MN: Federal grand jury investigation seeking information on recruitment of Somali youths for Islamic terrorism

09/08/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Are Minnesota mosques responsible?

One more story out of ‘Little Mogadishu’ Minnesota on the Somali refugees turned Jihadists.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune (hat tip: Deb):

Be sure to see Pamela Geller on the story, here (“mosquing the neighborhood”), where she puts this all in a larger perspective.

Al-Farooq Youth and Family Center is under the microscope. Photo: http://bloomingtonmn.gov/main_top/3_homecomm/afyfc/afyfc.htm

A federal grand jury in St. Paul is investigating a group of Somali-Americans who were allegedly conspiring to join terrorists fighting in Syria, according to sources with direct knowledge of the probe.

The proceedings, which have been going on all summer, appear to be centered on trying to find out who is behind efforts to convince 20 to 30 people that they should leave Minnesota to fight in the Middle East. That question has stymied federal agents for the last year as they have struggled to build inroads and trust with the Muslim community in the Twin Cities in order to cut off a new pipeline of recruits.

Seven years ago, about two dozen young Somali men from Minnesota were recruited to fight in Somalia with another terrorist group, Al-Shabab. As many as nine were reported killed, and after a series of indictments and high-profile convictions, federal authorities and community leaders believed that the recruiting had stopped.

Instead, it has shifted to a new region.

[….]

The group under investigation is mostly composed of young Somalis who have been frequenting the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center and mosque in Bloomington. There, they may have fallen under the influence of Amir Meshal, a 31-year-old American of Egyptian descent who allegedly spoke often to them about joining in a jihad, those sources said.

Meshal, whose alleged actions at the mosque were reported in June to the FBI, was already well-known to counterterrorism agents. In 2007, agents arrested him in Kenya after he fled Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. He was accused of having received weapons training in an Al-Qaida camp and of serving as a translator for the terrorist group’s leaders in Somalia, according to court documents.

See our post yesterday on the Minnesota Somali nexus to terrorism in the Middle East and in Africa and follow links to other posts.

Addendum: Don’t forget! We brought almost 1,000 new Somalis to America just last month, here, bringing the number for the year so far to 8,278 (a number approaching the three years during the Bush Presidency when we resettled over 10,000 each year).

WND: MN Rep. Michele Bachmann talks about home grown Somali Jihadists

09/06/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Once again, reporter Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily does a very thorough report on the refugee program and the Minnesota Somali Jihadists we are raising. See our comments on two earlier articles by Hohmann here and here.

Rep. Michele Bachmann: It is willful blindness.

World Net Daily (hat tip: Deb). Emphasis below is mine:

Political correctness and a “willful blindness” are preventing the FBI from rooting out Islamic jihadists that continue to make headlines in her home state of Minnesota, says Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann.

In an exclusive interview with WND, Bachmann responded to news this week that two Somali-Americans from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area had left to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS. One had obtained a security clearance at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where he held a job cleaning jets for Delta Airlines. Both men died on the battlefield in Syria.

Please read the discussion about the FBI, and here are some segments about the refugee program that brought most of the Somalis to America:

The Minneapolis area has become home to more than 50,000 Somalis since the early 1990s. They have been brought there by the U.S. State Department through the Refugee Resettlement Program authorized by the Refugee Act of 1980. In a report earlier this week, WND detailed how several Christian charities work as contractors for the federal government to resettle the refugees using taxpayer-funded grants.

[…..]

Two of those who recently died fighting for ISIS in Syria have come from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where thousands of Islamic refugees have been resettled from the war-torn African nation of Somalia since the early 1990s. Portions of Minneapolis have been dubbed “Little Mogadishu” for their high concentrations of Somali refugees. Several thousand new refugees are brought in each year by the federal government, which delivers resettlement services through grants made to Christian charitable organizations like Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief Minnesota.

The Somali families tend to be large, and the roughly 25,000 transplants have mushroomed into more than 50,000 Somalis living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Some estimate the population of east Africans there could be as high as 85,000.

With that burgeoning Muslim population have come mosques and Islamic schools, funded largely with Saudi Arabian money and recruiters for radical Sunni Muslim terror groups like ISIS in Syria and al-Shabab in Somalia.

The FBI has been investigating, on and off, the Minneapolis community’s ties to Middle Eastern terrorist groups since 2007. That investigation is now officially back on, a FBI spokesman told WND, and the agency has confirmed that up to 25 Somali-Americans from Minnesota have left the country to fight with militant Islamic jihadists overseas.

Read it all, there is much more!

Dead Somali ISIS fighter worked for Delta at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport

09/03/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is what Breitbart is reporting (posted at Drudge). This news does not surprise us because we know that Somali refugees, in addition to the taxi business, are employed at airports nationwide. A few years ago a reader from Washington State expressed concern to us about the number of Somalis employed at Seattle’s Sea-Tak Airport.

So if the avowed Jihadist Muhumed worked for Delta, why the whining from apologists about “vulnerable kids”?

Abdirahmaan Muhumed, one of the refugees we welcomed to America recently died as an ISIS fighter. Photo: http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/26399854/challenges-lack-of-opportunity-drove-suspected-isis-fighter

From Breitbart:

According to a report from Minnesota Twin Cities FOX affiliate KMSP that aired Tuesday night, Abdirahmaan Muhumed, the second known American killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria, previously worked for Delta Global Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.

KMSP noted that according to sources, Muhumed’s position with Delta Global Services required a security clearance at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in order gain access to the tarmac and unfettered access to planes.

Muhumed’s employment with Delta Global Services was confirmed by two former employees that acknowledged working with Muhumed.

Muhumed died in the same battle as Douglas McCain, an ISIS fighter also from Minnesota.

See our first report on Muhumed here. See also this morning’s post on Minneapolis (aka Little Mogadishu).

What is it about the Islamic imperative to wage Jihad that most Westerners don’t get?

WND reports on Somali Jihad recruitment in “Little Mogadishu” Minnesota

09/03/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned the other day, we probably have at least 500 posts here at RRW on the Somali migration to America, and surely a hundred or more on the ‘Somali youths’ we welcomed to our cities who have said, s**** the good life, we are Jihadists. (See ISIS fighters just yesterday, here.)

Important to remember! Almost all Somalis (or their parents) now in the US got here through our LEGAL immigration programs, largely through the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement initiative (State Dept takes refugees that the UN tells them to take). Smaller numbers are here because they came illegally or over-stayed visas and were granted asylum and others got in and then were afforded the benefits of another legal program—Temporary Protected Status. It is impossible to know how many are here illegally, but we do know Somalis have been apprehended at our southern border (how many others got through?).

World Net Daily reporter Leo Hohmann does a good job of summarizing how we got to this place:

Amina Farah who was eventually convicted and sent to prison refused to stand for the Judge as her terror support trial opened in Minneapolis in 2011. http://www.mprnews.org/story/2011/10/03/al-shabab-trial

Even as President Obama launched air strikes Tuesday against the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia, a pipeline for potential new Somali terrorists continues to fester right here in the United States.

It’s called the Refugee Resettlement Program, and it continues unabated under the leadership of the U.S. State Department and with the help of several Christian charities.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, sits at the heart of the controversial program. Known as “Little Mogadishu” to some critics, the city has since 1983 welcomed thousands of Somali refugees, most of whom are practicing Muslims and attend a local mosque or Islamic center.

While the Minneapolis-St. Paul area plays host to the largest Somali refugee population, it’s not the only American city that is taking in refugees from the war-torn African nation. Columbus, Ohio, and San Diego, California, have also served as refugee resettlement hot spots.

The State Department, working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, chooses the communities largely because they are viewed as welcoming of foreign refugees and also because they have well-developed social welfare programs.

“Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and World Relief, which is an evangelical group, resettled them there because the welfare is so good in Minnesota. That was the main reason,” says Ann Corcoran, an activist who has written hundreds of articles about the Somali resettlement program for Refugee Resettlement Watch. “That’s also the case with Maine. A lot of the Somalis are going there for the same reason.”

The Christian charities have worked quietly behind the scenes, using millions of dollars in federal grants, to resettle the refugees in the chosen cities.

There is much more, continue reading here.

* About the photo: Amina Farah (Ali) also told the court that we ‘infidels’ were going to hell, here.

Minnesota Somali refugee believed to be second ‘American’ killed while fighting with ISIS

08/28/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Between the illegal alien “children” (wannabe refugees) invading our southern border and some of the American ISIS fighters turning out to be “refugees” we welcomed to America, the general public sure is getting an education about our Refugee Resettlement and Asylum Program this summer!

Waging demographic Jihad as well as violent Jihad, the 29-year old Somali refugee we raised, reportedly left behind nine children for taxpayers to support. Photo: http://drrichswier.com/2014/06/20/jihad-cool-muslims-u-s-head-syria-iraq-join-isis-bring-back-caliphate/

This latest news comes as no surprise to us since we have been writing about the recruitment of Somali “youths” for the international Jihad since 2008. See much of our earliest coverage at this post or type ‘Somali missing youths’ into our search window. [Want to write a book on this? Most of your research is on the pages of RRW!]

We attended a hearing in Washington in March 2009 at which Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins listened to US intelligence testimony which promoted the naive dream-world notion that the “youths” were only giving up the good life in America to go to Somalia to fight the Ethiopian invaders of their homeland. The Senators were visibly relieved to be told it was only nationalism driving the recruitment—but the intelligence was wrong and they were WRONG!

Think about it! Through our refugee program we are bringing young children to America (who otherwise might have died in their homeland) who we pay to raise—school, medical, housing all provided—believing they will melt in our mythical melting-pot and instead we grow healthy fighters to terrorize the world. By the way, just about every Somali in America is here as a refugee or child of a refugee. Some have entered illegally (or in years past, overstayed a visa) and been granted asylum, but the lion’s share came through the US State Department as refugees.

The contractors who brought the Somalis to Minnesota are Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services of MN, and World Relief of MN, here.

Before I get to the breaking news, you need to know that we are on target to receive one of the highest numbers of new Somali refugees since the three Bush years when numbers topped ten thousand (2004, 2005, and 2006). See that post.

As of July 31st we have “welcomed” 7,326 new Somalis to America this fiscal year!

We saw this coming in a post in June. From Fox News (hat tip: Deb):

[emphasis is mine]

A second American killed fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria has been identified as Abdirahmaan Muhumed, of Minneapolis, two sources told Fox News late Wednesday.

KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported that Muhumed was killed in the same battle as Douglas McArthur McCain***, who grew up outside Minneapolis in the town of New Hope and most recently lived in San Diego. The State Department confirmed McCain’s death earlier this week, but spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the U.S. has no independent confirmation of the second American’s death. “We’re looking into it,” she said.

A source told Fox News that Muhumed’s family had been sent a photo of his body from Syria, but had not been formally notified by the State Department.

29-years old and the father of nine! So, guess who will be paying to raise his kids? You!

A profile of Muhumed by Minnesota Public Radio this past June described him as a 29-year-old Somali-American who had been married more than once and was a father of nine children. MPR reported, citing the FBI, that at least 15 young men from the Twin Citites’ Somali-American community had traveled to Syria to join Islamic State, the militant group formerly known as ISIS that has captured wide swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

In a Facebook messages to an MPR reporter, Muhumed wrote “I give up this worldly life for Allah” and “Allah loves those who fight for his cause.” A picture posted on the social network showed Muhumed carrying a Koran in one hand and a rifle in the other.

Federal investigators believe that approximately 100 Americans have traveled to Syria to join Islamist groups. Most of them are disaffected young men targeted by recruitment videos like those one put out by the Somali-based, Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab that praised Minnesota’s “martyrs.”

***McCain had links to this same Somali community. And, the FBI thought they had this Minnesota recruitment under control years ago. As reader Ed said yesterday when he sent us this link about McCain: