Merry Christmas: Islamic flag being held in window of chocolate shop by hostages.
Update December 15th (10:26 a.m. Eastern): Gunman is identified as an Iranian “refugee”, here.
Update December 15th (4:35 a.m. Eastern): NBC News has the latest: some hostages run from shop, fuzzy image of gunman clearly a Muslim, here.
Update 8 pm Eastern time: Live streaming at the Daily Telegraph, here. 13 hostages and they believe one gunman.
‘Pungentpeppers’ received an alert within the last hour from the Herald Sun:
40-50 hostages are being held by gunmen in Sydney. Based on the flag being displayed, the assumption at the moment is that these are Islamic terrorists.
ARMED men are holding 40 to 50 people hostage at a cafe in Martin Place in Sydney.
There are reports that two gunman have taken hostages, some of which are standing with their hands up at the windows in the popular Lindt chocolate shop, which has two or three entrances. There is also a black and white flag being held up in a window. It is believed to be the Black Standard, a jihadist flag.
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There are State Government agencies in the same building and police have shut down traffic in a wide perimeter surrounding the incident. Surrounding buildings are also in lockdown.
Australia, as we have reported on many previous occasions (archive here) has its problems with Muslim immigrants too.
Isn’t it funny (not!) that the headline everywhere on this story calls them “Minneapolis men.” There is surely not one headline with the words ‘Somalis we raised with our tax dollars give us the finger, join Jihad!’
Actually, when you read the story in the Minneapolis Star Tribuneyou can see that one of the two actually succeeded in getting out of the US and is charged in absentia.
Abdi Nur got away and is believed to be in Syria. Taxpayer-funded eye glasses? http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/27478751/2-minnesota-men-arrested-on-isis-related-terror-charges
For me, it is really simple, let them go and then rescind their passports so they cannot return to America—ever! That would really send a message!
What are we going to do with this guy—Abdullahi Yusuf—give him a slap on the wrist, put him in jail (at great expense) for a few years and have this angry wannabe jihadist hanging around Minneapolis?
We have followed this same story for years—they are always “disaffected” youths whether they joined Al-shabaab earlier or ISIS now. And, the trouble will all go away, we are told, when they have more stuff, like youth activities and jobs. There is virtually no mention that it might not even take a “big fish” recruiter but their desire to go help build the Islamic State might be coming directly from their weekly mosque lessons.
I was alerted to the story by seeing Omar Jamal’s face on Fox News earlier this morning. Longtime readers know our Somali ‘Jesse Jackson’ well. See our lengthy archive on news hound Jamal by clicking here. Jamal was at one point convicted of entering the US illegally but nothing ever happened to him.
Two Twin Cities men accused of trying to join a terrorist organization in Syria were charged with conspiracy Tuesday by federal prosecutors, part of a continuing investigation into a pipeline used to recruit Somali-Americans to fight overseas.
Abdi Nur, 20, of Minneapolis, and Abdullahi Yusuf, 18, of Inver Grove Heights, are charged with conspiring to provide support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Yusuf, who was stopped by FBI agents last May while trying to board a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, appeared before a U.S. magistrate in Minneapolis Tuesday afternoon and was ordered held in custody pending a detention-bail hearing on Wednesday. Nur, who was able to board a flight bound for Turkey last spring, is believed to be in Syria.
“These two young men conspired to travel to the Middle East to engage in a campaign of terror in support of a violent ideology,” said Andy Luger, U.S. attorney in Minnesota.
“Since … 2007, our region has lost dozens of disaffected young people to terrorist organizations that would sooner see Somali-Minnesotans die on foreign battlefields than prosper in peace and security in the United States.”
A federal grand jury convened last spring is investigating the ISIL recruitment pipeline. Federal authorities believe about a dozen Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities, including two women, have managed to fly to the Middle East after being provided assurances of safe passage by ISIL contacts.
“This is a global crisis and we will continue our efforts to prevent Americans from joining the fight,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin said Tuesday in Washington.
With Tuesday’s charges, he said, the U.S. Department of Justice has charged more than 15 individuals with offenses “related to the foreign fighter threat in Syria.”
The Obama Justice Department is going to roll out the youth outreach program soon and that will end this foolishness!
For community leader Abdirizak Bihi, the indictments create a sense of urgency as the Justice Department rolls out its youth outreach program.
Bihi said he believes that, in addition to online recruitment videos and social media, there must be recruiters working on the ground in the United States. “There must be somebody here to plant the seeds,” he said.
“The whole community is interested to know who is behind this, who the masterminds are.”
Maybe there is no mastermind, maybe it’s pretty simple—Mohammad told them to do it.
Why are there so many Somalis in Minneapolis? See our 2011 post here, one of our all time top posts. Thank the US State Department and its contractors—Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and World Relief Minnesota!
Abubakar Asiddiq Islamic Center. When you look around for more photos, there were building plans for this mosque that included a gold dome and minarets, wonder where they are? Photo: Columbus Dispatch
Related (update): More mosque problems in Boston, here.
Yesterday we mentioned Columbus as it relates to Somali Islamists recruiting jihadists in Columbus, here.
Demographics! Demographics! Demographics!
And, today I see that Columbus saw another grand opening of a mosque on Saturday to accommodate the growing Muslim population there of mostly Somalis, Iraqis and other Arabs (secondary migrants) who the article in the Columbus Dispatch actually says are moving to Columbus because of the mosques.
Read the article about the mosques here . And, then any of you Ohioans who want to dig down into the Refugee Resettlement program of the US State Department should visit Ohio Refugees Servicesin the Ohio Dept. of Job and Family Services.
Get to know the resettlement agencies (contractors) which include at least three of the big nine: World Relief(Evangelicals), Catholic Charities (USCCB) and subcontractors for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They are every year bringing more Muslim refugees to Columbus.
One of the country’s preeminent experts on the Islamist agenda in America, Patrick Poole, in a recent PJ Media post tells us why the federal “lone wolf” extremist concept is bogus and highlights a case he was personally familiar with involving SomaliDahir Gurey in Columbus, Ohio during the height of the Al-Shabaab recruitment of Somali refugees in America.
Poole: Feds are counting on the “good Islamists” to report on and counter the “bad Islamists.” Photo: http://theunitedwest.org/learning-center/security-briefing-overview/
For background see at least this post from 2008, here at RRW where you will see that the recruitment issue was covered fairly widely but never really broke into the national consciousness as has the recent ISIS recruitment in the US.
I think the final number of Somali refugees who joined Al-Shabaab, thumbing their noses at the good life in America you gave them, was in the 20s (or at least that is the number the feds actually found evidence of).
CVE (countering violent extremism) has been a colossal disaster because it has no roots in reality. It was always intended as a convenient fiction for politicians, bureaucrats, media and academics to avoid talking about the problem of the ideology that supports Islamic terrorism.
There has never once been a recorded case of anyone on the planet swearing their allegiance to the ideology of “violent extremism” and their willingness to kill others and die in the cause of “violent extremism.” It is a null set. There is nothing to counter, which is the whole point. And yet there are academics and institutions who are the beneficiaries of mountains of taxpayer cash to pursue the elusive CVE unicorn.
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One crackpot theory has been that there are good Islamists that we can use against the bad Islamists.This was the keystone of the Obama administration’s Arab Spring policies. And this theory put into practice in Egypt, Libya, Syria and other places has left the Middle East in even worse shape than Obama found it.
Poole’s personal report from Columbus, Ohio about Somali refugee Dahir Gurey:
I’ve seen this “known wolf” problem work first-hand.
When the problem of terror recruitment amongst the U.S. Somali community by al-Shabaab became an issue in 2008 and 2009, there were reports in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, which has the second largest Somali population in the country, that al-Shabaab operative Dahir Gurey was fundraising and recruiting for the terrorist group in the area. He later showed up in Minneapolis.
When we told the FBI about it, the response was that our information couldn’t be accurate, because if it were true they would have heard about it from their local Muslim outreach partners.
Fast forward 18 months: Dahir Gurey was killed in a firefight in Mogadishu operating as a senior al-Shabaab commander. As I reported at the time, local FBI officials had publicly said that there was no known terrorist recruitment in the Columbus area just a week before Gurey’s death. He was featured last year in a recent al-Shabaab recruitment video targeting American recruits. But it’s doubtful our FBI office subsequently asked their Muslim outreach “partners” about it.
UPDATE: A MUSLIM teen shot dead after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers was a member of a radical Islamic group that was raided in Melbourne’s southeast two years ago.
Islamic Council of Victoria secretary Ghaith Krayem said members of Al Furqan told him that the 18-year-old Afghani man, described this morning as a “known terror suspect”, hadn’t been a part of the group for a while.
Al Furqan Information Centre in Springvale South was raided by counter-terrorism squads in 2012. It is thought the teenager came to the authorities attention following the raids.
It comes as police say they had “no choice” but to shoot dead the Narre Warren man after he stabbed the two officers outside Endeavour Hills police station last night.
The Joint Counter Terrorism Taskforce had been monitoring the teenager for a number of months, Victoria Police chief commissioner Ken Lay said.
