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In a July 13, 2009 booking
photo provided by the Anoka Couty Sheriff, Salah Osman Ahmed is shown.
Ahmed is one of two men accused of supporting terrorism in a grand jury
indictment unsealed Monday in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Anoka County
Sheriff,ho)
Federal authorities unsealed a 5-month-old indictment Monday charging
two Twin Cities men with terrorism conspiracy in their native Somalia.
One of the men, Salah Osman Ahmed, had been a fugitive but had been
apprehended recently and appeared before a federal magistrate Monday. He
is to have a detention hearing Thursday.
Federal officials would not say when or where he was taken into custody.
The other man, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, was arrested in February and has
been held since, said his attorney, Paul Engh, of Minneapolis.
The indictment says that at least Ahmed, of Brooklyn Park, traveled to
Somalia in December 2007 with another person "so that they could fight
jihad in Somalia."
Engh, who is required to have a security clearance just to defend Isse,
said he couldn't discuss the case because virtually all of the case
remains sealed.
"I can't do that without talking about something that's sealed," he
said. "I can't even say if they traveled together. I've read a ton of
stuff, and I'd rather not comment on the substance of it. I'm totally
aware of the facts. I'm well-versed in what's going on, but I really
can't say much."
Similarly, the office of outgoing U.S. Attorney Frank Magill declined to
comment. "Our office is not issuing a news release on the Salah Ahmed
indictment. Our office also has no statement regarding the indictment,"
said David Anderson, a spokesman for Magill.
Federal officials have been investigating claims that some young, male
Somali refugees in the Twin Cities have been recruited by Islamic groups
to fight in their homeland.
A fourth young Somali-American man, who disappeared from the Twin Cities
in recent years, apparently has been killed in Somalia, a local
community leader said Sunday night.
Omar Jamal, executive director of the St. Paul-based Somali Justice
Advocacy Center, said his group had received word that Zakaria Maruf,
30, of Minneapolis, was killed in combat.
Maruf is one of an estimated 20 men from the Twin Cities suspected of
going to Somalia to fight in the Islamist Shabaab insurgency in the
country's civil war. Last weekend, relatives and community leaders said
another from the group — Jamal Bana, 20 — also had been killed in
Somalia.
Another young Somali man from Minneapolis, Shirwa Ahmed, is believed to
have carried out a suicide bombing in October as part of coordinated
attacks that targeted a United Nations compound, the Ethiopian consulate
and the presidential palace in Hargeisa, capital of the Somaliland
region.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said in February that the bomber had
probably been "radicalized" in the Twin Cities.
In June, the Minneapolis family of another young Somali, Burhan Hassan,
said they believed he had been killed and buried in Somalia.
Isse and Ahmed were each charged with a single count of providing
material support to terrorists, as well as a count of conspiracy to
"kill, kidnap, maim and injure." The alleged incidents occurred between
September 2007 and December 2008, the indictment claims.
The dates coincide with the disappearance of the first wave of young
Somali men from the Twin Cities.
The recruitment of the Twin Cities men can be traced to a group of
Somali immigrants from Northern Europe and other countries who traveled
to Somalia in 2005 to fight with the Islamist movement, a senior law
enforcement official said, according to a New York Times report Sunday.
A handful of those men later went to Minneapolis and helped persuade the
first large group from the Twin Cities to leave for Somalia, starting in
late 2007, the official said.
The material support, the indictment alleges, was "namely personnel
including themselves, knowing and intending that the material support
and resources" were going to be used to kill, kidnap or injure people in
a foreign country.
The conspiracy charge alleges that they conspired with each other "and
others, known and unknown to the grand jury," to engage in terrorism.
The indictment alleges that on Dec. 6, 2007, Ahmed boarded a Northwest
Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam "with a final destination
of Somalia."
Ahmed is named in two additional counts of making false statements to
FBI agents. The first of the counts alleges that while he knew people on
his December 2007 flights to Somalia, on July 30 he told the FBI that he
didn't know anyone on the flights.
The second of the charges claims that he traveled with others on the
flights, but on Dec. 8, he told the FBI that he traveled alone.
David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.
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