If yesterday was Hmong day at RRW, it looks like today is shaping up to be Somali day!
Authorities destroyed evidence immediately following the blast and fire.
Bloggers and researchers atGates of Viennahave produced further documentation that the government has not fully investigated the New Years Day explosion and fire in a Somali apartment building that took several lives. For new readers, our previous posts are here.
Below is blogger Baron Bodissey introducing the latest portion of their investigation which leads to a connection between the building and the Somali terror group al-Shabaab.
The day after last month’s explosion and fire at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, an FBI agent named Greg Boosalis reassured Minnesotans that there was no evidence of terrorist activity in connection with the devastating explosion.
I wondered at the time — and still wonder — how the FBI could be so certain less than forty-eight hours after the blast that no terrorism was involved. The immediate neighborhood of the demolished building is a known hotbed of terrorist activity, and is especially notorious for the recruitment of mujahideen and funds for the jihad being waged by al-Shabaab in Somalia.
As it turns out, the FBI was absolutely derelict in ruling out a terrorist connection with 514 Cedar Avenue South.Our Minnesota correspondent Henrietta has examined property and business license records for the city of Minneapolis, and found a clear trail leading from the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque to the destroyed building, and from there to a pair of convicted money-launderers for al-Shabaab.
Go to GOV for the paper trail which demonstrates the kind of work that investigative reporters used to do, but now is being done by diligent citizens!
Also for new readers, this 2011 post—Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis—is almost every day one of our top most-read posts. Thank the US State Department and its contractors—Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief MN—and the generous welfare supplied by Minnesota taxpayers!
Now they have moved on to bringing the same to St. Cloud—next!
Farhia, deported from Saudi Arabia last month, says she was a domestic worker there for ten years.
I gotta hand it to ‘Human Rights Watch’ which seems to be the only private or public sector organization with the nerve to call-out Saudi Arabia.
The UN (where S.A. sits on the Human Rights Council) has been silent while it has been busy blasting Israelfor its supposed mistreatment (“warehousing”) of Africans. Israel is not deporting thousands weekly and detention in Israel is in a new cushy facility where the would-be asylum seekers can leave for a portion of the day.
Saudi Arabia is clearing out its ethnic diversity! I guess they aren’t buying that multiculturalism is beautiful PR, or that they need to be charitable to their Muslim coreligionists.
(Nairobi) – Saudi authorities have deported more than 12,000 people to Somalia since January 1, 2014, including hundreds of women and children, without allowing any to make refugee claims. Saudi Arabia should end the summary deportations, which risk violating its international obligations not to return anyone to a place where their life or freedom is threatened or where they face other serious harm.
Seven Somalis recently deported from Saudi Arabia told Human Rights Watch researchers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, that the Saudi authorities had detained them for weeks in appalling conditions and some said Saudi security personnel beat them. None had been allowed to speak with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to discuss possible refugee claims before being deported. UNHCR said in mid-January that “south central Somalia is a very dangerous place.” UNHCR also said the Saudi authorities have denied its staff access to detained Somalis in the country.
They don’t want those undocumented foreign workers! Are there jobs Saudis won’t do? Maybe not!
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the Somali Interior Ministry expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 in the coming weeks. The deportations are part of a Saudi campaign to remove undocumented foreign workers.
We will be anxiously waiting for the Obama Administration and the UN to blast those racist unwelcoming Saudis!
Saudi Arabia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have an asylum system.
[….]
Major donors to UNHCR, including the European Union and the United States, should press Saudi Arabia to end its deportations of Somalis.
Meanwhile, another boat load of Somalis was rescued at sea this week and taken to Italy where you know all hell would break loose and the UN would blast those Mediterranean countries if they dared deport even one of the Somali illegal aliens.
Thanks again to ‘pungentpeppers’ here is an update from the stalemate in Calais where hundreds of Middle Easterners and Africans have congregated for months demanding they be let into the UK. (See our previous Calais posts here).
Camping in Calais where camps are divided by ethnic groups (by their own choosing!)
In a clear ploy to tug at heartstrings,The Independentbegins and ends with sob-stories about the poor men who scratched together thousands of dollars to get this far in order to break into what they call “The House” (the UK).
But the British government again lays out the cold hard truth—in the European Union, legitimate asylum seekers are to ask for asylum in the first safe country in which they land. For these men was it Italy, Malta, Greece, Bulgaria—any of the border countries? And, indeed if they were legit, they could ask for asylum in France.
Going one step further, the UK says the condition of French “camps” is France’s problem! Yup!
The French government has asked Britain to consider a renegotiation of the agreement which led to the closure of Sangatte and share more of the financial and policing “burden” caused by the migrants. The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, said last month that the situation in Calais had reached an “impasse”. The response from his British opposite, Home Secretary Theresa May, has been a polite restatement of the status quo.
A Home Office spokeswoman said tonight: “The conditions of any camps in France and the policing of them is the responsibility of the French authorities. If individuals have a genuine need of protection they should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.”
Indeed, the real passion and anger is among those with the least power and the most to lose.
For two consecutive weeks, the streets of Calais have been the scene of demonstrations by angry migrants waving placards proclaiming “Freedom to move”, “Liberté” and “No border, no nation – stop deportation”
The list of grievances of the marchers – Afghans, Kurds, Sudanese, Eritreans, Egyptians, Syrians – is long and multifarious, from an unrealistic demand for Britain to open its border to a plea for the “basic dignity” afforded by washing facilities and an end to what they say is harassment by French police.
Let’s make this focus-on-the-Hmong day at RRW. See previous post.
Note that in this criminal case, the court could not find an impartial interpreter. From ABC 8 Tulsa:
Products of the US State Department (and contractors)!
Two men appeared before a Tulsa courtroom for their reported roles in a shooting at a Hmong New Year’s festival.
Boonmlee Lee and Meng Lee made their appearance before the judge for their scheduled preliminary hearings. Both are accused of opening fire at the festival in east Tulsa last fall.
Court records indicate that both men have pleaded not guilty to the counts of shooting with intent to kill and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
According to a report from the Associated Press, an Oklahoma judge delayed the preliminary hearings last month because attorneys were having problems finding a local interpreter who didn’t know the victims or defendants.
The Lees and the five people hurt in the October shooting are all ethnic Hmong, who hail from Asian countries including Laos, China, Vietnam and Thailand. Thousands of Hmong live in Tulsa, many arriving in recent years in search of work. [But wait! We are constantly told that there aren’t enough immigrant laborers in America!—Hey Grover! Hmong over here looking for work—ed]
We know that tens of thousands of Hmong refugees were resettled in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California, but did you know that criminal gangs were forming in Minnesota in the mid-1980’s? See this 2003 reporton Hmong gangs in America.
The charming Tou Vang Xiong. Taxpayers paid for his upbringing and now the taxpayers will care for him in prison—probably for life!
Diversity is an excuse alert!
We need to understand that killing tigers is big, really big! in the Hmong spiritual world! ‘Poor’ fellow just thought he was killing tiger spirits when he shot his girlfriend and her friend at point blank range after a methamphetamine party.
The jury didn’t buy it and on February 7th he was convicted on two counts of first degree murder, here. Hat tip: Investigator par excellence ‘pungentpeppers.’ Emphasis is mine:
After fewer than three hours of deliberation, a jury on Friday found an Atwater man guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in connection with a 2009 shooting in west Modesto.
Tou Vang Xiong shot his girlfriend, Gao Sheng Her, and friends Nhia Yang and Lee Pao Yang at close range after the four had smoked methamphetamine in a detached room behind Nhia Yang’s family home in west Modesto. Gao Sheng Her and Nhia Yang died quickly from multiple gunshot wounds, but Lee Pao Yang managed to escape and survived.
Defense attorney Ruben Villalobos argued that his client was under the influence of methamphetamine and was experiencing hallucinations when he fired an automatic rifle at the victims. For those reasons, he told the jury Xiong should be found guilty of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, he said.
Hmong Shaman was called to testify:
Here is the report on how Tou Vang Xiong’s attorney brought in a Hmong Shaman to help explain that the slaughter was all the result of the religion he brought to America as a refugee at work in a drug-addled mind. Note that the Shaman needed an interpreter (at taxpayer expense no doubt!).
A Hmong shaman testified about his faith’s rituals and beliefs Tuesday in a trial for a man charged in the killings of two people shot at close range with an automatic rifle in west Modesto.
Atwater resident Tou Vang Xiong spoke of “killing two tigers” after shooting his girlfriend, Gao Sheng Her of Merced, and his friend Nhia Yang of Modesto, according to previous testimony from Yang’s sister. Xay Yang testified that “tiger” is commonly used in Hmong culture as a derogatory term for people they dislike.
Neng Yee Lee has been a shaman for nearly 40 years and began as a shaman in his native country of Laos. He has lived in the U.S. for eight years. He told the jury that shamans in the Hmong faith are able to help people solve problems in the spiritual world.
These spiritual world problems can manifest themselves as visions of wild spirits or warrior spirits, he said in court, and those spirits can harm people by creating illness, for example.
Lee testified that spirits can appear as animals, typically tigers, and even ordinary people can sometimes see these visions of spirits. “It’s not real tigers but spirits,” Lee said with the help of a court-appointed interpreter.
Shamans perform rituals to scare off these threatening spirits. They also perform rituals when people are born and when they die. Lee said he has not seen a spirit since he moved to this country, but others, even children, have said they have seen spirits.
“If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you,” Lee testified.
The Hmong shaman was called to the witness stand by defense attorney Ruben Villalobos. He has told the jury that his client didn’t think he was attacking his girlfriend and his friends that early morning.
Villalobos has argued that Xiong and those shot had smoked a lot of methamphetamine in the hours before the shooting. He plans to call an expert to testify about “methamphetamine psychosis” and the effects of the highly addictive drug on the brain. He is seeking a verdict that results in a charge less serious than murder.
Add one more refugee criminal trial to our list (from this post on Sunday):
***Just for fun I went to our ‘crimes’ category with its 1,396 posts to see how many criminal court cases we wrote about just since the beginning of the year (specifically involving refugees). Too lazy to link them (you can find them in the crimes category by clicking here).
We had the Colorado Iraqi rapists, the Utah Burmese rape/murder trial, the Iowa Bosnian sex abuse case, the Illinois Sudanese murder retrial, Washington Somali rapist, New York Afghan welfare cheats, Florida Sri Lankan illegal alien trafficking case, California Somalis sentencing in terror funding case, Minnesota Somali woman sentencing delayed (terror funding), and the Nevada Chinese refugee ripping off the casinos! All within the last seven weeks!
