The Star Tribune headline refers to “Somali terror,” but there is nothing specifically or inherently Somali about it. After all, “those recruited by Faarax were reportedly trained by Somali, Arab and Western instructors.” Now why would Arabs and Westerners care to train people to fight in Somalia? Obviously the answer is Islam, Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacism — the motivating factor that the mainstream media and government dare not name.
“First man is sentenced in local Somali terror probe,” by James Walsh for the Star Tribune, July 17 (thanks to Benedict):
A federal judge on Friday sentenced the first man out of more than a dozen charged in a sweeping counterterrorism investigation that has spanned more than two years and several continents and focused a spotlight on the Twin Cities Somali community.
Abdow Munye Abdow, 26, was a relatively small player in a major drama involving the recruitment of 20 or more local men of Somali descent to aid and, in some cases, fight for the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab. U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum sentenced Abdow to four months behind bars and four months of home confinement for lying to federal agents investigating the case….
A total of 14 men, most of whom lived in the Minneapolis area, have been charged or indicted in connection with an investigation that began more than two years ago, after young Somali men from Minnesota started secretly slipping away from their families.
Five of the 14, including Abdow, have pleaded guilty in connection with the case. One local man awaits trial. Another sits in jail in the Netherlands, awaiting extradition. The rest are believed to have fled the country and remain at large.
Five Somali men have been killed in the fighting waged by Al-Shabaab for control of war-torn Somalia. Another Minneapolis man, a convert to Islam, also was killed….
The Minnesota investigation took off in October 2008, when Shirwa Ahmed, an American citizen who attended high school and college in Minneapolis, died as part of a coordinated suicide bombing attack in northern Somalia. Ahmed’s death immediately heightened fears in the U.S. intelligence community that other Somali men from the United States who left to train and fight with a terrorist group might return to the United States and carry out an attack here.
While FBI officials say they’ve found no evidence of planned attacks on U.S. soil, investigators learned that many of the men who left here were indeed trained to fight in Somalia.
Over the next year, investigators say, more than a dozen young local men were seduced to the cause of fighting for Al-Shabaab, a group the U.S. State Department said is aligned with Al-Qaida. Al-Shabaab has been fighting for control of Somalia, but it also has extended its reach with attacks in neighboring countries.
One of the key local figures in romanticizing the fight was Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax. According to court records, Faarax used stories of his own fighting in Somalia to recruit others.
As part of his pitch, Faarax said that he “experienced true brotherhood” while fighting. Travel for jihad was the best thing that they could do, he said.
Those recruited by Faarax were reportedly trained by Somali, Arab and Western instructors “in the use of small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and military-style tactics,” records say. They also were indoctrinated against Ethiopian, American, Israeli and Western beliefs….