Update October 21st: MPR has an update here with a bit more information.
This article headlined at Fox News late Wednesday, “Man on Terror Watch List Stopped and Then Let Go,” adds more information to the story we posted two days ago about a new arrest in the Somali missing youth case.
It seems that 5 Somali men were traveling through Nevada headed to Southern California when they were stopped for speeding. Here is the story:
A Somali man on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist was stopped last week by a police officer outside Las Vegas, but the officer had no legal authority to detain the man so he was sent on his way, multiple law enforcement sources told FOX News.
On Oct. 6, about 10 miles north of Las Vegas, a Nevada Highway Patrol officer pulled over a rental car that was speeding, according to court records and one of the sources. The gray Chevrolet was occupied by five men of Somali descent, including Cabdulaahi Faarax of Minneapolis and Abdow M. Abdow of Chanhassen, Minn., according to the court records and sources.
The five men offered conflicting accounts of their travel. All five told the officer they were on their way to San Diego to attend a friend’s wedding, but they “gave inconsistent explanations regarding where they were staying in San Diego, how the occupants knew one another, and who was getting married at the wedding in San Diego,” according to court documents.
When asked for their dates of birth, they all gave “January 1” as their birthday, but each offered a different year of birth. Faarax said he was born Jan. 1, 1977, making him 32 years old, one source said.
When the officer ran Faarax’s information through a law enforcement database, it came back as “a hit on the terrorist watchlist,” a law enforcement source said.
It’s unclear why Faarax’s name would be on the terrorist watchlist. But unless there’s a warrant for the person’s arrest or a “red notice” from the global police force Interpol, there is no reason or ability to detain someone on the list, sources said.
“There are people on the list that are just being monitored,” one law enforcement source said.
It seems they were involved in the Somali pipeline that flows with former Somali refugees going back to the Horn of Africa for terrorist training. The big question is does the pipeline flow back as well!
So what good is the Terrorist Watchlist? Obviously it did nothing to stop these guys, only Abdow was ultimately arrested. How does one get on the List? Ponder this:
One source said Faarax had certain associations with al-Shabaab, but how deep those associations run is unclear.
For example, voicing support online for al-Shabaab, which was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government last year, could warrant placement on the terrorist watchlist, one source said.
Training with al-Shabaab in Somalia could also warrant placement on the terrorist watchlist. None of the sources would say whether Faarax had trained with al-Shabaab or traveled to Somalia recently.
Think about that, one could go and train with Jihadists in Africa, return to the US and get placed on the terrorist watchlist—big deal! It apparently means nothing! No one is watching the list!
For new readers:
The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.