Category: Africa

Another indictment in Minneapolis Somali Jihad case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I said yesterday that I had a couple (turns out to have been 5!) of those hot Somali stories and this is one I didn’t get to.  The sixth indictment has been handed down in the FBI investigation into the Somali (former refugee) missing youth case.  Hat tip: ever-watchful in Tennessee.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a paper that keeps on top of this story:

A 24-year-old local Somali man has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on charges of conspiring to provide support to terrorists.

Omer Abdi Mohamed, an unemployed employment counselor and father of a 2-month-old boy, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to “kill, kidnap, maim or injure” people in foreign countries, according to an indictment filed Tuesday but made public Thursday.

Mohamed, of Minneapolis, is the sixth Somali man with local ties to be charged in connection with a two-year-old federal counterterrorism investigation aimed at finding out who recruited as many as 20 area men of Somali descent to return to their homeland and train and fight with the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The probe is considered to be one of the most sweeping international counterterrorism investigations since Sept. 11, 2001.  [Reminder: the FBI missed Major Nidal Hasan]

[….]

According to the indictment, others connected to the conspiracy include: Salah Osman Ahmed, Kamal Said Hassan, Ahmed Ali Omar, Abdifatah Isse and Khalid Mohamud Abshir — all of whom left the United States in December 2007 with a final destination of Somalia. Ahmed, Hassan and Isse all have pleaded guilty to the same charges Mohamed faces.

How and where were they radicalized?  It all just keeps coming back to the mosque they had in common—-Abubakar as-Saddique Islamic Center.

Officials at the mosque have repeatedly denied any role in recruiting or enabling the men to return to Somalia. Just last week, two mosque officials were cleared to fly after their names had appeared on a federal “no fly” list last year. According to an attorney for one of the men, the move cleared them of any involvement in the Somali men’s disappearance.

Why did they go?  

The woman [who knows the men well and helped the FBI in the investigation] said she doesn’t know for certain why all the men left for Somalia, but said she believes it’s rooted in a combination of patriotic feelings toward the Somali homeland and religious fervor.

I’m guessing 10% patriotism and 90% religious fervor.  This is an important point of discussion as I learned when I went to the Senate Homeland Security hearings on this terror-training investigation.  The Senators and those in the intelligence community testifying were eager to dismiss the return to Africa by men who had been given a good life through our refugee resettlement program, if it was patriotism that motivated them.  They skirted the religious fervor angle in what I’ll call the Major Nidal Hasan syndrome.

A judge released this latest indicted man on bond.

Mohamed appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel, who agreed to release him on a $25,000 signature bond after Wold argued that his client was not a risk to flee. As of Thursday night, he was preparing to be released, pending the installation of an electronic home monitoring system.

Let’s see, so 6 have died and 6 have been indicted. Then an alleged ringleader was arrested in the Netherlands.  The FBI has been saying 20 left the US for Somalia.  If you count the ringleader that makes 13 accounted for, leaving only 7 who knows where.   Wanta bet there were more than 20 from the US?

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.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

The Rainbow Nation: more trouble in paradise?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have been sold such a bill of goods about the South African government spawned by the revered Nelson Mandela and those who followed him to power in the so-called “Rainbow Nation.”   Rarely do we see stories in US publications about the violence of the majority black population against other Africans and the white population.  Gosh, is it possible that blacks can be xenophobic and racist?  Or, is it just plain-old tribalism and protecting one’s own stuff driving the violence—something the multiculturalists at the UN fail to acknowledge as they, and the one-worlders, perpetuate the myth of multiculturalism as nirvana?

Looks like trouble is brewing again according to this article from the BBC.

The UN has condemned attacks against Zimbabweans seeking work in South African vineyards, which it says have driven 3,000 people from their homes.

Local farm workers accused the Zimbabweans near Cape Town of stealing their jobs by accepting lower wages.

South Africa saw an outbreak of xenophobic violence in May last year, when Zimbabwean refugees and asylum seekers were attacked.

More than 60 people died in the waves of mob violence.

The UN refugee agency said those displaced in the latest unrest were living in tents in a sports field north-east of Cape Town.

On Friday, police said they had arrested 22 people in the informal settlement of De Doorns in Western Cape for allegedly attacking foreigners earlier this week, South African Press Association reports.

The trouble broke out when South African farm labourers were angered at reports that the farmers were employing migrant workers at lower wages.

“They started to shout at us saying that we had to go back to Zimbabwe,” one migrant worker told the BBC.

“After that they started to break our houses. We phoned the police but the police didn’t take action. They just stood there as people broke our houses and they stole our things.” [A little corruption in the police, eh?]

Correspondents say South Africa is keen to show the world that poverty and crime is under control in preparation for next year’s World Cup.

In addition to the BBC’s UN-slaps-wrist article above, my alerts reminded me of the website ‘Why I am a White Refugee,’ here where Friday’s article begins with this quote:

In SA, a major way of problem-solving is mob rule….. This use of mobs and the impunity of the anonymity of mass action lead to a breakdown in the rule of law. This, as academics have observed, is a direct result of the merging of militarised struggle politics with unions and community organisations.

Can you believe it, struggle politics, unions and community organizing there too?  Do we see a pattern?   Could they be reading Rules for Radicals too?

We have written about South Africa a lot, use our search function to learn more.

State Department close to reopening previously fraud-ridden program

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story I am ashamed to say I missed two weeks ago!   According to Matthew Lee of AP, yes, apparently the same Mr. Lee who reported on the last day of every month in the waning months of the Bush Administration that that awful Mr. Bush didn’t let in to the US enough poor Iraqis, here, tells us the State Department will soon re-open the controversial family reunification program.   

And, he reports that nothing will likely be done about the estimated 36,000 Africans (mostly Somalis) who may have gotten into the US by lying.  We admitted over 80,000 Somalis over 25 years.

Although no final decisions have been made, the State Department said it “was close to the end” of a review that had been delayed by the change in administrations. “Now that policy-level people responsible for this issue are in place, we expect to reopen the program with revised procedures in the near future,” an official said.

The suspended pilot program, known as Priority 3, allows foreign — almost all of them African — family members of legal U.S. residents to join relatives here.

With little fanfare [Edit: little fanfare!  It was because they wanted to keep it quiet, the WSJ had it, where were you?] , the program was halted in March 2008 after DNA testing on applicants in Africa found that up to 87 percent of their familial claims were fraudulent.

The experimental program was conducted in late 2007 and early 2008 on about 3,000 people mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia and Liberia who claimed blood relationships with each other and wanted to be reunited with a family member who had been resettled as a refugee in the U.S.

DNA testing was not done on the alleged relatives in the United States. The State Department said it targeted Africans abroad only for genetic testing because they make up 95 percent of applicants to the program. The testing started, officials said, only after suspicions of fraud arose in applications originating among refugees in Kenya.

“We were … only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20 percent of cases,” the State Department said in a fact sheet. “In the remaining cases, at least one negative result was identified or the individuals refused to be tested.”

Ho hum, fearing the ire of civil rights groups nothing will be done about the possibly 36,000 illegal aliens.

As the U.S. review winds down, questions were raised about what to do with the estimated 36,000 African refugees who arrived in the United States under the resettlement between 2003 and its suspension.   [Edit:  I don’t get why they are only going back to 2003 for this number, we have been resettling Somalis and other Africans long before that, I bet it’s more than 36,000 questionable refugees.]

The Homeland Security Department has jurisdiction to determine if any of those applications were fraudulent but department officials said Thursday they had no plans to check those already in the United States. Such a move would likely draw opposition from civil rights groups.

Gosh, maybe some of those are involved in the Kansas City, MO murder, or the recent Somali murder in Fort Morgan, CO, or the Boys in the Hood we heard about just two days ago,  or Somali gangs in Minneapolis and Seatttle, or the mosque arson we reported this morning, or maybe some of the Somali missing youths—one of whom was arrested just today for attending terrorist training in Somalia.   Nah, it couldn’t be, and besides it’s not worth riling up the diversity-is-strength gang !

Shades of Major Nidal Hasan, wouldn’t you say?

Columbus: Mosque fire exposes Somali infighting

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m starting to feel like I should rename this blog ‘Somali Watch’ because just when I thought I had a window of time to write the much needed post about that boring “Targeted Assistance” program I’m procrastinating  about, comes two hot Somali stories in the US and another in Finland.  And, oh geez, I forgot to tell you about the Somali missing youths from Canada!

Here is Patrick Poole, an expert on radical Islam from Ohio, writing on the intrigues surrounding a battle between a moderate Somali mosque and an Al-Shabaab-terror-supporting mosque in Columbus, Ohio.  Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon.

Poole begins:

In the early morning of October 19, a fire ravaged through the property surrounding Masjid Salama, a growing Columbus, Ohio, mosque frequented primarily by members of the local Somali community. Several Somali-owned businesses surrounding the mosque were heavily damaged, but the mosque itself was not touched. However, because of the surrounding damage, the mosque itself has not been cleared for reopening.

As reported by the Columbus Dispatch, fire investigators immediately determined that arson was to blame for the blaze.

But rather than blaming the arson on unknown anti-Muslim individuals engaged in a religious hate crime, many inside the Columbus Somali community are fixing their suspicions on leaders of another local Somali mosque, Masjid Ibn Taymiya. This mosque is dominated by supporters of the al-Shabaab terrorist group, and members have made repeated attempts to take over the rapidly growing Salama congregation through an unsuccessful campaign of legal and physical intimidation.

Following the blaze, I met with two leaders of Masjid Salama, who described the ongoing efforts by the leaders of Ibn Taymiya to take over their burgeoning year-and-a-half-old congregation. On November 12, the Salama leaders had to obtain a temporary restraining order to prevent the bulldozing of their rented facility by a leader of the Ibn Taymiya mosque, Mohamed Hassan, who, they say, is the ringleader of the campaign.

Read the whole article.  Poole wraps up with this:

While arson investigators continue to look into the fire that has temporarily displaced Masjid Salama, the leaders are waiting to see whether local officials and the media in Ohio — who have thus far ignored the larger controversy surrounding the fire — will finally recognize the larger battle between Muslim moderates and extremists happening in the Columbus Somali community.

And waiting to see exactly who the politicians and media will side with in this struggle.

Minneapolis, MN, Columbus, OH, Seattle, WA, San Diego, CA, Nashville, TN, Boston, MA and even little Lewiston, ME  (see the Mayor of Lewiston just this week talking up the joys of multiculturalism) are “welcoming” cities for Somali refugees and residents can expect similar warm and fuzzy diversity-is-strength experiences in the near future.   You can thank the US State Department and its Ten federal refugee contractors for this opportunity.

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.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Somalia Shariah Alert! Another woman stoned to death

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, this is what our former refugee youths have gone to Africa to fight for!   Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch explains why (Shariah law says so) this modern day version of Muhammad’s solution was carried out this week in Somalia and directs readers to a resource to learn the prescription for punishment laid down by Muhammad.  Read about the barbaric practice at Jihad Watch, a blog everyone should visit on a daily basis.

Almost a year ago we told you about the stoning death of a 13-year-old refugee girl in Somalia here.