Surely Obama will be sending over a team of imams — say, Mark Cunningham, and Joas Wagemakers, and Caner K. Dagli, and Loren Thompson — to go over to Somalia to explain to Liban Haji Mohamed that he is misunderstanding his beautiful religion of peace and tolerance.
“Virginia cabbie on FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list detained in Somalia,” by Adam Goldman and Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post, March 2, 2015 (thanks to Kenneth):
A Northern Virginia man who fled the United States more than two years ago and was recently placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list is in the custody of the Somali government, U.S. officials said.
Liban Haji Mohamed, 29, was detained shortly after prosecutors unsealed a warrant for his arrest and the FBI added him to the wanted list in late January. It is unclear how he was taken into custody or how soon he could be brought back to the United States.
The former cabdriver is charged with providing material support and resources to al-Shabab, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization allied with al-Qaeda. He is suspected of having an operational role in al-Shabab and of trying to recruit people to join the group.
When FBI officials announced his inclusion on the most-wanted list, they said Mohamed was “an asset to his terrorist associates who might plot attacks on U.S. soil.” Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, noted that he had detailed knowledge of potential targets in Washington.
The FBI had offered $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction and launched a significant online campaign to find him.
An attorney for Mohamed’s family was not immediately available for comment. The attorney, Gadeir Abbas, has said previously that the family is skeptical of the charges, noting that Mohamed has relatives who were killed or captured by al-Shabab.
Officials said efforts were being made to bring Mohamed back to Virginia, though there are significant logistical and diplomatic challenges. The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Somalia.
U.S. law enforcement had been attempting to track Mohamed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, before he slipped out of the country and into Mexico on July 12, 2012. The case had frustrated FBI agents who strongly believed Mohamed should have been charged with material support of terrorism while he was living in Fairfax County.
Some federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia were willing to do so, though they were overruled by others at the Justice Department, officials said.
Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the Justice Department.
Mohamed’s family still lives in Northern Virginia, and his brother, Gulet Mohamed, is pursuing an unrelated civil lawsuit against the FBI. The suit stems from a 2010 incident in which Mohamed, then 19, was detained and said he was tortured by authorities in Kuwait after his inclusion on a no-fly list kept him from traveling home to the United States….