I’m so sick of this story and the people involved in it, but to keep our archives up to date, I’ve got to report on the trial of the Somali “youths” who went off for jihad training after we gave them and their families the good life in America.

Remember way back in 2008 we learned that one of the youths blew himself to bits in Somalia and took 29 other human beings with him.  Our FBI kindly, and surely at taxpayer expense, scooped up his body parts and returned them to Minnesota for a funeral.

Now we learn from the on-going trial of a “recruiter” what happened to America’s first Somali suicide bomber.  From  Minnesota Public Radio:

Ahmed said he never made it to the battlefield because he and another Twin Cities recruit, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, escaped from al-Shabab in 2008 while helping set up a training camp in southern Somalia.

But another Minneapolis man wasn’t so lucky.

Shirwa Ahmed also wanted to leave the camp but was “trapped” by al-Shabab, Salah Ahmed testified. In fact, Shirwa Ahmed — who went by a Somali nickname that roughly translated into “hairy man” for the tufts on his chest — had early doubts about joining the terror group, according to Salah Ahmed.

While he was in Saudi Arabia in 2008 for the Hajj pilgrimage, Shirwa Ahmed called the Minnesota recruits in Somalia by phone, saying he wasn’t going to meet up with them after all, Salah Ahmed told the jury. Shirwa Ahmed said religious scholars in Mecca advised him not to participate in the fighting.

“I think you guys have been tricked,” Salah Ahmed recalled him saying.

But a friend who enlisted with al-Shabab, Khalid Mohamed Abshir, eventually persuaded Shirwa Ahmed to change his mind, Salah Ahmed testified. Shirwa Ahmed reunited with the group at a safe house in southern Somalia and then made it to the training camp.

As Salah Ahmed and Isse were making their escape from al-Shabab, they ran into Shirwa Ahmed in the nearby city of Kismayo. Shirwa Ahmed apparently was on the same page.

“I want to go back to the United States,” Shirwa Ahmed told the men. But his passport was in the hands of al-Shabab leaders in the Somali capital, and he couldn’t return home without it.

“Instead, he went back to Mogadishu, so he was trapped,” Salah Ahmed told the jury. He said the group’s leaders refused to give Shirwa Ahmed his passport and talked him into returning to the camp.

Several months later, in October 2008, Shirwa Ahmed detonated himself in a series of coordinated attacks in northern Somalia that killed dozens of people, according to the FBI.

“He was the last person I ever thought about doing that,” Salah Ahmed testified. “He wanted to come back.”

While Somalis in Lewiston, ME have been taking to the streets to proclaim that they have been maligned by the words of the local Mayor, some of their fellow Somali refugees in Minneapolis are on trial for helping support terrorists in Somalia and for sending some of the young men we raised with our tax dollars to Somalia to get jihad training.

From near the beginning of our reporting on this story of the ‘missing Somali youths’ in 2008, here, fingers have been pointed at the Abubakar as-Saddique mosque as the headquarters for the recruitment effort.  Now we see from reports of the trial of mosque janitor Mahamud Said Omar that the mosque was indeed jihad recruitment central.

From reporter Ami Forlitti at the Associated Press:

Isse [a witness] said he knew Omar as the janitor at Abubakar as-Saddique mosque, where Isse spent a lot of time after moving to Minnesota from Seattle in 2007. It was there where he also met other men who would eventually travel to Somalia.

Under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney John Docherty, Isse testified that someone at the mosque named Farhan began talking to him about going to Somalia for a “jihad” against Ethiopians, which many Somalis viewed as invaders.

The men began making plans to travel — meeting in private rooms at the mosque, or at restaurants and in cars. Three other men, two of whom have been identified as travelers by prosecutors, led the discussions because they knew more about traveling and had contacts in Somalia, Isse said.

[…..]

The men raised money for airline tickets by going door-to-door under the guise of raising money for a mosque, Isse said.   [LOL! I bet the Imam will insist he didn’t know about this money raising venture—ed]

Rich kids can get their own weapon money!

Then get this! You know we have reported many times in recent months that the US government has made it almost impossible for Somalis in the US to send money Somalia now.   Somalis have been screaming bloody murder that their relatives in Somalia will starve.  (Rep. Keith Ellison is working overtime to get the money flowing to Somalia again.)  Seems it was pretty darn easy to send money for weapons to the ‘youths!’

Since the men were from the West, they were told to buy their own AK-47s. Isse said they began calling friends in the U.S. and asking for money, and eventually got assault rifles at another safe house. One weapon arrived with Omar’s name on it, Isse said.

Read the whole story.   Our previous post on the trial that began last Monday is here.

By the way, one thing that might point to holes in Isse’s testimony is when he reported that new recruits were told to turn over their travel docs upon arrival at the Al-shabaab safe house.  How did Isse manage to keep his and get back to the US?