The US is trying to extradite Mohamud Said Omar who some of the Somali youths in Minnesota have fingered as the “recruiter” who helped the Somali missing youths (some dead youths now) leave the good life in the US and return to Somalia in order to learn the Islamic Jihad trade.
We told you about this guy previously here. Apparently he was a “refugee” we resettled in Rochester, MN. I often wonder how refugee resettlement workers feel when they hear someone they resettled and helped turns out to be a terrorist bag man (alleged terrorist).
From AP via the New York Times:
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Lawyers for a Somali man fighting extradition to the U.S. on terrorism charges stemming from a case in Minneapolis argued in a Dutch court Monday he is innocent and should be released.
Mohamud Said Omar, 44, is suspected of providing money to the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab that was used to buy guns. Around 20 youths of Somali descent are believed to have traveled to Somalia from Minnesota since 2007 to help the group, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.
Omar’s lawyers say he never intended to help terrorists.
”In any case Omar denies that he has ever been involved in any way whatsoever with the financing of terrorism,” his lawyer Bart Stapert said.
Omar has been held in a high-security Dutch prison since his arrest at the request of the U.S. government in November. He has residency in the U.S. but had been living in a center for would-be asylum seekers in the Netherlands since December 2008, apparently before he was a suspect.
A total of 14 people have been charged in the ongoing U.S. federal investigation into the travels of as many as 20 young men who went to Somalia to fight over a period of two years starting in 2007. They face a variety of accusations from recruiting and raising funds for the trips, to engaging in terrorist acts in Somalia and perjury.
For new readers:
For more on the Somali missing youths, use those search words. We have written dozens of stories on the case.
The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing. That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.
Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.