Thread: Feds charge another Somali youth with supporting ISIL terrorists

Feds charge another Somali youth with supporting ISIL terrorists

Charges say he led group planning to travel to Syria.

By Dan Browning and Mary Lynn Smith Star Tribune
DECEMBER 9, 2015 — 11:32PM



ANOKA COUNTY JAILAbdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, of Eagan, was arrested on Wednesday.
Federal charges were filed Wednesday in Minneapolis against another young Somali man from the Twin Cities, alleging that he conspired to provide material support to the terrorist organization known as ISIL.

The criminal complaint alleges that Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, of Eagan, was among a group of 10 men from the Twin Cities’ Somali-American community who began planning around April 2014 to travel to Syria to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Three of those men have already pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges, five are scheduled to start trial in May and one is in Syria.

Warsame was arrested Wednesday and is being held in the Anoka County jail.

Minnesota is believed to have produced more would-be foreign fighters than any other state, but it also has a Muslim community that’s exceptionally engaged with efforts to counter extremism. Word that another Twin Cities Somali-American was being charged spread quickly Wednesday night in Minneapolis.

“This is deju vu all over again,” said community leader Sadik Warfa. “The safety of this country is a concern for all of us. … We’re hoping this case is the last, and we can all move forward where these kind of things don’t happen.”

But Warfa said he wants to know why Warsame is being charged now: “Did the government get new evidence?”

Authorities offered no comment on why Warsame was arrested eight months after his fellow defendants.

According to the complaint against Warsame, he was part of a group of men who played basketball and watched propaganda videos at a local mosque. The men aspired to travel to Syria and fight with ISIL. He and others who planned to get to Syria via Mexico met throughout the spring of 2014, according to the complaint, which is based on a sworn statement by FBI special agent Vadym Vinetsky.

Warsame eventually became the leader of the group and encouraged those with passports and money to travel to Syria by the end of the upcoming summer. The complaint alleges that he provided $200 to help one of the men expedite a passport application. And according to the U.S. Department of State’s Passport Office, Warsame applied on April 16, 2014, for his own passport on an expedited basis.

On his written application, Warsame said he needed a passport for a July family trip to Britain. But in the passport office, he said it was for a family trip to Australia and that he needed the passport soon — “the same day if possible,” according to the complaint.

His application was denied on the grounds of insufficient supporting documentation. Vinetsky wrote that he believes that kept Warsame from trying to leave for Syria in the spring. He did, however, obtain a passport in August.

Vinetsky wrote that Warsame told his alleged co-conspirators in April 2015 that he was planning to go to East Africa on a family trip, then break away to travel to Syria or Somalia. He said he’d go first to Somalia to join the terror organization Al-Shabab, expecting that it would join forces with ISIL. If that happened, he reasoned that he might not need to travel to Syria, Vinetsky wrote, “because ISIL would then be in Somalia.”

A timeline laid out in the complaint alleges that Warsame accompanied some of the other men to a library in May to print out the travel itinerary for Abdullahi Yusuf, who had plane reservations for May 28, 2014, to travel from the Twin Cities to Istanbul, Turkey.

FBI agents prevented Yusuf from boarding his flight. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in February and agreed to testify for the government.

The complaint alleges that Warsame later provided ISIL contact information to a 21-year-old Minneapolis man who arrived in Turkey on June 9 and that in November, while staying in Chicago with his father, Warsame was in phone contact with Twin Cities men who tried in November 2014 to leave for Syria. By early 2015, the men revived plans to go to Syria via Mexico. Warsame, who was back in the Twin Cities, participated in several of these conversations. Some were recorded by a man who was cooperating with the FBI.

Warfa said his community will redouble efforts to send a message to the youth: “They are better if they stay here at home, get a decent education and embrace American life.”
With these latest charges against Warsame, Warfa said he hopes that his community won’t be “victimized twice.”

“Islamophobia is a real concern within our community,” he said, noting a recent uptick in anti-Muslim talk. “If someone in the Somali community has done wrong, the legal system will take care of it. But cases such as this shouldn’t reflect on the entire community.”

http://www.startribune.com/feds-char...sts/361354001/

See, he's from Somalia, not Syria or Iraq. Politicians who say "well, maybe ban refugees from these places, but all Muslims from everywhere" are just stupid. Muslims are everywhere, and everywhere there are Muslims, there are Radial Islamic Terrorists. So as Trump says, until our "representatives" can figure out what is going on, then we need a ban on Muslim immigration, not diplomats, diplomats are not immigrants, not business visitors and athletes or movie stars or others who come here on legitimate business, they are not immigrants unless they want to relocate here in which case, they must be vetted or be eligible for some type of exception. Trump has made this all very clear for anyone paying attention.

What is the term for those who hate Americans? Ameriphobes? There is a much greater % of Ameriphobes within the Muslim culture than there are Islamophobes within ours. Protecting yourself against those who hate you or wish you harm is not Islamophobia or Xenophobia, nor is it racism or bigotry, it's just common sense self-defense.

December 28, 2015

In the latest disturbing example of the government’s failure to root out foreign Islamic terrorists a young Somali man, who bragged about building rockets that could strike landing planes, worked at a major U.S. airport as a baggage handler.

This month the Somali, 20-year-old Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, was charged with conspiracy to help the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). He became the 10th Somali man to be charged with terrorism in Minnesota in a very short period of time. Judicial Watch wrote about the case a few weeks ago and linked the federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Warsame was among a group of men from the Twin Cities’ large Somali community who planned to travel to Syria to fight with ISIS, according to the feds. The men gathered at a local mosque to watch videos glorifying religious violence and Warsame paid $200 to have a third party get him an expedited passport to travel abroad to join fellow jihadists, the complaint states. Three of the accused have already pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, one is in Syria and five are scheduled to be tried next year.

Now a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent involved in the case reveals that Warsame once worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as a baggage handler. Local media outlets published a national newswire report on the FBI special agent’s testimony during a recent court hearing. The federal agent’s testimony featured breathtaking information that’s not included in the criminal complaint, including the fact that Warsame worked as a baggage handler at the airport “with access to the airplanes.” The FBI agent also testified about secret recordings made by a bureau informant in which Warsame says he could build “homemade rockets” that could reach 2,000 feet, enough to strike a descending plane.

The security lapse is astounding considering that a decade and a half ago Islamic terrorists used airplanes that had departed from major U.S. airports as weapons of mass destruction. The reality is however, that security is unbelievably lax for airport baggage handlers and other facility employees. The severity of the problem was highlighted earlier this year when the feds busted a huge, multistate operation in which baggage handlers at a northern California airport were transporting illegal drugs across the country. The baggage handlers circumvented six airport security measures and provided marijuana to outbound passengers for distribution in cities throughout the United States, according to the federal complaint which is largely redacted. Incredibly, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has determined that full screening of airport employees would not lower the risk to the public.

Around the same time that the alarming details in the Wasame case started trickling out, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the monstrous agency created to prevent a repeat of 9/11, launched a “review” of the visa program that permitted the San Bernardino terrorist to enter the U.S. In an announcement made public earlier this month, DHS reveals that it has formed a “working group to scrutinize each step” of the now famous K-1 “fiancé” visa process. The goal is to improve background checks and better scrutinize visa adjudication practices worldwide to “ensure that the highest level of consistent standards is being met.”

A few days later the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee confirmed that immigration officials did not thoroughly vet the San Bernardino terrorist, Tashfeen Malik, a native of Pakistan. In fact, an immigration official reviewing her application requested evidence that Malik had met the criteria to obtain the fiancé visa but it was never provided and the document was approved anyways. In order to obtain K-1 fiancée visa, it is required to demonstrate proof that the U.S. citizen and foreign national have met in person. However, Malik’s immigration file does not show sufficient evidence for this requirement.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...r-u-s-airport/