Just one more in a growing list of stories about Somalis with possible ties to terrorism getting into the US through Mexico. Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane was indicted last Wednesday. From the San Antonio Express-News:
A Somali man who allegedly has ties to terrorist groups is accused of smuggling, or trying to smuggle, through Texas several East Africans with similar affiliations.
A federal grand jury in San Antonio indicted Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane on Wednesday on two counts of making false statements to federal authorities.
Dhakane, 24, has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since entering the U.S. through Brownsville in March 2008 and saying he wanted to seek asylum. He applied for asylum while in custody in October 2008.
The multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force alleges he failed to disclose on his application that from before Sept. 11, 2001, through January 2003, he had been a member of the wire-transfer network Al-Barakat and an Islamic militant group in Somalia, Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), both on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Terrorist entities.
The indictment, made public Friday, also alleges he’s known by 10 aliases, mischaracterized how he came into the United States and left out key details about his life in Brazil. It also alleges he failed to say he was part of and later ran a large-scale human-smuggling ring that smuggled, or tried to smuggle, hundreds of people from Brazil into the United States, among them “several AIAI-affiliated Somalis.” [Which is it, smuggled or tried to smuggle-ed]
Doesn’t Mr. West read the newspapers? (or RRW?)
But West (Ben West, a tactical analyst with Austin-based Stratfor, a global intelligence company) said most of the militant factions or terrorist groups in Somalia are concentrated in the south and are concerned with regional or local interests.
“We haven’t seen any indication from any of these groups that they want to go transnational,” he said.
Mr. West, here is just our most recent report about Somalis with terror ties going “transnational.”
You can bet that Dhakane has a whole bunch of do-gooder asylum lawyers working on his case probably affiliated with this outfit quoted in the story—Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.