Operation Rhino Gets a Guilty Plea from a Minnesota Mujahadin

United States v. Mohamed (D.Minn. July 18, 2011) is the latest in a series of convictions federal prosecutors have obtained in response to the recruitment of young Somali-American men in the Minneapolis area to travel to Somalia to fight for al-Shabab. Details from the press release follow:

MINNEAPOLIS – Earlier today in federal court, a 26-year-old Minneapolis man pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim abroad. Omer Abdi Mohamed, also known as “Brother Omer” and “Galeyr,” who was indicted on Nov. 17, 2009, entered his plea before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Michael J. Davis.

In his plea agreement, Mohamed admitted being a member of a conspiracy that recruited young men of Somali descent to travel to Somalia to fight against Ethiopian troops, who were in Somalia assisting the internationally-recognized Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia. Mohamed admitted assisting the men in planning their trips, knowing that once in Somalia, the men intended to murder, kidnap or maim Ethiopian and Somali government troops.

Following the entry of the plea, U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones said, “Those involved in this conspiracy, including Omer Abdi Mohamed, violated the law in a dangerous and misguided effort to support a terrorist organization. In the process, they tore apart many Somali-American families. Parents were left to fret over the disappearance of their young sons, who often left home without a word. In some instances family members discovered what happened to their relatives only by watching Internet videos being used as propaganda by al-Shabaab. I doubt many of us can imagine the feelings in such circumstances, and I can only hope that the criminal prosecutions we continue to take against those involved, including Omer Abdi Mohamed, will help deter these ill-advised actions in the future.”

Between September and December of 2007, Mohamed admittedly attended meetings at a Minneapolis mosque, restaurant and private residence, where he and his co-conspirators formed a secret plan that called for Somali men residing in Minneapolis to travel to Somalia to fight. He also facilitated the travel of several of these young men, including assisting them in obtaining plane tickets as well as the false itinerary needed by one man to mislead his family about the purpose of his travel.

In his plea agreement, Mohamed further admitted being present in Minneapolis when money was raised to mobilize groups of men to travel to Somalia. Many of the donations came from unsuspecting members of the Somali-American community, who were told the money was going to be used for Somalia relief efforts.

The indictment of Mohamed arose out of the “Operation Rhino” investigation, which has focused on young ethnic Somali men from the Minneapolis area who were recruited to fight with al-Shabaab against the TFG and African Union peacekeeping troops in Somalia.

• The earliest groups of identified travelers departed the United States in October and December 2007, while others left in February 2008, August 2008, November 2008 and October 2009.
• Upon arriving in Somalia, the men resided in al-Shabaab safe-houses in southern Somalia until constructing an al-Shabaab training camp, where they were trained.
• Senior members of al-Shabaab and a senior member of al-Qaeda in East Africa conducted the training.
• In July 2008, men from Minneapolis as well as other Americans participated in an al-Shabaab ambush of Ethiopian troops.
• Then, on Oct. 29, 2008, one of the December 2007 travelers from Minneapolis, Shirwa Ahmed, detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device as part of an apparently coordinated series of five suicide bombings in Bosaso and Hargeisa, Somalia. In doing so, Ahmed is believed to have become the first American suicide bomber in Somalia.
• Then, in June 2011, Farah Mohamed Beledi, one of the indicted October 2009 travelers, was killed at a checkpoint in Somalia as he attempted to detonate his suicide vest.

This is the sixth guilty plea in connection with the investigation.

• Kamal Said Hassan, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse and Salah Osman Ahmed returned from Somalia to the United States and have been convicted of terrorism offenses.
• Adarus Abdulle Ali and Abdow Munye Abdow have been convicted of obstruction offenses.
• Mohamud Said Omar is in the custody of authorities in the Netherlands pending extradition,
• Ahmed Hussein Mahamud is in custody in the United States pending trial.
• An indictment of eight men believed to be fugitives in Somalia also was unsealed late last year.

For his crime, Omer Abdi Mohamed faces a potential maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. Chief Judge Davis will determine his sentence at a future hearing, yet to be scheduled.

The Rest @ Lawfare Blog

Somali Terrorists Captured in the Netherlands

Dutch authorities have arrested 12 men of Somali origin they believe were about to carry out a terrorist attack, authorities said Saturday.

The country's intelligence service provided information that led to the arrests in Rotterdam, Public Prosecution Service spokesman Wim de Bruin told CNN.

No weapons or explosives were found, he said. The suspects are in police custody.

"The attack was said to be imminent so the national police started an investigation which led to the arrest of 12 Somalis later on Friday in Rotterdam," de Bruin said.

• "We are not sure about what the target was, how they were going to carry out the attack or when."
• A Dutch counterterrorism office spokeswoman said the immediate threat to the country has been removed and the terror alert level will remain "limited," or relatively low.
  "We are now following the information that comes out of the interrogations with these 12 individuals to see if there still remains a threat from this plot," said Judith Sluiter of the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

The men, between ages 19 and 48, were arrested in various locations. Police have searched a pawn shop, four homes and two hotel rooms, de Bruin said.

Six of the suspects live in Rotterdam and one is from Denmark. Some are Dutch citizens. They all are of Somali origin, de Bruin said.

A spokesman for the Danish Security Service said authorities are in "close contact" with Dutch police.

War-torn Somalia has a virtually powerless central government and is home to several militant groups, including Al-Shabaab, which controls much of the country. Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including a series of bombs that tore through an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby center in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

Officials said the July 11 blasts, which killed 79 people, were probably set off by suicide bombers.
The United States this year charged several people with trying to funnel money or otherwise assist Somali extremists. Al-Shabaab has been linked to al Qaeda.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in September asked other countries to train Somalia's forces to help counter militant groups.

The Netherlands is concerned about threats to Western countries, including itself, said Sluiter. She made a reference to the recent suicide bombing in Stockholm, Sweden.

A 2009 Dutch intelligence report indicated a decreased threat from domestic militant networks.
Domestic militants were becoming more focused on jihad outside the Netherlands, the report said.

But it did say the country was seeing more jihadist threats from Somalia and Yemen.
The report noted several cases of Dutch citizens trying to travel to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab, including four arrested in 2009 in Kenya.

The arrests in the Netherlands followed an unrelated sweep a few days before in the United Kingdom. An operation Monday led by the British intelligence service, MI5, resulted in arrests of 12 suspects ranging in age from 17 to 28 in the cities of London, Stoke and Birmingham, England, as well as Cardiff, Wales.

A senior British official not authorized to speak on the record said the suspects were arrested on suspicion of "preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism in the UK," but he also said the suspects were "aspirational" rather than equipped and "ready to go."

The Rest @ CNN

Mohamud Said Omar Is the Minnesota Somalia Aressted In The Netherlands

MINNEAPOLIS — A Somali man arrested in the Netherlands and accused of financing Islamic terrorists was not an extremist and was so poor he couldn't afford to bring his new wife from Somalia to the U.S., according to two of his brothers who live in Minnesota.

Mohamud Said Omar, 43, was arrested Sunday at an asylum seeker's center near Amsterdam and is being held at the request of American authorities.

The arrest is related to the FBI's investigation into the disappearance of up to 20 young Somali men who left the Twin Cities over the last two years for Somalia, presumed to have joined the terror group al-Shabaab. Dutch authorities said the U.S. has asked for Omar's extradition, which could take up to a year if he contests it.

Dutch prosecutors said U.S. investigators suspect him of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic militants and helping other Somalis travel to Somalia in 2007 and 2008.

Abdullahi Said Omar, Mohamud's younger brother in Minneapolis, and another brother, Mohamed Osman, said Mohamud worked low-paying jobs to make ends meet, and didn't have enough money to send to terrorists. They believe their brother is innocent.

"He was homeless, he didn't even have a place to stay," said Osman, 51, of Rochester, Minn.

Abdullahi said he and Mohamud left Somalia soon after graduating from high school and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for a time, before moving to the U.S. in 1993, living first in Virginia and moving to Minnesota in 1999.

Omar traveled to Somalia in early 2008 to marry a woman there, Abdullahi said, but had not been able to scrape together enough money to bring her back home with him.

Mohamud returned to the U.S. after the wedding and got a job as a fruit truck driver to earn money to bring his wife to the U.S. He said Mohamud also worked on an assembly line for a time.

Omar left the U.S. in November 2008 to make a hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Abdullahi said, then he went to the Netherlands. Abdullahi said his brother had tried unsuccessfully to get U.S. citizenship and that it was not a surprise he hadn't returned after his trip to Mecca.

Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator with the NEFA (Nine Eleven Finding Answers) Foundation, which researches Islamic militants, said it was still possible for someone with limited means to help finance terrorist activities — especially in a place like Somalia, where one can live cheaply. Terror groups like al-Shabaab have learned that, he said.

"What these guys have discovered is, if you pool enough people together, even relatively meager personal resources can be marshalled in a way where you can have a fairly significant impact," he said.

Osman said he had not spoken to Mohamud for about a year, but that he was not as surprised as his brother to learn of Mohamud's arrest, saying Mohamud had worked as a janitor at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the largest mosque in Minnesota, and sometimes served as a driver for people that Osman suspects might have had ties to al-Shabaab in Somalia. Both brothers said Mohamud earned $800 a month working at the mosque.

He described his brother as highly open to suggestion from authority figures.

"I think my brother, what they are doing is scapegoating him," said Osman.

"He's the same like me — just normal," Abdullahi said. "We pray five times a day and follow our religion, but we are not extremists."

A person working in the mosque's main office this week declined to say anything about Mohamud or confirm he worked there. None of about 20 other people at the mosque approached by a reporter, both workers and citizens, would admit to knowing Mohamud or recognizing his name.

Details of Mohamud's case were sealed in the Netherlands under that nation's privacy laws, and U.S. authorities have declined to discuss the case except to confirm it is related to the Minneapolis investigation.

Omar's Dutch attorney, Audrey Kessels, told the daily newspaper De Volkskrant that because Omar had a U.S. green card, he was ineligible for asylum in the Netherlands and his request was quickly rejected.

She said he had appealed the decision on the basis of illness. Omar had told her he couldn't find work in America and "didn't have any peace in his head." Osman said his brother suffered from sleep problems and was often scared of other people.

"He didn't make a healthy impression," Kessels said.

At least three of the men who left the Minneapolis area have died, including one who carried out a suicide bombing in the semiautonomous Puntland region in October 2008. Three have pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in federal court in Minneapolis; a fourth has pleaded guilty to perjury, and a fifth has pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a socialist dictator and then turned on each other, causing chaos in the African nation of 7 million.

Tens of thousands of Somalis resettled in Minnesota in the last two decades, and the state now has the largest Somali population in the United States. Abdullahi Said Omar owns and runs a discount store in a part of Minneapolis populated by many Somali immigrants.

Abdullahi said that his brother had called him from the Netherlands early Thursday morning on his cell phone while he was sleeping, and left a message that indicated he thought he could return to America.

"He said he's in the jail and he's doing well," Abdullahi said. "He said he thinks maybe they'll send him back here."


The Rest @ The Associated Press

Ahmed Osma's Partner Arrested in The Netherlands

Yesterday the Star Tribune (published in Minneapolis-St. Paul) reported on a seemingly significant arrest in the Netherlands related to the al-Shabaab recruiting networks that have centered on the Twin Cities area. From the Star Tribune:

A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was arrested this week in the Netherlands for allegedly financing the recruitment of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota to train and fight with terrorists in their homeland....

The identity of the man, who was arrested Sunday at an asylum-seeker's center 45 miles northeast of Amsterdam, was not released.

• But Special Agent E.K. Wilson of the Minneapolis FBI office confirmed Tuesday that the man was arrested in connection with the ongoing counterterrorism investigation that began here when young men began disappearing in 2007.
• "We are aware of this individual and of this arrest. And it is tied to our ongoing Minneapolis investigation," Wilson said.
• "We are and have been working closely with Dutch authorities through our legal attaché office in Brussels and coordinating with the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs."

Dutch prosecutors said in a statement that

• the man lived in Minneapolis before leaving the United States in November 2008 and arrived in the Netherlands about one month later.
• The statement said American authorities asked for the man's arrest and are seeking to have him extradited....
• According to the Dutch statement, U.S. prosecutors suspect the man of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic extremists and helping other Somalis travel to Somalia in 2007 and 2008.
• The article refers to this as likely "the most significant development yet" in the investigation into US-based Shabaab recruiting networks.

This assessment appears to be correct. A recent article in CTR Vantage that examines Shabaab recruiting networks in the West shows that though recruiters seem to play a significant role in these networks, much is still not known about them.

Those arrested to date in the Twin Cities case have been people who traveled to Somalia, or those who facilitated the travel, but the recruiters have been largely in the shadows.

For example, when 26-year-old Salah Osman Ahmed pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists based on his travel to Somalia, he spoke elliptically of the recruiters who helped draw him there, mentioning "secret meetings" beginning in October 2007 with people he would only describe as "guys."

The arrest of a bigger player in the case may provide greater insight into these networks.


Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/11/arrest_in_netherlands_may_yiel.php#ixzz0WguAEeSr

The Rest @ The Long War Journal