MINNEAPOLIS — A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was
arrested this week in the Netherlands and charged with financing the
recruitment of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota to train and fight with
terrorists in their homeland.
The arrest appears to be the most significant development
yet in one of the most far-reaching counterterrorism investigations since Sept.
11, 2001.
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 to 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 attache 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. Wilson said he could not confirm
or deny that.
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.
Jeanne Cooney, director of community relations for the U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis, which has been handling the case here, said
she could not comment.
Minneapolis has been the epicenter of the case for nearly
two years, ever since the first of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota
began leaving to return to their homeland. In most cases, the men did not tell
family or friends of their plans.
The men are believed to have been recruited by Al-Shabab to
train and fight. Al-Shabab has been designated by the U.S. State Department as
a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaida.
Five of the Minnesotans have died, including Shirwa Ahmed, a
Minneapolis man who is believed to be the first U.S. citizen to act as a suicide
bomber when he died at the center of an explosion in northern Somalia in
October 2008.
A sixth man, a Muslim convert from Minneapolis, is also
thought to have been killed in the fighting.
In addition, four other Somali-American men have pleaded
guilty in federal court in Minneapolis to charges related to this case. The
most recent to plead guilty was 25-year-old Adarus Abdullah Ali, who admitted
in court last week to lying to a grand jury about knowing men who went to
Somalia to fight.
The three other men who pleaded guilty earlier this year
admitted to traveling to Somalia and attending an Al-Shabab training camp
there. Al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Somali, has been
fighting an ongoing civil war to establish an Islamic state.
At the heart of the federal investigation has been the
question of who recruited the men and financed their return to their homeland
to fight.
Wilson would not comment on the significance of Sunday’s
arrest. But it is apparently the first to involve someone in an alleged leadership
role.
More indictments are expected.
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It is unclear how soon the Minneapolis man would face
charges there. Depending on whether he fights efforts to extradite him, it
could take many months before he appears in a U.S. courtroom.
At a hearing Tuesday, Dutch authorities ordered that the man
be held for 60 days.
In another development Tuesday, Mahir Sherif, an attorney
for Sheikh Abdirahman Ahmad, of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in
south Minneapolis, where many of the missing Somali men were known to socialize
or worship, said Ahmad was taken off the federal “no-fly” list in the
past month.
Ahmad, the spiritual leader of the mosque, learned he was on
the list last November when he and Abdulahi Farah, a youth coordinator at Abubakar,
were prohibited from boarding a flight to Saudi Arabia as part of a spiritual
pilgrimage.
Sherif said at the time that he thought the men were put on
the list because they and the mosque had been linked by rumor to the
disappearance of up to 20 young Somali men, many of whom were known to
socialize or worship at Abubakar.
“Obviously, (the FBI) took the rumors that they had and
followed up,” Sherif said Tuesday.
The FBI’s Wilson wouldn’t comment Tuesday on whether Ahmad
had been taken off a no-fly list.
But Sherif said that he thinks federal agents concluded that
the imam and the mosque were not involved in any way in the disappearance of
the men.
“They went through the procedure of the investigation
and I think they’ve confirmed that the sheikh and the center really had nothing
to do with the disappearance of these men, either directly or indirectly, that
they had nothing to do with financing, they had nothing to do with recruiting,
and they had nothing to do with indoctrinating,” he said.
Sherif said that Ahmad boarded a domestic flight for the
first time in a year on Tuesday. He said he did not know if Farah, the youth
director, had also been cleared to fly, but added that he was checking into
that.
“I’d be surprised if he was on (the list),” he said.
“If the sheikh is off, I’d bet he is off. But I can’t confirm one way or
another.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
