would be as important to the country’s future as Obamacare.
“It will be a landmark piece of legislation,” she told a videotaped meeting of progressive allies in a building alongside the White House.
“Together with the Affordable Care Act — two major pieces of legislation — that when we look back 50 years from now, I think we will all just be extremely proud,” said Jarrett.
Jarrett’s close relationship to Obama was underlined by her repeated use of the first-person plural. “We are confident that with everybody making [immigration] a priority, it will in fact pass, and we will sign it into law,” she said.
Jarrett’s pairing of Obamacare and immigration echoes her critics, who say the immigration rewrite is an effort by Democrats to gain political supremacy by adding tens of millions of Democrat-leaning immigrants to election rolls after 2020.
“Politically, pairing them in her mind suggests that the administration sees both pieces of administration as transformative,” said Mark Krikorian, a noted critic of immigration and the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
It is fundamental transformation alright!
Obamacare and increased immigration are “ways of fundamentally changing the United States so that it will not be like our country before Obama was elected, which has always been his goal,” he said.
So Paul Ryan and others, what the hell are you thinking!
The Daily Caller continued:
Jarrett’s pairing of the two bills also contradicts efforts by Republicans to focus the GOP’s base on the existing Obamacare law, and to divert the base away from the closed-door, bipartisan efforts to pass an immigration rewrite, Krikorian said.
“Without realizing it [Jarrett] is probably doing a favor to opponents of amnesty because [Rep.] Paul Ryan and other other Republicans are trying to distract attention from immigration by focusing attention on Obamacare,” said Krikorian.
“Valerie is bringing everyone back to the connection of the two,” Krikorian said.
Go to all of our coverage of S.744, here, to see how the new “comprehensive” immigration bill will increase the number of refugees/asylees in the US and how the contractors will be raking in the taxpayer cash.
Indianapolis tent city where immigrants and refugees were living until a few days ago.
Although not all of the 60-plus evicted from under an Indiana bridge are immigrants, I’ve been wondering for some time if the overload of unemployable (for one reason or another) immigrants in the US would eventually lead to encampments like those we see in Israel and Europe. And, then I wonder if those stories (like this one) ever reached the mainstream media would the average American get-it about the perils of open borders and unlimited immigration.
INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis police arrested several homeless people Monday who ignored the city’s order to vacate a makeshift camp near the city’s downtown area where dozens of tents had been set up beneath a railroad bridge.
The bridge on downtown Indianapolis’ south side was home to about 24 tents, and about half the residents folded up their shelters and left in response to the city’s 9 a.m. removal order.
But city police arrested at least five people who refused to the leave and disposed of the remaining tents.
Maurice Young, the camp’s self-appointed caretaker, was taken into custody along with a handful of camp supporters. Young told The Indianapolis Star (http://indy.st/19TvijU ) all the city has done is disperse the homeless residents.
Mixed group of residents, many with mental illnesses, drug addictions:
Young said he and his supporters want individualized solutions but he said that since Indianapolis doesn’t offer that he and the others have chosen to live outside the city’s homeless shelter system and on their own terms.
He said the homeless camp’s population fluctuates, but until a few weeks ago 67 people lived in the camp.
After the city’s Department of Public Works posted signs Aug. 19 ordering the land to be vacated by Monday, he said that about 10 people moved out.
Those that stayed until Monday ranged in age from about 30 to 74 and included about 15 women, two of them pregnant, and 10 veterans. The others are immigrants or refugees from Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Liberia, Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico.
Young estimated about 80 percent have mental health issues, while others have addictions.
Indiana Overload!
For new readers, Indiana has had quite a problem with an overload of refugees especially in the Ft. Wayne area, although Indianapolis is also a “preferred” resettlement site. Catholic Charities of Indianapolis is a primary refugee contractor there and I hope they have been contacted to see if any of their ‘clients’ have been living under the bridge. Maybe the good Catholic parishioners of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis will take some of these destitute people into their homes?
Back in 2010, then Indiana Senator Richard Lugar requested a GAO study of the refugee program as a result of the lack of communication between the federal government/contractors on one side and local governments/citizens on the other who felt they were being swamped with refugees they couldn’t possibly afford to care for. The GAO report is hereand it is well worth your time to read it. Whether it mattered one bit to the State Department and the ORR is not evident.
For more information type ‘Indiana’ or ‘Fort Wayne’ into our search function.
The African “asylum-seekers” have been sleeping in a park in Tel Aviv.
African migrants sleep in Tel Aviv park. Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Regular readers know we have been following the on-going tension in Israel as thousands of mostly Africans came across the Egyptian border in recent years and asked for asylum. The flow was slowed when Israel built a substantial border fence, but the political battles are on-going as to what to do with the thousands already there.
Four men driven by a hatred of foreigners beat and robbed African migrants in south Tel Aviv in recent months, before they were arrested Monday by Tel Aviv police.
Tel Aviv police said Tuesday that the four men operated in the neighborhoods of Hatikva, Shapira, and the area around the Central Bus Station. They would single out foreigners walking around these neighborhoods and then would attack them “using great cruelty” – police said – using bottles and sticks to beat them into submission.
Police said the robberies were of secondary interest to the men, who were driven by a hatred of foreigners and were looking to beat and terrorize them, robbing them as a sort of afterthought.
The men, all aged 22 and 21, are themselves residents of south Tel Aviv, and will be brought for a remand extension at the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
In April, Tel Aviv police arrested five Israeli males, including two minors, for carrying out a series of attacks on Africans in south Tel Aviv.
Of course we don’t condone what these men have done, but frankly it is human nature to protect one’s territory so it’s not unexpected. I think it has a name—Ethnic nationalism. It is something the multiculturalists would like to stamp out permanently.
How long before we in the US have migrant camps like this one, and the ones in Germany, France, and Holland?
Addendum: Here is an earlier storywhere an Israeli cabinet member says the migrants must be dispersed.
