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Feds: “Significant Progress” In Terror Case
November 23, 2009 - 6:31 PM | by: Mike Levine
Touting “significant progress” in a “critical investigation,” federal authorities on Monday announced charges against eight people in a long-running probe into how dozens of young Americans were recruited to join an Al Qaeda-linked group in Somalia.
Although several indictments in the case were previously unsealed, the question of who helped persuade – and pay for – more than 20 young men from the Minneapolis area to train and fight with the group had remained largely unanswered.
Court documents unsealed Monday explicitly accuse three men, Cabdulaahi A. Faarax, Abdiweli Y. Isse and Mahamud S. Omar, of encouraging others in the Minneapolis area to join al-Shabaab, which is fighting to establish a Muslim state in Somalia and recently pledged its allegiance to Usama bin Laden.
“The recruitment of young people from Minneapolis and other U.S. communities to fight for extremists in Somalia has been the focus of intense investigation for many months,” Justice Department Assistant Attorney General Kris said in a statement. “Those who sign up to fight or recruit for al-Shabaab’s terror network should be aware that they may well end up as defendants in the United States.”
In late 2007, according to the Justice Department, Faarax and others met at a mosque in Minneapolis, where they called associates in Somalia to discuss the need for more Minnesota men to join the fight.
The Justice Department did not identify which mosque Faarax and the others visited. However, a source told FOX News that some of the defendants identified Monday have ties to the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in St. Paul, one of the Minneapolis area's most popular mosques.
Many of the men recruited to join al-Shabaab attended the Abubakar mosque, and it has become a subject of speculation among those who’ve been watching the case.
A call to the mosque was answered by a machine, and efforts to reach the mosque's director were not successful. However, in March, the mosque posted a statement online saying any suggestions it played a role in recruitment of young men to Somalia were untrue and "unfair."
"Abubakar Center didn't recruit, finance, or otherwise facilitate in any way, shape, or form the travel of those youth," the statement said.
Faarax’s efforts allegedly went beyond his time at the mosque. At a Minneapolis home later in 2007, he appealed to others to fight “jihad” in Somalia like he had earlier in the year, the Justice Department said.
Since that time, more than a dozen more men – all but one of them of Somali descent – left the Minneapolis area for Somalia, according to the Justice Department.
Isse allegedly raised funds for recruits to travel to Somalia. He told members of the Minneapolis community that any contributions would help send young men to Saudi Arabia to study the Koran, the Justice Department said.
In October, Faarax and Isse were secretly charged via criminal complaint with conspiring to kill or injure people outside the United States.
Three days earlier, a car carrying Faarax and four others was stopped for speeding by a police officer outside Las Vegas, but the officer determined there was no legal basis to detain Faarax, even though Faarax was on a terrorism watchlist.
Two days after that, a taxicab dropped Faarax and Isse at a border crossing along the U.S.-Mexican border, according to court documents.
Both are now believed to be outside the United States, and authorities are trying to track them down.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities are working to extradite Omar, a Somali citizen with U.S. resident status, to the United States.
He was secretly indicted in August for allegedly funding travel from Minneapolis to Somalia for young men to train with and fight for al-Shabaab. Law enforcement authorities in the Netherlands arrested Omar earlier this month.
Indictments against five others -- Ahmed Ali Omar, Khalid Abshir, Zakaria Maruf, Mohamed Hassan and Mustafa Salat – were also unsealed Monday.
They have been charged with several terrorism-related offenses, including providing material support to terrorists. All five are believed to be outside the United States and have yet to be arrested.
More indictments in the case are expected, a source said.
The latest charges were announced at a joint FBI-U.S. Attorney's Office press conference in Minneapolis on Monday afternoon.
Until Monday, authorities had remained mostly quiet about the progress of their investigation, as indictments related to the case were sporadically being unsealed.
In July, FOX News first reported that a federal grand jury in Minneapolis had indicted three Somali-American men in the case. Two have since pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists, and one has admitted that he lied to investigators.
More recently, another man was indicted for lying to FBI agents, but he has pleaded not guilty. And last week, one more Minnesota man was indicted on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
Somalia has had no stable government since 1991, when dictator Siad Barre was ousted from power. A newer secular government has had trouble keeping Muslim militants at bay, and in 2006 fighting with al-Shabaab intensified after Western-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia.
The U.S. government labeled al-Shabaab a terrorist organization last year. U.S. officials worry that if al-Shabaab prevails in Somalia, the war-torn country could turn into a haven for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
In October 2008, 27-year-old college student Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis became "the first known American suicide bomber" when he blew himself up in Somalia, killing dozens, according to the FBI.
Since then at least four more men from Minneapolis have been killed in Somalia, according to their families.
In response to Monday’s announcement, the FBI agent in charge of the Minneapolis field office noted that the actions of a few should not be seen as representative of the entire Somali community.
“I emphasize the sole focus of our efforts in this matter has been the criminal conduct of a small number of mainly Somali-American individuals and not the broader Somali-American community itself,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Ralph Boelter said in a statement. “[The Somali community] has consistently expressed deep concern about this pattern of recruitment activity in support of al-Shabaab.”
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