| Home Front: WoT | ||
| 4 Somalis in U.S. guilty of supporting terrorism | ||
| 2013-02-23 | ||
| A Somali terror leader implored his fellow countryman in California to send money 'to finance jihad," triggering a chain of events that ended with four convictions. U.S. government agents recorded dozens of such calls a few years ago, according to the Department of Justice. And on Friday, a jury found four Somali nationals guilty of supporting terrorism in their native country. The verdict came after prosecutors played the recordings to jurors in a San Diego federal court during weeks of trial. The four, who included an imam and a cab driver, had raised $10,000 and wired it to the Islamist terrorist group Al-Shabaab, according to the original indictment. Cab driver Basaaly Saeed Moalin had many phone conversations with former Al-Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayrow, before a U.S. missile strike ended the latter's life in May 2008. Investigators from the FBI, Homeland Security and a San Diego anti-terror agency recorded dozens of them. Federal prosecutors filed charges in November 2011. The group pleaded not guilty. But the recordings convinced the jurors otherwise. The money wasn't coming fast enough for Ayrow, who implored Moalin in at least one recorded call to hurry it up. "You are running late with the stuff," Ayrow told him. "Send some, and something will happen." Ayrow pushed the cab driver to get his local imam to come up with some funds. Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud ran the City Heights mosque in San Diego, which many in the Somali community attended. Together with a second cab driver, Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, and an employee at a money transfer company, Issa Doreh, they raised the cash and wired it to Al-Shabaab , the Justice Department said. It wasn't the only favor Moalin did for the terror group. Moalin had kept a house in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, one of the world's most embattled cities at the time. He offered to let the terrorists use it, the Department of Justice said. "After you bury your stuff deep in the ground, you would, then, plant trees on top," Moalin told Ayrow in a recorded conversation. Prosecutors argued he was "offering a place to hide weapons." For months, they talked about "bullets, bombing and Jihad," said U. S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy. After hearing the recordings, the jury no longer bought the defendants' explanation that they "were actually conversations about their charitable efforts for orphans and schools," she said. Sentencing is scheduled for May 16. Al-Shabaab is one of about 50 groups that have been designated by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.
Most of the 87,000 Somalis living in the United States have arrived through US-sponsored refugee resettlement programs. The largest two US Somali communities, and the sites of most of the arrests in the crackdown, are in San Diego and Minnesota.
| ||
| Link |
| Home Front: WoT | |
| US woman charged with aiding al-Shabaab | |
| 2010-11-17 | |
| [Geo TV] A Caliphornia woman has been charged with aiding the Shebab, a Somalia-based militia with ties to Al-Qaeda, the US Department of Justice said Monday. Nima Ali Yusuf, 24, was jugged on November 12 and has been charged with "conspiracy to provide material support to hard boyz (and) conspiracy to provide material support to al-Shabaab," US attorney Laura Duffy said in a statement, using an alternative spelling of the group's name. The San Diego resident has also been charged with "making false statements to a government agency in a matter involving international terrorism," Duffy added, without providing further details. The first two charges each carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a 250,000 dollar (180,000 euro) fine. The false statements charge carries a maximum penalty of eight years and a 250,000 dollar fine. Yusuf will be held without bail until a detention hearing on Thursday. The Shebab, a radical Islamist insurgency bent on toppling the US-backed government in Mogadishu, grabbed credit for July 11 suicide kabooms in Uganda that killed 76 people. Earlier this month three San Diego residents were indicted on similar charges of providing funding and other support for the Shebab.
| |
| Link |