Update December 27th: Five of the 12 are released, here.
Update: This Somali publication claims the Dutch authorities caught a big fish, here.
Several readers sent me this story yesterday. When these events occur, I wonder whether the citizens of Holland say to themselves, maybe Geert Wilders (stop Muslim immigration to the Netherlands) has a point.
From AP:
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch police have arrested 12 Somali men in the key port city of Rotterdam on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack, the public prosecutor said Saturday.
The men, aged 19 to 48, were detained Friday on a tip from the intelligence services that they were planning an attack shortly in the Netherlands. There was no immediate information on the alleged target, but Rotterdam is Europe’s biggest port and a hub of maritime commerce, with huge oil and gas storage facilities and dozens of massive docks.
European officials stepped up security around the holidays this year after a Nigerian man in 2009 left Amsterdam airport on Christmas Day and allegedly tried to blow up a plane over Detroit with explosives taped to his underwear.
There also have been growing holiday security concerns in Europe following a suicide bombing in Sweden and attacks on two embassies this week in Rome.
Hey, look we get a mention of our Rochester, Minnesota Somali former refugee who was arrested in Holland last year (see this update from May) as the alleged recruiter of the Somali missing youths who thumbed their noses at the good life in American and returned to Africa for terror training:
Dutch intelligence services reportedly have been closely watching the growing Somali community in the Netherlands. One U.S. citizen of Somali extraction is under arrest and is fighting extradition to the U.S., suspected of supplying money to the al-Shabab insurgent group for weapons and to finance trips for potential recruits. The U.S. State Department considers al-Shabab a terror group with links to al-Qaida.
For new readers: We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US. To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years. In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.
Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008. See the latest on new regulations, here. The State Department is on the verge of re-opening the program (maybe it’s open already!).