“Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien…had asked Common Pleas Magistrate Elizabeth Watters for a bond of $2.5 million, calling Mohamud a public-safety threat and a flight risk. She set a bond of $1 million.” A public-safety threat: was he plotting a jihad mass murder attack in Ohio?
“West Side man in terrorism case made Middle East trip,” by John Futty, The Columbus Dispatch, February 26, 2015:
Relatives and friends of a West Side man who is accused of having ties to terrorists were in court yesterday to show support for him.
At one point, Abdirahman S. Mohamud turned, waved and smiled to some of the six women and five men in the court, and one woman waved back. None of his family, however, would talk to reporters.
Little new information was released yesterday about Mohamud, 23, who is accused of having contact with terrorists in the Middle East. He didn’t speak during his arraignment in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien did say that a tablet computer was among the items Mohamud supplied to members of a terrorist organization during a trip to the Middle East.
O’Brien had asked Common Pleas Magistrate Elizabeth Watters for a bond of $2.5 million, calling Mohamud a public-safety threat and a flight risk. She set a bond of $1 million.
Mohamud’s attorney, Sam Shamansky, had argued that O’Brien’s request was excessive for a defendant facing what Shamansky called two “low-level felonies,” the most serious of which is punishable by no more than three years in prison.
He said his client, who was born in Somalia, is a U.S. citizen, has lived in central Ohio since about 1999 and has strong family ties in the area.
“He is entitled to a reasonable bond,” said Shamansky, who entered not-guilty pleas for his client.
Mohamud, of Dunlane Court, was arrested on Saturday and indicted on Monday on one count each of soliciting or providing support for acts of terror, a third-degree felony, and money laundering in support of terrorism, a fifth-degree felony. The arrest followed a 1 1/2 year investigation by the FBI, O’Brien said.
In a motion filed on Tuesday, O’Brien wrote that Mohamud “provided material support and resources or electronic devices to persons engaged in terrorism in the Middle East and has traveled to that area of the world.”
Prosecutors have provided few specifics about those activities, including whether Mohamud is suspected of planning terrorist attacks in central Ohio. The local office of the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office have declined to comment on the case.
“There’s not a lot of meat on these bones,” Shamansky said of the allegations.
O’Brien said Mohamud traveled to the Middle East, where he met with relatives and others linked to a “federally designated terrorist organization.” He declined to name the group but said after the hearing that it is “a subgroup of a terrorist organization that people would recognize.”
Mohamud reportedly traveled to Syria, but O’Brien would not discuss any countries that he visited.
O’Brien said the federal investigation is ongoing and likely will result in more-serious federal charges against Mohamud.
Shamansky, who was hired by Mohamud’s family, said he assumes that “the federal case will rear its head and this case will become secondary.”
Watters said she could not consider any potential federal charges in setting bond on the state charges.
At $1 million, Mohamud can’t afford to pay a bail-bond agent the necessary premium to gain his release from jail, Shamansky said.
If Mohamud does get out of jail, Watters said he must be under house arrest, surrender his passport and not use the Internet or transfer funds out of the country.
After numerous reporters asked Shamansky for more information about Mohamud, including whether he was in college, Shamansky said, “He’s been helping his mother, who has a serious back issue.”
Hassan Omar, who leads the Somali Community Association of Ohio, said he talked with Mohamud’s mother yesterday.
“She said he’s innocent,” Omar said.
He said he fears that the arrest will tarnish the community’s image here.
“We don’t want to be part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution,” Omar said. “We are here. We are American.”…
PRCS says
I hope you’ll agree that whatever sentences levied for his offenses should be completed before that, eh?
KrazyKafir says
Are you in agreement that if the Muslim is found guilty helping America’s enemies he should be stripped of his citizenship and deported.
Lucretius says
Tried for treason and executed. But that would require the moral sternness of demanding loyalty from citizens which the cultural marxists have worked so hard to undermine.
Mabungo says
He is Somali Fanatic.
pongidae rex says
Somali Muslim immigrant US citizen in Somalia meeting with relatives who are members of an Islamist terrorist organization. Someone in the State Department is not doing their job. Or maybe they are doing their job exceptionally well if the idea is to flood the US mainland with Islamic terrorists.
Angemon says
I think that’s the whole idea behind it…
cs says
I have a simple question. What this people is doing here in the west??
They abuse the welfare system, they run amok here, harass women and gay people, attack Jews.
Their time here is gone, there is no justification.
M S case says
@cs What they are doing here is simple…They are just following their master’s (the devil and mohammed’s) command they are following the Koran to make islam the religion ( which is not a religion but a Cult) of the world Simply put that is it, and we are strapped . The political arena just won’t admit that and until they do then we are doomed to the situation we are in right now and that is…..radical muslims are going to run rampant throughout the world until political pundits come out of the closet.
Sugarboots says
Before his term ends; and before he grants citizenship to upwards of 20,000,000 illegals, the skunk in the Oval Office is going to import 300,000 more Somalians to the states. (not vetted i’m sure) I heard this on the Mark Levin radio program. President O. is surly selling us out, changing the demographics, and creating an unstable and dangerous world. I loath that SOB.
mortimer says
The only thing a jihadist fears is losing residency.
Joycey says
I bet he is one of those Somali’s that Obama air lifted in and placed all around the United States in rural areas to dilute the Christian “red necks”.
M S case says
Us Christian red necks and on the look-out…………..and I hear the KKK is rattleing the bushes again.
mortimer says
The mullah said, “He said he fears that the arrest will tarnish the community’s image here”
There you go. Nothing to do with Islam. We never conduct jihad against our hosts, etc. We are all innocent.
More Islamic ‘honor’ here as well. A Muslim cannot be a ‘terrorist’ because that is against the Islamic version of slander…saying something true that Muslims don’t want publicized.
Muslims have a right never to hear anything true, but unpleasant about Islam.
Baucent says
Talk about “biting the hand that fed him!” This is how he repays the kindness of America that allowed him and his family the escape the sh-t hole that is Somalia. Unbelievable.
M S case says
And what about his family?????even if he goes to jail They are still there and not deported and don’t you know they will work double hard against America because we hurt their son and their community and the mosque etc.
ConnectingDots says
President Obama,
If you had a son, would he look like Abdirahman S. Mohamud?
If not, why not?
Discuss.
Lioness says
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to send this ugly bastard to Syria, instead of jailing him here and paying his expenses for the next 15 years?
Oliver says
HOWEVER, ” HIS MOTHER SAID THAT HE IS INNOCENT”.
And the Feds don’t accept that?
isn’t that against Obama’s rules?
Just aksing