Feds stop Minneapolis Mosque leaders from boarding a plane

12/01/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Imam and the youth leader were probably skipping town, headed to Saudi Arabia, as evidence points to the mosque’s role in possibly encouraging Somali young men (refugees!) to leave for terrorist training. Hat tip: Blulitespecial

The theory is that the youths have gone to Somalia to fight in the civil war, but we don’t know that yet! At least these two are not leaving on a jet plane. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

An imam and a youth coordinator at a Minneapolis mosque were prohibited from boarding a flight Saturday morning to Saudi Arabia as part of a spiritual pilgrimage, an attorney for the mosque confirmed Sunday

The attorney said it’s likely the men are on a federal “no fly” list because they and the mosque have been connected by rumor to a number of missing Somali men whose families fear have returned to their East African homeland to fight in that nation’s civil unrest or to receive terrorist training.

The FBI, which has been investigating alleged links between some in Minneapolis’ large Somali refugee community and the strife in that nation, would not comment on the airport incident. The scope of any such links, if they exist, remains unclear.

There is so much in this article, you really must go read the whole thing. Here is another interesting piece of information. The two mosque leaders were stopped by the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list. This agency is one of the quiet efforts of the Bush Administration that has helped keep us safe since 9/11.

Mahir Sherif, a California attorney who represents Abubakar as well as other Somali mosques across the country, said there are many possible reasons why the men are on the federal Transportation Security Administration’s “no fly” list, which as of mid-August contained about 50,000 names. But he suspects that the reasons are linked to stories circulating in the Somali community that the mosque has been used to indoctrinate and train young men to return to Somalia — stories that Sherif strongly denied Sunday.

He might be denying it, but the families have been pointing to the mosque as the source of the indoctrination. I noticed in an earlier report on the missing Somali men that one family said their son only went to school, came home and went to the mosque— bells went off for me.

Here is a comment from a relative of another missing man:

The relative said he is a bright young man who attended the University of Minnesota and spent a lot of time at the Abubakar mosque.

“He used to sleep at the mosque … like he lived there,” the relative said through an interpreter in a West Bank apartment.

I’m closing by echoing what Judy said last night:

It is insane that we let any Somalis into this country, given what is now known. It’s insane that seven years after 9/11 we have not stopped the Wahhabi Saudis from funding mosques, organizations, Middle East studies programs, and God knows what else throughout our country. It’s insane that radical Muslims carry out the stealth jihad under our noses, telling us what they’re doing while we watch them do it.

Endnote: The Minneapolis Star Tribune finally caught on to the Somali immigration fraud story a couple of days ago. But, in the eyes of the mainstream media the two stories are not connected!

Update and review of the Greeley/Swift controversy

11/28/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have to warn you, this article I’m posting is a long and superficial piece about the controversy in Greeley, CO a few months back, the one we created an entire category to follow (here). If you have been a regular reader of RRW and followed the recent news about Somalis getting into the US by lying about family members or that Somali young men are believed to be headed to terrorist training camps, this is the kind of story that will make you want to barf it is so one-sided.

The problem in Greeley, in a nutshell, is that Somalis flooded the town for jobs at the local JBS Swift meatpacking plant, then demanded special prayer breaks for Ramaden which Swift first gave them then took back when other ethnic workers at the plant protested. Somalis walked off the job and were told to return to work by a certain time, those that did not were fired. Swift stuck to its guns and many of the nomadic Somalis moved on to other meatpacking towns.

A few nuggets from yesterday’s article in Denver’s Westworld News follow. Setting the scene for the clash of cultures:

Hispanics have been in Greeley for years, attracted by the many factory and agricultural jobs. But their numbers have swelled in recent decades, and they now make up at least 30 percent of the city’s population of 89,000, according to the U.S. Census.

Interestingly the clash of cultures came not from white Americans, but from the Hispanics primarily. Other ethnic groups employed at Swift protested too.

How did the Somalis come to be in Greeley?

In December 2006, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials descended on the Swift plant, arresting and deporting hundreds of illegal workers as their families sobbed outside. The raid was part of a national crackdown that shook the meatpacking industry and left Swift desperate for a new source of cheap labor.

Refugees — those who fear persecution in their native countries and have been screened by the Department of Homeland Security for resettlement in America — are both cheap and legal. After the raid, some Somalis say, Swift sent recruiters to African restaurants in Denver, offering them cash to work in Greeley. The word spread quickly among Somali refugees from Denver to Kansas City to California, as friends and relatives talked up the job openings and the larger paychecks to be earned at the Swift plant.

Now we know from recent news that many of the Somalis are not here legally and could never have been screened by Homeland Security because they lied about who they are. Kind of hard to screen someone who isn’t who they say they are.

So, when Swift refused to hire back the Somalis who walked off the job did they stay in Greeley or move on? And, how is Greeley today?

Suddenly, Greeley had a different problem: Scores of Somalis, out of work and worried about making their rent. Within weeks, the fired workers began leaving town for jobs at packing plants in Fort Morgan, Nebraska and Minnesota. They emptied out the Greeley Islamic Center mosque, left vacant apartments, even shut down the only African restaurant in town, creating a massive rupture in the community.

I guess just as local citizens were being told to adjust to their new neighbors, poof, they were gone. Most of them that is!

Remaining are the “community organizers” who had intrigued me while the controversy was on-going. Graen Isse was the guy who had showed up in town just before all this started and then busied himself by talking to the likes of Arabic news outfits, blaming the problem on the Hispanics. He told the Arab publication he had worked in America since he was 16, but from this puff-piece it would appear he had a typical American high school experience. And, with an education like his, what was he doing looking for meatpacking work (even as a translator)?

Graen Isse, a local Somali leader, understands these conflicting impulses well. In his fourteen years in America, he’s bounced between three states. Now he’s trying to figure out how to help Greeley’s Somali community survive, even if he’s not sure how long he’ll stick around himself.

Slim and amiable, the 27-year-old Isse is constantly in motion — knee tapping, cell phone wire hanging from his ear, eyes scanning the room. [who is he talking to and what is he looking for?]

[Supposedly separated from his parents as a child by the everpresent violence in Africa, miraculously one day his parents were found.]

One day, Isse’s older brother appeared and announced that their parents had escaped to neighboring Kenya. As his family was reunited, another of Isse’s brothers, who had been injured in the war, made it to California as a refugee. He told the government about his family back home, clearing the way for Isse and several members of his family to apply for refugee status and move to San Diego.

So Isse grew up as an American teenager, running track and playing high school football. After he graduated from high school in Minneapolis, where his mother had moved, his globetrotting continued. He took college classes in California, then completed his degree in Kenya before ending up back in San Diego. There he worked for a transportation tracking company, drove a taxi, even took some law school classes.

Isse moved to Greeley last summer because a friend from California, Aziz Dhies, was working as a nurse there and suggested that Isse might like the town as well. Isse was hired as a translator at Swift and had only been on the job for about a week when the Ramadan controversy began. He was thrust into the midst of the problem as he negotiated on behalf of hundreds of people whom he had only just met. He, too, was fired because he went home to eat and rest on the day the dispute was resolved instead of returning immediately to work. But he quickly found a new job, working part-time as a translator at the Weld County courts. And he and Dhies dedicated themselves to community organizing, forming the East Africa Community, which aims to be “the middleman between the leaders and our community,” Isse says.

I believe that Isse is a professional community organizer brought in to agitate the Swift workers, but I guess the big question is, who sent him?

Holy Cow! Now 40 young Somalis are missing in Minnesota!

11/26/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Note to new readers: This post, originally written in November 2008, has now become my archive for all the posts we have done on this topic . The number of missing men is now generally to believed to be about 20. If you would like to learn about the missing youths, begin reading at the bottom of this post and work your way to the most recent update below.

*I’ve got more updates since July 19th, 2009, just haven’t gotten them linked in here—sorry!

Update July 19th: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) says US should consider retrieving the Somalis who left the country to join the Jihad, here.

Update July 16th: Counterterrorism blog: this is about the international jihad, here. Youtube clip of American Al-Shabaab telling Obama his charisma won’t work on them, here.

Update July 15th: Indictments unsealed in this case, here.

Update July 14th: We hear from Zakaria Maruf’s sister, here. What do you know, the same thing is happening in Kenya too!

Update July 13th: 4th Somali-American (Zakaria Maruf) dead in Somalia, the NYT called him the recruiter, here. See also Judy’s post today about the cultural problems Somalis face in the US, here.

Update July 12th: New York Times publishes front page story on missing Somali youths, here. It is all about Allah, here.

Another Somali-American missing boy is found dead in Somalia, here. Shot in the head.

Update July 11th: Al-Shabaab leader mocks Obama, here.

Update July 10th: More on Somalis standing up to CAIR and the Imams, here.

Update July 9th: We do it for Allah, here.

Update July 4th: Another anti-CAIR demonstration scheduled today in Minneapolis, here.

Update July 2nd: Fox News is reporting that indictments are imminent, here.

Update June 24th: MN Somali leader confirms criticism of CAIR directly to RRW, here.

Update June 21st: Somali community activists defend CAIR, here.

Update June 12th: Unbelievable! Somalis tell CAIR to butt out! See also this excellent overview of the whole story of the missing Somali youths.

Update June 9th: More on the death of that Somali youth at AP, here.

Update June 7th: One Somali youth found dead in Somalia, believed to have been killed by al Shabaab, here. Omar Jamal says US must bring the body back to Minnesota, here.

Update April 16th: Somali youths have been missing from Minneapolis since 2007!

Update April 10th: CAIR tries to hamstring questioning of students in Minnesota, here.

Update April 8th: Canadian missing Somali arrested in Somalia, here.

Update April 6th: Some missing youths hold press conference in Somalia, here.

Update April 5th: Does an American play a significant role in recruiting the missing Somali youths, here?

Update April 2nd: Somali terror recruitment film found by FBI here.

Update March 31st: MPR reports that relatives of the missing youths are working their contacts in Somalia, here.

Update March 30th: NPR reported that four missing men have returned, but have disappeared from sight again, here.

Update March 27th: Canadian youths missing too, here.

Update March 23rd: Jamal says missing youth spotted at the mall, here.

Update March 20th: Fox News is reporting that the missing youths have been found, here.

Update March 19th: Osama Bin Laden encourages Al-Shabaab to fight on and capture Somalia, here. This links our “youths” to international jihad.

Update March 12th: My view from the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday on terrorist recruitment here.

Update March 11th: Grand Jury hears testimony in case of missing Somalis, here. Senate Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing.

Update March 8th: Jamal: He could have blown himself up here just as well.

Update March 7th: Recruitment methods explored at Minnesota Public Radio here.

Update March 6th: Senate panel to hold hearing March 11th on missing youths.

Update Feb. 28th: AP tells us more about how the missing Somali men were part of a terror scare on inauguration weekend, here.

Update Feb. 27th: Minneapolis mosque holds open house to assure community they are good guys.

Update Feb. 24th: More on FBI director Mueller’s speech about the Somali youths, excellent reporting at the Washington Times .

Update Feb. 23th: You gotta laugh! The New York Times finally gets to this story 3 months after it began.

Update Feb. 17th: Jerusalem Post reporting today that 500 could be missing!

Update Feb. 16th: UK fears its missing Somali youths are returning, here.

Update Feb. 15th: CAIR crying about ‘religious profiling’ as FBI steps up questioning of Somalis.

Update Feb. 12th: More indepth coverage of the press conference from Dinah Lord. My post here.

Update Feb. 11th: Mystery deepens about whether jihadists captured in Somaliland are our missing boys.

Update Feb. 10th: Press conference held and mosque denies role in missing youths case.

Update Feb. 9th: Another missing youth story with lots of inflamed commentary here.

Update Feb. 5th: Somali press conference called and cancelled in Minneapolis.

Update Feb. 3rd: NPR says missing men are victims, here.

Update Jan. 31st: Somali writer blames FBI for not spotting this terror recruitment sooner.

Update Jan. 28th: FBI looking for missing Somali refugees in Atlanta, here.

Update Jan. 27th: Arrest of Somali man trying to get into Canada may be linked to the missing men and the plot against the inauguration.

Update Jan. 26th: Well what do you know! American “terrorists” arrested in Somaliland today. Could they be some of our missing Somali youths?

Update Jan. 25th: Newsweek joins the crowd today. Boy these news magazines are slow! It is almost exactly two months after we first reported the story.

Update Jan. 18th, 2009: Los Angeles Times fills in more details.

Update Dec. 30th: Washington Times puts story on front page here.

Update Dec. 29th: The FBI is paying attention to Somalis in U.S.

Update Dec. 26th: Scrutinize mosques in the US in wake of missing Somalis investigation.

Update Dec. 23rd: Financial Times of London is reporting this story now. Hat tip: Jerry Gordon.

Update Dec. 21st: UPI reported that the FBI might be taking a harder look at the local mosque, here.

Wall Street Journal reports that Somali youths are missing from other US cities, here.

Update Dec. 12th: CNN gets on the Somali missing men story bandwagon here.

Indepth reporting by Patrick Poole here at Frontpage magazine.

Update Dec. 8th: More on missing men in US and Denmark

Update Dec. 4th: Somali men missing all over the world tonight. And, missing Somali American man who became suicide bomber buried in Minnesota.

Update Dec. 1st: Minneapolis mosque leaders not allowed to leave country, here.

Update Nov. 29th: News Busters says this is not West Side Story.

Update Nov. 28th: Somali Jihadists say they are coming to get us! At Jihad Watch today.

Update Nov. 27th: AP story has gone everywhere, on FOX News here.

Update a couple hours later: The story is movin’ on up nationally—to ABC now.

Thanks again to the Baron at Gates of Vienna, who just sent news that 40 (four-0) Somali young men have disappeared from the Twin Cities recently. Two days ago we reported the number at about 20. From 5 Eyewitness News today:

Forty young Somali men from the Twin Cities are missing and federal investigators believe they may be back in Somalia training as terrorists.

“We have active Al Qaeda cells recruiting these people,” said Omar Jamal with the Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

Unless he has had some sort of conversion, I wouldn’t trust this Omar Jamal as far as I could throw him! He has proven in the past to be a master news manipulator (see my post linked above). Don’t ask me what his game would be in directing the blame to Al Qaeda? AQ just seems a logical target, so what might he be steering authorities away from? Be sure to watch Jamal in action on the KSTP-TV film clip.

The big question for us is, are the 40 missing men coming back to share their new found knowledge here in the US.

CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledges a growing tie between Al Qaeda and Somali terrorist groups. Federal investigators believe these missing men are training for terrorist attacks overseas, but can’t be sure they won’t return the the Twin Cities someday to carry out an attack.

Or, here is another thought, maybe, just maybe they haven’t left the US. What if they are still here and our spinmeister supreme is leading authorities astray? Kind of convienent that the Twin Cities “recruiter” can’t talk (having already been blown to bits).

See yesterday’s post with suggestions for the Homeland Security to check a few other US cities.

Somali terrorist group wants to throw the West “into hell”

11/25/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Dec. 4th: This group is recruiting all over the world.

Update Nov. 26th: Now 40 Twin Cities Somalis are missing!

And, guess where they are recruiting? According to a pair of stunning articles today, it looks like right in the good old USA. Yes, that is right! Remember those Minneapolis missing young men? When we suggested in that post yesterday that we are breeding and raising Jihadists, whose families have possibly arrived in the US fraudulently through the Refugee Resettlement Program, we might really be on to something.

No wonder the Department of Homeland Security put the squeeze on the State Department to shut the family reunification (P-3) program down. Family reunification, we have learned previously, is the largest portion of our legal immigrant program. I don’t think Somalis come into the US in any other way than through Refugee Resettlement (or I suppose illegally).

From Minneapolis 5 Eyewitness News:

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month.

The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. All are thought to be associates of Ahmed. U.S. officials suspect most of the young men have departed for Somalia to fight in ongoing violence there or to train in terrorist camps. Family members of the young men are said to be distraught, trying to figure to out what happened to them, sources say.

So far, the investigation has not uncovered credible evidence of a plot targeting the U.S. but American officials want to track down all these young men before they can say for certain what this is or is not…

The Minneapolis news story tells us that the terrorist group that Ahmed was involved with is Shabaab al Mujahideen. And, what a coincidence, here is another article today from Fox News (Hat tip: Blulitespecial) about Shabaab al Mujahideen.

In the summer of 2007, a 28-year-old father of three from Houston, Texas, shocked his country when he became the first American ever to be convicted of receiving military training at a terrorist camp in Somalia.

Daniel Maldonado, an offbeat, outspoken young man who sported tattoos and dreadlocks, committed himself to wage jihad outside the United States and went to Somalia to receive training. It was there that he mastered the violent “arts” of homicide bombing, building IEDs and engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

Read on and consider that the chances are very very high that this convicted terrorist was resettled in the United States by the US State Department with the help of your tax dollars. Remember we have resettled over 80,000 Somali refugees in the last 25 years. More than half of those are here since 9/11!!!

I’m wondering if any of the good folks in the volags remember Jihadis Shirwa Ahmed or Daniel Maldonado?

So what do they want?

Shabaab’s ultimate goal, as articulated in an April statement, is to throw the West “into hell.”

Hint to Homeland Security, you need to now go to some of the hot Somali towns in the US and see if other Somali young men (the ones we have fed, educated, and taken care of) might have turned up missing. For starters, try Seattle, WA, Greeley, CO, Grand Island, NE, Shelbyville, TN, Ft. Morgan, CO, Lewiston, ME, Columbus, OH and of course Minneapolis and Houston. And, I almost forgot! NASHVILLE, TN!

Minnesota mystery: where have all the Somali young men gone?

11/24/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Nov. 26th: Now 40 men are missing!

Update Nov. 25th: Looks like we are beginning to get an idea–recruited for terrorist training!

Update: More insight (and humor) on this story at Gates of Vienna here.

Thanks to the Baron at Gates of Vienna for this shocking news. Well maybe not so shocking if you’ve been following our extensive coverage of Somali refugees in the US.

Somali young men are missing in Minneapolis, according to MyFox:

MINNEAPOLIS — Young Somali men are vanishing off the streets of the Twin Cities. More than 20 have left in the last few months, and the community fears they’ve gone back to Somalia to fight in a holy war.

If this is true (a big ‘if’) in light of the Somali Jesse Jackson’s involvement, then think about it. We have resettled Somali refugees by the tens of thousands and just last week had confirmed to us that a large percentage are here fraudulently. Now, we learn that some of those young men we were giving educations, homes, food, and healthcare to, have up and left to fight in a war in Africa. In other words, are we breeding and raising warriors, not young people wanting to be Americans to follow the American dream?

The other possible scenario, since Omar Jamal is quoted as the expert here (again!), is that they are somewhere else preparing for jihad.

The families and community leaders believe the men have gone back to fight in a bloody civil war, in which Al Quiada is a major player.

“They’re concerned emotional and in shock,” Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Center said. “They’re completely grief stricken.

Omar Jamal is the ultimate spinmeister. We first heard about him in August 2007, only a month after RRW was launched. He was spinning and defending a Somali rapist in St. Paul who had been caught on camera doing the crime. I’ll let you review our Omar Jamal archive which includes posts about his extensive activities as follows:

I called him the Somali Jesse Jackson when he got involved in the Denver Somali Cyanide death telling the media that the Canadian found dead with enough cyanide to kill hundreds was just a nut, not a terrorist. In that post we learned Jamal had been ordered deported due to immigration fraud. He reportedly lied to get into the US. Of course, the big question now is why is he still here?

We also learned in that post that Jamal is the uncle to a Canadian Somali indicted for giving material support to Al-Queda in 2003.

Then we caught sight of him again in an article in which it says the Socialist Workers Party helped him fight his deportation.

He crops up in every story on Somali gang murders in Minneapolis, seemingly the go-to guy for local law enforcement.

We’ve heard him blame ‘no child left behind’ for problems Somali students have in US schools.

Most recently he was in the middle of the mess involving a possible election fraud in a predominantly Somali community. We learned in that article that Jamal is related to the president of Somalia.

And, now here he is again telling us how distraught the families are that their young sons have gone off to Africa to fight in the Somali civil war. Or possibly they heard how much they can make from piracy, beats working in meatpacking for a living? See “…where everyone wants to be a Somali pirate.”

Or, maybe, just maybe, they are somewhere else in the world getting ready for jihad?