Shariah law creeps into Somali terror-funding trial in Minnesota

09/22/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers, this is the third and most important story on Somalis this morning.

I bet you’ve never heard (through the mainstream media) about the trial of two Somali women in Minnesota who were convicted of conspiracy and other charges for sending money to Al-Shabaab, a designated terrorist group, in Somalia. We first told you about the case here when one of the women told the court that all the “infidels would go to hell.”

By the way, for interested readers the other two stories in my Saturday Somali trifecta are here and here.

From Twin Cities Pioneer Press:

Due to her “religious” beliefs, one defendant (“go to hell infidels”) refused to stand when the Judge entered the court room.

If a Muslim woman wasn’t punished for refusing to stand when a federal judge entered his Minneapolis courtroom, others would have been emboldened to show disrespect for the court, the judge has ruled.

Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis wrote that defendant Amina Farah Ali’s silent gesture — which she said was rooted in religious principle — could have led to chaos during her trial on terrorism-related charges last year.

“If Ali were allowed to sit while court is called, it may have been possible that her many sympathizers would have begun to emulate her in a show of support,” Davis wrote in an opinion and order.

“The court was also concerned that allowing Ali to show disrespect for the court by failing to rise would encourage additional signs of disrespect, leading to a loss of control in the courtroom.”

Ali, 36, is one of two Rochester women awaiting sentencing for raising money for al-Shabaab, a group fighting the government of her native Somalia.

In a pretrial hearing and during the first two days of her trial last October, Ali refused to stand when Davis entered or left the courtroom. The “standing requirement,” as it is known, is intended as a show of respect for the legal system in general and not the judge in particular.

[….]

Ali and co-defendant Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 65 (who did stand), were convicted of conspiracy and other counts and are awaiting sentencing; each could get 30 years in prison.

So far, so good! Right! Now get this!

Ali’s lawyer appealed and the Appeals Court sided with Ali and threw out most of the trial judge’s contempt charges.

Ali’s attorney, Daniel Scott, appealed the contempt citations to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Scott argued that Ali’s actions weren’t disruptive and that because they were sincerely held religious beliefs, Davis was obliged under federal law to find the “least restrictive” way to maintain order in the court.

The appeals court agreed. But the three-judge panel also said judges have discretion in how they run their courtrooms.

The appeals court threw out all but the first contempt citation and sent the matter back to Davis to reconsider. At a hearing Tuesday, Sept. 18, (at which Ali stood when the judge entered) Davis reinstated the contempt citations but then “purged” them, saying he would explain his rulings later in a written order.

Incidentally, we reported last December that Minnesota Hard Left advocacy groups rallied around the cause of these two women, here.

For new readers: More than 100,000 Somalis have been admitted to the US through the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department, here, and there is no sign of the feds letting up. Minnesota is one of the top destination states for Somalis. This post about why so many Somalis are in Minneapolis is one of our most-read posts here (at RRW) almost daily. In fact, today as I write this, it is our top post.

Are more Somali refugee “kids” leaving Minnesota for jihad training?

09/22/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Looks like that may be the case. Not enough taxpayer-funded “programs” to keep them on the right path in America?

Although you did pay for their educations, housing, food and medical care so that they are now big healthy Islamist fighters.

Here is the latest from Minneapolis otherwise known as Little Mogadishu!

From the Associated Press at USA Today (interesting that a more nationally distributed publication is posting the story):

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man recently traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabab, a spokesman for his family said, renewing fears that the terror group is continuing to recruit Somalis living in the U.S. to return to their homeland to fight.

The investigation into al-Shabab’s recruitment of young men has been going on for years, and authorities have never ruled out that more men could be traveling from Minnesota — home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. — to join the terror group. Still, there have been no public reports of travelers from Minnesota since 2009, and the investigation has been largely out of public view for more than a year.

But in recent weeks, some Somalis here have been visited by the FBI and subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury –possible signs that the investigation has picked up. The reasons for the subpoenas were not immediately clear. Authorities would not confirm that additional men have recently traveled to join al-Shabab, and they would not say whether any increased FBI activity is connected to reports of recent departures or to the overall investigation.

But according to a spokesman for his family, 21-year-old Omar Farah left Minneapolis several weeks ago and called his aunt after his departure to say he was in the Somali town of Merca — and that he was with al-Shabab.

We have extensively covered the story of the ‘Somali missing youths‘ since 2008. If you type those words into our search function you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about the budding Jihadists. A short history has been provided by AP:

Since 2008, Minneapolis has been the center of a federal investigation into travels and recruiting of people from the U.S. to train or fight with al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda and is considered a terror group by the U.S.

Authorities have previously confirmed that more than 20 young men left Minnesota starting as early as 2007. Some of those men have returned to Minnesota and been charged. Four have been confirmed dead by family members or authorities.

E.K. Wilson, the supervisory special agent overseeing the FBI’s investigation in Minneapolis, said he could not confirm whether there have been any recent departures or whether the FBI is currently investigating those reports.

“The whole investigation into recruiting and the departures of Somali kids from the Twin Cities in 2007, 2008 and 2009 is definitely ongoing,” Wilson said. “We’re continuing to look hard at the possibility of continued recruitment and radicalization.”

Just like that Canada story I just posted, the fault is never extremist Islamic teaching in some mosques or the fact that in these huge Somali families headed by single mothers there is no supervision of the kids, instead we are expected to believe it’s a lack of “programs” for the “kids” that is to blame!

He said this week that he believes recruiters are preying upon vulnerabilities of young Somali men who are often without a father figure and looking for a sense of belonging.

“I believe that the root causes of this problem, are a lack of programs for young people,” Bihi said.

Abdirizak Bihi is a good guy. He even had the nerve to testify in Congress, but he can’t possibly believe this!

For new readers: More than 100,000 Somalis have been admitted to the US through the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department, here, and there is no sign of the feds letting up. Minnesota is one of the top destination states for Somalis. This post about why so many Somalis are in Minneapolis is one of our most-read posts here almost daily. In fact, today as I write this, it is our top post.

Canada: Somali “kids” killing each other

09/22/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is not the first post we’ve written on Somali gang violence taking the lives of Somali “kids” in Canada. (check our Canada category for more if you are interested).

Here is one thing I wonder, what is the age at which Somalis don’t call their 26-year-olds “kids” anymore, and when do we call them men?

This is the latest, this time from Toronto, on the violent deaths of Somali men. From the Toronto Star:

Last week, Abdul Warsame spent an afternoon at the Khalid Bin-Walid mosque in the Rexdale neighbourhood mourning 28-year-old Abdulaziz Farah. In a fiery sermon to the hundreds gathered, he warned parents and youngsters that “it’s a matter of time until another Somali kid is killed.”

Within days, those words had come true.

Four days later, early on Tuesday, two young men were shot to death on Jamestown Cres., in a notorious west-end neighbourhood. They were the fifth and sixth Somali-Canadian men to be killed in gun violence in Toronto since early June.

“I am heartbroken,” said Warsame, co-founder of a mentorship program for Somali-Canadian youth. “What should we do … our kids are dying.”

He’s not exaggerating.

The bloodletting started when Ahmed Hassan, 24, was shot dead at the Eaton Centre on June 2. Hussein Hussein, 23, died on June 23. Abdulle Elmi, 25, on July 8. Abdulaziz Farah, 28, on Sept. 8.

And then on Tuesday, Suleiman Ali and Warsame Ali, both 26, were found dead with gunshot wounds in an alley in an Etobicoke townhouse complex.

The spate of violence has left the Somali community in Toronto crushed, its leaders desperately seeking answers.

They want more programs and services, yup that will fix the problem (not!)

They have held meetings throughout the summer to understand why their young men are getting killed and how they can help keep them safe. They’ve asked federal and provincial politicians for more programs and services to help young people get through school and find jobs. They have asked Toronto Police to help.

Somalis have highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in Canada (gee, whose fault is that?)

There are an estimated 80,000 Somalis in Toronto, another few thousand in Ottawa and, community leaders say, about 3,000 in Fort McMurray, Alta.

For long, the community has battled poverty and unemployment. It tried to deal with many single-parent households. The unemployment rate for Somali-Canadians is above 20 per cent, the highest of any ethnic group.

Canadian Somali “kids” also thumbed their noses at Canada and went for jihad training in Somali. Are we going to blame this on lack of services, or on what they are being taught in some mosques?

Between 2009 and 2011, at least two dozen young men from Toronto and Ottawa — and two young women — disappeared, allegedly to fight alongside Al Shabaab in Somalia, an Islamist youth militia aligned with Al Qaeda.

Europe’s multi-culti nightmare: Kurds this time

09/22/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Kurds (they are Muslims) are making the news these days. We just had a report of a Kurdish refugee “welcomed” by Australia being found guilty of human trafficking. Then earlier this summer we learned that young Kurds in Nashville (little Kurdistan!) are chief promoters of gang violence. And, some European countries are deporting Kurds, here.

Looks like Kurds are scaring the ‘bejeezus’ out of Germany. This ‘event’ happened two weeks ago, did you read about it or see it on your favorite TV news programs? No! (I didn’t think so).

Here is the story at Frontpage magazine (hat tip: Judy):

“The festival gives expression to our demand for a peaceful coexistence of all humans with their different cultures, languages and traditions.”

– Proclamation of the festival’s organizers.

The beautiful, rosy multicultural paradise Europe’s leftists promised in the 1960s and ’70s manifested itself brilliantly again recently at a Kurdish festival in Mannheim, a German city in the south-western state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Almost as soon as the festival began, German police were set upon by hundreds of young Kurds who were encouraged “with words and applause” by thousands of others. When the shocking, hours-long savagery ended, eighty policemen were injured, one seriously, while “more than a dozen vehicles were destroyed” before order could be restored.

Martin Boll, a spokesman for Mannheim’s police, said he had never seen such violence in his 30 years of police service.

They had been allowed into Europe under the multicultural banner or asylum laws!

It was estimated 40,000 people, of whom 2,500 were regarded as “violent or violence-prepared,” attended the twentieth holding of this annual “multicultural” event. Most of the previous 19 Kurdish festivals had been held in the German state of Rhineland-Westphalia. An estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Kurds live in Germany, but Kurds had travelled from all over Europe for this year’s festival in Mannheim.

The riot began when officials of a security firm contracted by the festival’s organizers asked two policemen for assistance with a 14-year-old Kurdish youth who was refusing to give up a flag he was carrying of the banned Kurdish terrorist group, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Apparently angry at the police intervention, about 100 young Kurds “suddenly attacked the two policemen from behind and kicked them in the back.” The violence escalated from there as more police and thugs were drawn in.

Unfortunately, the Mannheim riot is not an isolated incident. Germans and other Europeans are becoming more accustomed to seeing their municipal police forces attacked by people who, for the most part, had been allowed into Europe under the multicultural banner or asylum laws. [Coming soon to a town near you?—ed]

Greatest worry for Germans? The Police lost control.

It is not surprising that Germans are wondering what is going on in their country today. Many realize that multiculturalism is a destructive, failed policy and that they are destined to experience many more such violent, “culturally enriching” moments in the future. They question why people are being let into Germany who actually belong in jail rather than on their streets. But what appears to upset Germans most about the Mannheim riot, even more than the lack of arrests, is that the police lost control of the situation and actually had to retreat to safety, leaving the rioters in control of the area for hours until police reinforcements arrived.

[…..]

Due to this loss of control on the part of the Mannheim police, some Germans are now worried whether security authorities will be able protect them when such inevitable rioting occurs again in future.

Get a gun if you wish to survive in this beautiful multi-culti world!

And if the police cannot enforce law and order, another reader asked, what could prevent such a “violence-prepared” mob from “breaking into houses, plundering and pillaging?”

The answer is nothing. The politicians are also not going to help correct the situation by sending large numbers of these miscreants back to their country of origin. So the only option left is, like in America, for the ordinary citizen to arm him- or herself, if one wants to survive in the “beautiful, new multicultural world” Europe has become.

There is more on what is happening in Europe—read it all!