Thread: Analysis: Somali terror suspects multiplying in U.S.

SOMALIA AND AL-QAEDA

Analysis: Somali terror suspects multiplying in U.S.

By Jim Kouri
Sunday, November 28, 2010

In a statement that came as no surprise to U.S. security and law enforcement experts in January 2010, the Somali-based Muslim terrorist group Al-Shabaab announced that its fighters are aligned with al-Qaeda’s global terrorism campaign.

U.S. law enforcement nailed a Somali national after he attempted to blow up an improvised explosive device at a Christmas tree lighting celebration at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon.

FBI agents and Portland cops thwarted the teenager’s plot to blow up a van full of explosives at a crowded venue. According to a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police’s Terrorism Committee, the Somali teen’s IED was a fake device supplied by undercover agents and civilians were never in danger.

The terror suspect, 19-year old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was captured on late Friday afternoon after dialing a cellular phone he believed would detonate a large explosion at the Christmas ceremony. At that point, FBI agents and local police officers swarmed the suspect.

The FBI report that described the counterterrorism investigation reveals that the suspect plotted the attack for months, going as far as mailing bomb components to FBI undercover agents who told Mohamud they would build a deadly explosive device for him to use in his terror plot.

In their report, FBI agents stated that the Somali teenager was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could be killed, and that he could back out, but he told agents: “Since I was 15 I thought about all this;â€

Canada learned their lesson about Somalis the hard way. They left thousands of them in the country and once settled and employed they would send money back home to support terrorist groups. There have been articles about that for the last year or so in Ontario.

A huge web of gang crime
Sex ring was part of financial network far beyond the Twin Cities.

By DAVID CHANEN and JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune staff writers

Last update: November 10, 2010 - 8:30 AM

The four girls allegedly forced into prostitution by Somali gangs in Minneapolis were just a small part of a wide-ranging investigation into the gangs' alleged criminal enterprises.

The case against the Somali Mafia and Somalia Outlaws gangs shows investigators have been tracking an extensive financial crime operation involving hundreds of potential victims spread far beyond the Somali communities in the Twin Cities, Nashville and Columbus, Ohio.

The gangs are accused of car theft, safe cracking and a brazen break-in at a police impound lot to retrieve counterfeit credit cards and a device used to make them.

Van Vincent, assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, is prosecuting the case. But he refused to characterize the size or scope of the crime network. "The indictment is self-explanatory," he said, noting that 29 people have been charged with a variety of crimes.

In court Tuesday, a pair of suspects who had been ordered released by a magistrate judge were ordered kept in custody by a federal judge in Nashville. Vincent said Tuesday that his office has asked the court to keep all the suspects in custody. Whether that happens will not be known until the remaining suspects appear in court in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The 29 people whose alleged crimes were made public Monday are accused of running an interstate human trafficking ring that sold Somali girls as young as 12 into prostitution. Local Somalis triggered the investigation in 2007 when they raised concerns about young girls and gang activity. The investigation was led by members of the Gerald Vick Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes officers from local and federal agencies.

About 18 months ago, one of the victims mentioned in the indictment was found in the Nashville area during a traffic stop. On Monday, agents from various federal agencies and local departments arrested at least 25 of the people indicted.

But a source with knowledge of the investigation said the trafficking charges are just a small part of a potential international criminal enterprise. The case, based out of Nashville, also alleges credit card fraud, burglary and tampering with witnesses.

Employing a strategy they've used to dismantle other gangs in Minneapolis, officers from various jurisdictions shared intelligence to help build cases against the entire gang, not just individual members. Federal conspiracy and trafficking charges could bring longer prison sentences than state charges, and alleged financial crimes made it easier to reel in more gang members as part of the overall criminal conspiracy.

In fact, several federal officials said Tuesday that it is not unusual for investigators to use information regarding one set of crimes to topple an operation known for committing a variety of other offenses.

U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones, while refusing to comment about this case, said federal investigators and prosecutors often look for a "federal hook" as a way to bring down gangs. Evidence that criminal organizations broke federal law or crossed state lines -- such as mail fraud, cyber crimes, tax evasion or conspiracy -- can give investigators a way to connect the dots and bring federal prosecution to bear.

"You get the makings of an Al Capone scenario," Jones said of the gangster who was finally brought to justice for tax evasion. "We go wherever the facts and the law lead us."

Michael Feinberg, special agent in charge of the local office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-Homeland Security Investigation, said human trafficking cases often include other crimes.

For example, he said, federal agents investigating a case involving Eastern European women forced to work as strippers or prostitutes in Detroit could, in the course of their work, follow a money trail to other financial crimes committed by their handlers. In that way, a human trafficking case can help topple an even bigger criminal enterprise.

"If we start a case down one path and it leads us to another charge, we take whatever gives us our strongest case," he said. "Human trafficking can be difficult cases to prove. So if we can get a hold of other charges, that is an avenue we will take as well. We will do whatever we can to break up a ring."

ICE agents were involved in the Somali gang investigation, but Feinberg declined to discuss details of the case.

Thefts, fraud

The 59-page indictment against the Somali Outlaws and Somali Mafia details years of financial fraud throughout the Midwest and Nashville. In 2006, four people allegedly took $120,000 in cash, $30,000 in payroll checks, and $4,000 in phone cards from a safe at a Nashville business and transported the cash back to Minnesota. Gang members also pulled off a series of burglaries in Columbus, Ohio, allegedly reaping more than $5,000 in cash and merchandise.

Gang members allegedly produced counterfeit credit cards and used them at Wal-Marts in the Twin Cities and large shopping sprees in Kansas City, Mo. They allegedly possessed more than 500 credit card numbers on a laptop and conspired to break into the Nashville police impound lot in to retrieve counterfeit credit cards and a device used to make them.

The indictment also accuses gang members of possessing 166 separate credit card account numbers from Chase credit card holders, resulting in a total loss of $231,000 between February 2009 and August 2010. One of the suspects allegedly obtained the numbers through his work at a Holiday Inn in the Twin Cities. As a result, the U.S. attorney's office has moved for $231,000 to be forfeited to the government in this case.

Task forces tackle gangs

Some gang prosecutions have failed in the past because participating agencies needed to work by different sets of rules, or county and federal prosecutors fought over who handled cases. Multi-jurisdictional task forces -- that include local, state and federal officers -- allow charges to be filed for crimes outside a particular city or county.

And the approach allows investigators to prosecute the alleged crimes using the laws -- state or federal -- that they deem most effective.

Among other things, the task force uses past criminal histories to help build new cases against multiple gang members instead of trying to nab individuals hanging around on street corners. The task force targets people who always seem to be around violent crimes, but "are still out there" because investigators lacked physical evidence or witnesses were afraid to come forward, police said.

David Chanen • 612-673-4465 James Walsh • 612-673-7428

http://www.startribune.com/local/107008 ... nchO7DiUsT


An Interesting Post
How did we get so many Somali refugees—the numbers are telling
Posted by acorcoran on September 10, 2008

Update November 13th, 2010: This post continues to be one of the most visited posts at RRW. I have just now updated the numbers for FY 2010 below which ended on September 30th.

I finally got around to something I’ve been promising to do for weeks (months!) and that is go over all the records of Somali resettlement numbers.

I do want to remind readers that these numbers are only for the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department. We just had a commenter to another post suggesting that the numbers are much larger then the government statistics indicate for immigration to the US. I don’t doubt that. But, again, these are the numbers that the Office of Refugee Resettlement must present to Congress each year for that special category “refugees.â€

Who was responsible and why? I don’t know. I do know that African resettlement was not a priority until, according to a report by Heidi Boas which I mentioned here last year, the Congressional Black Caucus got involved:

The self serving Congressional Black Caucus and Hispanic Caucus operate under the same mantra; increase their numbers by any means possible, including illegally and from nations that are hotbeds for terrorism. It doesn't matter if it destroys the country, just keep bringing them in. That’s the agenda!

83,991 people named Mohamed.
These guys really need to get real jobs, then they'd be to tired to do anything else! Oh! damn that's right illegals have all those, sorry!
Am I just stupid,because I don't understand why?