Nima Yusuf Pleads Guilty to Helping Al Shabaab in San Diego

San Diego: Somali refugee pleads guilty to helping funnel jihadists from Minnesota to al-Shabaab

Nothing says "gratitude" for refugee status like turning around and helping the main reason Somalia is hemorrhaging refugees. "Somali refugee acknowledges aiding terror group," from the Associated Press, December 1 (thanks to Kenneth):

A Somali refugee living in San Diego pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to aiding four men who left Minnesota to join a Somali terror group, including one man who is suspected of carrying out a suicide bombing in the African nation in October.

Prosecutors have said Nima Yusuf conspired in Southern California and elsewhere to aid al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked militia trying to create an Islamic state in Somalia. As part of her plea, the 25-year-old permanent resident of the U.S. acknowledged that she agreed to help the men with money and personnel.
Over the past three years, Minnesota has been the center of a federal investigation into the recruitment of people from the U.S. to train or fight with al-Shabab in Somalia, which hasn't had a functioning government since 1991.

• Twenty people have been charged in the state in connection with the travelers and alleged terror financing. 
• Others have been charged in St. Louis with funneling money to the terror group, and Yusuf was among four people charged in San Diego in late 2010 with helping al-Shabab.
• Yusuf acknowledged to prosecutors that she knew the four men had left the United States to become fighters for al-Shabab. 
• She said she sent $1,450 between February 2010 and November 2010, and also acknowledged lying to federal officials twice when she denied that she had sent money to Somalia.

The men - Abdisalan Hussein Ali, Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax and Abdiweili Yassin Isse - are accused of fighting for al-Shabab and are charged in a separate federal indictment in Minnesota.

Authorities have said they believe Ali and Hassan left Minneapolis for Somalia at different instances in 2008. Members of the city's Somali community fear Ali carried out a suicide bombing on Oct. 29 in Mogadishu that Somali authorities said killed 15 people.

Al-Shabab released a recording of the alleged bomber, who the group identified as a Somali-American, Abdisalan Taqabalahullaah. One of Ali's relatives told the AP he listened to the recording and believes it was Ali's voice.

The FBI hasn't confirmed the identity of the bomber's remains. If they are confirmed to belong to Ali, it will mark the third time someone from Minnesota has been involved in a suicide attack in Somalia.

According to court testimony and documents, Faarax and Isse left Minnesota in a rental car on Oct. 5, 2009, and headed south to the U.S.-Mexico border. At the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego, they told a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer that they were flying from Tijuana to Mexico City. They ultimately made their way to Somalia.

Federal officials wouldn't say whether Yusuf had contact with Faarax and Isse while they were in the San Diego area.

Yusuf faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. She remains in jail without bail. Her plea is subject to final acceptance by U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz at or before sentencing on Feb. 1

The Rest @ Jihad Watch

Somali Famine Illustrates Al Shabaab Recruiting Methods

September 06, 2011 02:07 AM

Heart-wrenching images of emaciated and dying children in Somalia have brought the country back to the world’s attention. The difficulty in delivering food to the needy because of the opposition of the Islamist Somali insurgents has also put a spotlight on Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, or Movement of the Warrior Youth. Famine or not, Al-Shabaab’s “jihad” continues.

Even before the United Nations declared famine in parts of Somalia, suicide attacks by Al-Shabaab on an African Union post in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, drew world attention to the role of the Somali diaspora in the insurgency. Of the two suicide bombers dispatched by Al-Shabaab, one was 27-year-old Somali-American Farah Mohamed Beledi, killed before he could set off his device. In July, Omer Abdi Mohamed of Minnesota pleaded guilty to charges that he had facilitated the travel of young Somali-American men to Somalia to join the insurgent movement.

Now the famine may have given Al-Shabaab new opportunities.

• The insurgent movement has its own emergency drought-relief committee, currently headed by Hussein Ali Fiidow, formerly an official in Al-Shabaab’s governing administration in the district of Banaadir, where Mogadishu is located.
• This committee organized modest relief programs that included collection of food, water and medical supplies as well as refugee camps.
• Senior Al-Shabaab leaders, including Hasan Dahir Aweys, recently visited one of these camps in the Lower Shabelle district.

Despite these efforts, the massive scale of the famine has proved to be too much for the insurgent movement to deal with alone, leading Al-Shabaab leaders to state publicly that they would allow international humanitarian aid organizations to operate in territory under its control. However, some organizations, including the World Food Program, previously barred from distributing aid because they were allegedly disrupting sales by Somali farmers in 2006, remain banned.

Since its rise to public prominence following the U.S.-supported December 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia, Al-Shabaab has sought foreign recruits to bolster its military strength. It emerged as the main insurgent group fighting the Ethiopian military occupation of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia.

Al-Shabaab has aggressively recruited in Somali diaspora communities in Europe, North America, East Africa and the Middle East, estimated to number 1.5 million people. Estimates suggest that Al-Shabaab has attracted around 1,000 recruits from the diaspora and several hundred non-Somali Muslim recruits.

A controversial Homeland Security congressional hearing convened by U.S. Representative Peter King produced a report claiming that 40 Americans, most of Somali descent, have joined the movement.

It’s difficult to draw a single general profile for Al-Shabaab recruits. A number of Somali-American recruits, including Beledi, came from single-parent households, leading lives of petty crime.

Others, such as Abdisalan Hussein Ali, were enrolled in college before joining. Many of the Minneapolis recruits, including Beledi and Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-American who carried out a 2008 suicide bombing in Somaliland, attended the city’s Abubakar as-Saddique Mosque.

The lion’s share of attention from Western media and law-enforcement agencies has focused on Al-Shabaab’s ability to attract scores of men from Somali immigrant families in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. Evidence suggests, however, that the movement views East African recruitment as a priority.

There are several reasons for this: The largest Somali communities reside near East Africa, along the Kenyan-Somali border in places such as the Eastleigh district of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Travel logistics for regional recruits are simpler. Somali refugees in East Africa also endure economic hardships in countries such as Kenya, making them more susceptible to recruitment. Regional recruits typically require less time to adjust to the battlefront than those coming from Europe or North America. Finally, Al-Shabaab maintains a well-established support network throughout East Africa, useful for fundraising and potential refuge during battlefield setbacks.

Many recruits from Somali diaspora communities are wooed by Al-Shabaab’s mixing of a relatively simple creed composed of a peculiar form of militant Islamism with appeals to Somali nationalism.

Most of the estimated 20 Somali-Americans who traveled to Somalia and joined Al-Shabaab did so when Ethiopia was still occupying Mogadishu and other parts of the country in support of the Transitional Federal Government. Other non-Somali recruits are Muslims, like American Al-Shabaab member Omar Hammami, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mansur al-Amriki, or the American.

The movement’s media foundation, the Al-Kataeb, or the Brigades, continues to produce increasingly polished propaganda films that serve as recruitment vehicles.

• Young Somalis in North America and the United Kingdom have been targeted since 2007, as evidenced by the appearance of multiple English-speaking young men in insurgent films released in 2007 and 2008.
• A lengthy video recruitment message released in August 2008 from Saleh Ali Saleh al-Nabhani, an Al-Qaeda operative in East Africa with Kenyan and Yemeni citizenship, was subtitled in English.
• More recent Al-Shabaab videos have also included subtitles or narration in English.

In its recruiting appeals, Al-Shabaab’s methods vary depending on the audience.

• For the Somali diaspora, appeals rely on a mix of Somali nationalism and militant Islamism that painted first the Ethiopian military and now the African Union Mission in Somalia, a 9,000-soldier force in Mogadishu, as foreign interlopers propping up a corrupt government.
• Al-Shabaab’s call to non-Somali Muslims is largely transnational. For example, Swedish recruit Abu Zaid in “Message to the Ummah” speaks about Lars Vilks, the controversial Swedish cartoonist who drew derogatory cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that offended many Muslims around the world.
• These calls are not Somalia-specific and are aimed at a wider audience of discontented Muslims.
• Similar religious exhortations, combined with Somalia-centric messaging, are also made to the Somali diaspora.

Al-Shabaab’s desire and ability to recruit from outside the country signals both strength and domestic weakness. On the one hand, its recruitment networks abroad have been relatively successful in attracting recruits through diverse recruitment appeals based both on a virulent interpretation of Somali nationalism and militant Somali Islamism, influenced by militant Islamic trans-nationalism. However, the insurgent movement’s need to recruit abroad is also a sign that it is incapable of meeting its manpower needs domestically.

The Rest by By Christopher Anzalone @ The Daily Star