If yesterday was Hmong day at RRW, it looks like today is shaping up to be Somali day!
Authorities destroyed evidence immediately following the blast and fire.
Bloggers and researchers atGates of Viennahave produced further documentation that the government has not fully investigated the New Years Day explosion and fire in a Somali apartment building that took several lives. For new readers, our previous posts are here.
Below is blogger Baron Bodissey introducing the latest portion of their investigation which leads to a connection between the building and the Somali terror group al-Shabaab.
The day after last month’s explosion and fire at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, an FBI agent named Greg Boosalis reassured Minnesotans that there was no evidence of terrorist activity in connection with the devastating explosion.
I wondered at the time — and still wonder — how the FBI could be so certain less than forty-eight hours after the blast that no terrorism was involved. The immediate neighborhood of the demolished building is a known hotbed of terrorist activity, and is especially notorious for the recruitment of mujahideen and funds for the jihad being waged by al-Shabaab in Somalia.
As it turns out, the FBI was absolutely derelict in ruling out a terrorist connection with 514 Cedar Avenue South.Our Minnesota correspondent Henrietta has examined property and business license records for the city of Minneapolis, and found a clear trail leading from the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque to the destroyed building, and from there to a pair of convicted money-launderers for al-Shabaab.
Go to GOV for the paper trail which demonstrates the kind of work that investigative reporters used to do, but now is being done by diligent citizens!
Also for new readers, this 2011 post—Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis—is almost every day one of our top most-read posts. Thank the US State Department and its contractors—Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief MN—and the generous welfare supplied by Minnesota taxpayers!
Now they have moved on to bringing the same to St. Cloud—next!
Farhia, deported from Saudi Arabia last month, says she was a domestic worker there for ten years.
I gotta hand it to ‘Human Rights Watch’ which seems to be the only private or public sector organization with the nerve to call-out Saudi Arabia.
The UN (where S.A. sits on the Human Rights Council) has been silent while it has been busy blasting Israelfor its supposed mistreatment (“warehousing”) of Africans. Israel is not deporting thousands weekly and detention in Israel is in a new cushy facility where the would-be asylum seekers can leave for a portion of the day.
Saudi Arabia is clearing out its ethnic diversity! I guess they aren’t buying that multiculturalism is beautiful PR, or that they need to be charitable to their Muslim coreligionists.
(Nairobi) – Saudi authorities have deported more than 12,000 people to Somalia since January 1, 2014, including hundreds of women and children, without allowing any to make refugee claims. Saudi Arabia should end the summary deportations, which risk violating its international obligations not to return anyone to a place where their life or freedom is threatened or where they face other serious harm.
Seven Somalis recently deported from Saudi Arabia told Human Rights Watch researchers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, that the Saudi authorities had detained them for weeks in appalling conditions and some said Saudi security personnel beat them. None had been allowed to speak with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to discuss possible refugee claims before being deported. UNHCR said in mid-January that “south central Somalia is a very dangerous place.” UNHCR also said the Saudi authorities have denied its staff access to detained Somalis in the country.
They don’t want those undocumented foreign workers! Are there jobs Saudis won’t do? Maybe not!
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the Somali Interior Ministry expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 in the coming weeks. The deportations are part of a Saudi campaign to remove undocumented foreign workers.
We will be anxiously waiting for the Obama Administration and the UN to blast those racist unwelcoming Saudis!
Saudi Arabia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have an asylum system.
[….]
Major donors to UNHCR, including the European Union and the United States, should press Saudi Arabia to end its deportations of Somalis.
Meanwhile, another boat load of Somalis was rescued at sea this week and taken to Italy where you know all hell would break loose and the UN would blast those Mediterranean countries if they dared deport even one of the Somali illegal aliens.
Court says Ali Mohamed Ali not a pirate, now seeking asylum in US! http://thesomalian.com/us-dropping-case-against-man-accused-of-piracy/
Update February 19th: Writers at NRO blast Holder for botching this case, here.
The case against a middle-aged English-speaking “pirate” ended and now the question becomes, can Ali Mohamed Ali get asylum in the US thus setting up the problematic scenario that the Guantanamo Bay prisoners have also posed for out legal system. Try them in the US and if they aren’t convicted, then what?
The failed prosecution of an alleged Somali pirate — and the fact that that failure could leave him living freely, and permanently, inside U.S. borders — is highlighting anew the risks of trying terror suspects in American courts.
Just a few weeks ago, Ali Mohamed Ali was facing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence in a 2008 shipjacking off the coast of Yemen — an incident much like the one dramatized in the film “Captain Phillips.” Now, the Somali native is in immigration detention in Virginia and seeking permanent asylum in the United States.
Ali, who was accused of piracy for acting as a translator and negotiator for a crew of pirates, was partially acquitted by a jury in November after a trial in Washington. Prosecutors initially vowed a retrial but decided last month to drop the rest of the case against him.
That’s just the kind of situation that opponents of U.S. criminal trials for Al Qaeda suspects caught abroad have long feared: The government falls short at trial — and the courts eventually order an accused terror figure freed to live legally among Americans.
“It’s a trial, not a play. You don’t know how it’s going to end,” said Cully Stimson, a former military prosecutor and defense official now at The Heritage Foundation. “Justice has all sorts of twists and turns. … It really has to be thought through at the highest level of government before we take action to bring someone here.”
One current federal terrorism prosecutor said the Ali case and the potential for his eventual release is another reason why foreign Al Qaeda suspects picked up overseas should not be brought to the United States but should instead be detained at Guantánamo or some other facility.
“It’s a significant risk … to say, ‘Oh well, we’ll just turn him over to the immigration service’” if a criminal case falls apart, said the prosecutor, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “You can’t count on the justice system working out just the way you want it to.”
Even some proponents of closing Guantánamo and relying on American civilian courts to prosecute alleged terrorists agree that the collapse of the Ali case highlights the potential downside of bringing suspected terrorists to the United States for trial.
Read the next sectionabout other cases and the pitfalls. Then back to Ali’s case near the end of the article. This was a dumb move by someone in the Obama Justice Department! Ali had a good claim that he was a hostage negotiator, an official in Somalia, and seems to have been an unlikely pirate! No, not getting soft on Somalis! Just something stinks about this whole government case!
The Ali case went off the rails for the government in the face of his claims that he was solely trying to resolve the hijacking of the M/V CEC Future — an event in which 13 crew members were held hostage for 71 days. While prosecutors contended Ali was “every bit as responsible” as those who carried weapons, the middle-aged English speaker, who had spent more than two decades in the United States, may not have seemed like an eye-patch-wearing or AK-47-toting type. [What he was doing in the US for 20 years (refugee?) and not becoming a citizen is a question I would like answered.—ed]
By the time of his arrest in 2011, Ali was serving as education minister for an autonomous area in Somalia. Officials lured him back to the United States by inviting him to attend an education conference. He was arrested when he landed at Dulles International Airport.
….we are going to continue to turn boats away from our shores, said Immigration Minister Morrison!
I wasn’t planning on writing a second post on Australia today (see first one here), but when I saw this photo, I wanted you to see it!
What the heck is this—a strategy session with a white ‘community organizer’ where Somali men, at a hotel in Indonesia, plan their next attempt to break into Australia!
If they want asylum, ask for it in Indonesia, a safe Muslim country! International law requires legitimate asylum seekers to ask for asylum in the first safe country they reach!
This is the caption published with the photo: “Somali immigrants gather at a hotel where Indonesian authorities have billeted asylum seekers hoping to reach Australia. (AFP/JEMS)”
Here is the story that accompanies the photo, from Reuters:
SYDNEY — Australia’s government on Friday acknowledged its navy breached Indonesian territorial sovereignty several times as part of its controversial operations to stop boats carrying would-be asylum seekers from entering Australian waters.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said he had been informed earlier this week about the “inadvertent breaches” and immediately informed the Indonesian navy.
Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, the officer in charge of “Operation Sovereign Borders,” said the breaches occurred on multiple days but declined to provide further details.
“We deeply regret these events and have offered an apology,” Morrison told reporters. “However the Australian government remains committed to continuing to implement the policies to stop the boats.”
Most of those they are pushing back are from: Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.
Update January 6: Reader Petzix sent us the website ‘UN Watch’ with a story on the ten worst things the UN did in 2013, check it out here. Ha! Ha! Ha! Saudi Arabia elected to the UN Human Rights Council!
They just ship them back and drop ’em off in Mogadishu. Meanwhile the UN bullies Bulgaria to be more welcoming to Syrian Muslims and berates Burma for being unwelcoming to Rohingya Muslims, not a critical peep though about Muslim Saudi Arabia being unwelcoming to fellow Muslims. The double standard is stunning! No ‘diversity is beautiful’ for the Saudis!
Bye! Bye!
Every time I see one of these stories I’m reminded of the UNHCR saying in 2009 that the tradition of welcoming refugees comes out of the Islamic faith! From Mareeg:
Mareeg.com-More than 200 Somalis deported from Saudi Arabia have reached Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle Airport on Friday.The people deported mostly young men and women were members of Somali immigrants who have travelled to the Kingdom of Saudi Srabia to seek better life and work following the civil wars in their homeland.
Some of those deported back to Mogadishu have said they were tortured and mistreated by the Saudi police while some of the people were detained for more than one month.
The country’s civil aviation authoroties said that more than two thousands Somalis were deported back to the country since September.
Just imagine for a moment the worldwide wailing and crying if the US deported 2,000 Somalis in three months! Photo is from this story—we will give Somalia money, but we don’t want your people! (the article doesn’t say that, I do).
