Minneapolis: arrests made in case of Youth traficking; report: PICS

[General Duke]

Somali-born Roosevelt grad pleads guilty to terror acts

 

A Roosevelt High School graduate, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, has pleaded guilty in Minnesota to terrorism-related charges in connection with the disappearances of dozens of U.S. Somali youths, some of whom turned up fighting with suspected terrorists in Somalia and at least one of whom became a suicide bomber, according to court documents and interviews.

 

 

Court records show Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, 25, a 2002 Roosevelt High School graduate and a former economics student at Eastern Washington University, traveled to Somalia to train with Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based radical Islamist group that last year was designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

 

His court-appointed attorney said Isse was likely being recruited as a possible suicide bomber.

 

He pleaded guilty to a single count of providing material support to terrorists — which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence — and has been cooperating with federal investigators in what the FBI has said in an ongoing investigation.

 

His mother, in an interview earlier this week, said Isse was a "good boy" who fell in with the wrong crowd while in Minneapolis.

 

Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, also has spoken with Isse's family and said Isse was approached by jihad recruiters at the Abubakar as-Saddique mosque, the largest Somali mosque in Minneapolis.

 

"These people came here and took these boys right under the noses of the FBI," he said.

 

Isse and another man, Salah Ahmed, were named in an indictment unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, part of what the FBI has said is a widespread and ongoing investigation into alleged terrorist recruitment among Somalis living in the U.S., including Seattle.

 

Federal prosecutors say Isse went to Somalia with another man in December 2007, that he stayed in Al-Shabaab safe houses, was given an AK-47 and helped construct an Al-Shabaab training camp.

 

After a couple of weeks, however, he decided not to stay and he and another Minnesota man left the camp. Isse stayed in Somalia to visit relatives. He was arrested at Sea-Tac Airport in March when he returned.

 

 

Paul Engh, Isse's Minneapolis attorney, wrote in documents that Isse "will not be the last defendant indicted" because of the recruitment done by those he trusted.

 

"Recruiting young men ... to blow themselves up while killing the innocent at a crowded marketplace is a definition of evil," Engh wrote in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce restrictions on his client while in jail. "And this recruitment happened at a place of worship."

 

Isse's mother, a devout Muslim who spoke from a tidy apartment in Southwest Seattle, said Isse attended Roosevelt High School and was never very religious.

[General Duke]

Two More Deaths

The unsealing of the indictments came on the heels of a gloomier development. As the fighting has stepped up in Somalia, there came word over the weekend that two more of the young men who had joined al-Shabab from Minneapolis had been killed. Jamal Bana and Zarkaria Maruf were killed during clashes between al-Shabab and government forces in Mogadishu.

 

Bana's mother first learned her son was dead when she saw photographs of his body on the Internet. Maruf's mother received a phone call from Somalia that said her son had been killed. Then, on Tuesday, both families received e-mails from someone who claimed to be representing al-Shabab. The e-mails said the young men had died as martyrs and good Muslims. The writer told the parents not to be sad because their sons were now in paradise.

 

Bihi, the community leader, says the latest deaths have been really hard. "Especially for the mom of Jamal Bana," he says. "It is also very devastating for the whole community. Those two deaths are making families who are missing the recruited kids -- it is making them less optimistic" that they will return home alive.

 

Bana and Maruf are the third and fourth youths from Minneapolis to die in Somalia since the recruitment effort began. Last October, a young man named Shirwa Ahmed blew himself up in a suicide bombing. Last month, Bihi's nephew, 17-year-old Burhan Hassan, was killed in Mogadishu.What is clear is that after nearly a year of waiting for the FBI to capture whoever is behind the recruitment, the community is eager for the agency to move in and make arrests.

 

The concern is that if those arrests don't happen soon, more of their sons will go missing.

 

Source: NPR

[General Duke]

Indictments Stir Fear, Relief For Somali-Americans

By Dina Temple-RastonMorning Edition,

July 15, 2009 ·

 

The Somali-American community in Minneapolis has greeted the news of indictments in a long-running investigation into the disappearance of young Somalis from the city's neighborhoods with a mixture of relief and fear.

 

The relief comes from a sense that the indictments mean authorities are close to revealing who they believe convinced the young men to leave the United States, go to Somalia and fight alongside members of a terrorist group called al-Shabab. The fear grows out of an uncertainty about who might have been behind it.

 

"We are scared that the recruiters can be anywhere in our community and we don't know them," said one community leader, Abdirizak Bihi. "The parents are not sleeping. They are on the phone, on the Internet, scanning and monitoring what is happening in Somalia. It has been devastating for the families of the missing kids, and it has been very devastating for the whole community. These kids have been tricked into going to Mogadishu and fighting."

 

According to the FBI, more than two dozen young Somali-American men have left the Twin Cities in the past two years and joined the ranks of al-Shabab, a Somali militia battling the transitional government. The group is on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations, and intelligence officials say it has forged increasingly close ties to al-Qaida.

 

That's part of the reason why some law enforcement officials are calling this case the most significant terrorism investigation in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.

[General Duke]

Indictments Unsealed

 

The indictments unsealed this week raised almost as many questions as they answered. While the grand jury indicted two men -- Abdifatah Isse and Salah Ahmed -- it is clear that they are not the main targets in the FBI's investigation. The two men, both Somali-Americans in their 20s, are charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy. Ahmed was also charged with two counts of lying to the FBI.

 

But the indictment is thin on details about what the two men are actually accused of doing. It is only three pages long and does not discuss anything about the recruitment of young Somali-Americans.

 

The terrorist organization the two men were allegedly helping is never mentioned by name. And what the conspiracy was, exactly, is also never spelled out -- although there is a vague reference to a flight one of the two men took from Minneapolis to Somalia.

 

Government officials tell NPR that this week's indictments are just the first in a series of charges that will come out of Minneapolis in the coming days and weeks. The grand jury is still meeting, and sources tell NPR that there could be as many as six more indictments coming.

 

What may be most interesting is the way the Somali-American community has reacted to news of the indictments. In terrorism cases like those of the Lackawanna Six or the Fort Dix suspects, the community has typically rushed to the defense of those linked to terrorism. They say the FBI has accused the wrong people, or that they are being scapegoated.

 

Not this time. The latest indictments have the Somali-American community in Minneapolis virtually punching the air."Everybody is talking about it," says Bihi, who has combed the coffee shops around the Cedar-Riverside community where the Somalis gather to gauge public opinion. "I am seeing support for law enforcement. I am seeing support for the indictments, and also I am seeing tremendous support for the families."

[General Duke]

Report: Suspect in Somalis case cooperating

1 day ago

 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — One of two Somali men indicted in Minneapolis for providing support to terrorists pleaded guilty months ago and has been cooperating with the FBI's investigation.

 

That's according to court documents examined by the Star Tribune. The documents were public for a time Tuesday, then later sealed.

 

A motion from Abdifatah Yusuf Isse's attorney says he and other Somalis were recruited at a house of worship to fight in Somalia. Prosecutors say Isse admitted that he trained with terrorists in Somalia and helped build a terrorist training camp.

 

Isse's attorney didn't return a phone call from The Associated Press, and the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment.

 

Up to 20 Twin Cities men of Somali descent disappeared over the last two years.